Dianne Nora

When Soso is left for dead on the Eastern Front, he’s taken in by the Kremlin due to his shocking resemblance to a certain someone. Koba is tasked with training him to perform the role of a lifetime: Stalin’s body double. While Soso is a performer—trained to dance, juggle, and tour the countryside entertaining peasants, Koba is an Actor’s Actor, a student of Stanislavski himself (maybe you’ve heard of his System?), committed to the pursuit of perezhivanie, or experiencing a character’s reality. Based on true events, the doubles prepare for the Conference at Tehran, when three so-called Great Men (or were they merely players?) decided the fate of the 20th century.

Commissioned by the Goodman Theatre, as part of their Playwrights Unit 2018-2019.

In this play, a fictionalized Ruth convenes a chorus of eight women and nonbinary Justices to tell the story of her life through standup, stories, and scenes. The play offers a human side to Ruth's enduring legacy as an activist, jurist, and icon. The play offers of a glimpse of a Court that reflects the diverse identities of American women today, a Court that lives up to Ruth's vision for when the Court would have enough women: "when there are nine."

Xavi is a little girl with a big imagination, stranded alone in her bedroom. When a mysterious visitor drops by looking for a missing part to fix his magical flying machine, they explore the hidden depths of her room and use the power of imagination to turn her isolation into an epic indoor voyage. This online interactive experience borrows techniques of the Victorian toy theatre (like paper cutout characters) and combines them with contemporary style puppetry and original songs. Designed specifically for online viewing, it invites viewers to turn their cameras on to participate in select scenes. A post-show talkback after each performance invites them to meet the puppeteers, ask questions, and explore behind-the-scenes. Audience members will also receive a printable puppet template that they can make and color at home.

This is an opportunity for families quarantined together to share some quality fun time together; and for extended families, who can't get together physically, to enjoy a shared virtual experience.

Journey Around My Bedroom is loosely inspired by a work of the same title by the 18th-century French writer Xavier de Maistre—a peculiar travelogue conceived during six-weeks of house arrest—that transformed his confinement into a fresh perspective on his life.

Through a series of scenes between a woman--let's call her Monica--and different imagined lovers, this play asks what the cost of intimacy is, how we reckon with our past selves, and what we talk about when we talk about Other Women.

Dianne is seeking development opportunities for this play.

Martha Truman and Thomas Fairweather meet by chance on an airplane -- a brief liaison that ultimately ends in a life-altering tragedy. An unlikely pair, one is the rebellious daughter of a successful capitalist and the other a missionary of a fringe sect of Christianity, encountering the world outside his community for the first time. A year later, the still shaken Thomas travels to meet Martha’s family. With the country in turmoil as class tensions between workers and the landed elite continue to rise, a general strike has left the Trumans isolated on their estate. Over a few short days, the family is visited by a series of plague-like misfortunes. As the family crumbles, and the natural world encroaches on their carefully kept estate, their well-guarded reality quickly becomes a fever dream spiraling out of control.

Dianne is currently seeking development opportunities for this play.

Aoife, a young Irish woman, and Grace, her American roommate, travel together from their home in Dublin to London, pursued by a ghost. Set in October 2018, this play offers a glimpse into the time after Ireland's historic vote to repeal the eighth amendment of the Irish Constitution, making abortion legal in the Republic of Ireland, but before the law had come into effect. As Aoife and Grace tackle issues of friendship, grief, and autonomy, Come Here to Me looks at the intersections of Irish and American culture, and the women's lives that hang in the balance.

A raucous and raw reimagining of August Strindberg's Miss Julie.

A dark comedy about f*cking and f*cking up.

Wasps tells the story of George Worth and his hyper-dysfunctional family. George is branded as the ideal, all-American candidate when he's chosen as a Democratic nominee for US Senator. As George and his family come under greater media scrutiny, he becomes obsessed with the idea that his family home has been infested with wasps. Following George's failures and successes, Wasps takes an irreverent look at the role of media and democracy in the Age of Terror.

Everybody's Legs is an examination of bodies and trauma, tracing one family's lineage through movement and text.

The lives of five women are brought together in this Western set on Chicago's West Side.