Daryl Lisa Fazio

Daryl Lisa Fazio

Daryl Lisa Fazio is a playwright, actor, and freelance graphic designer for theatre based in Atlanta, Georgia. Her plays have been produced Off-Broadway and regionally at Penobscot Theatre, Theatrical Outfit, Actor's Express, Horizon Theatre, Florida Rep, and Aurora Theatre. She is an O'Neill finalist & semi-finalist, a BAPF finalist, a Kilroy List selection, an Alliance Theatre Reiser Lab...
Daryl Lisa Fazio is a playwright, actor, and freelance graphic designer for theatre based in Atlanta, Georgia. Her plays have been produced Off-Broadway and regionally at Penobscot Theatre, Theatrical Outfit, Actor's Express, Horizon Theatre, Florida Rep, and Aurora Theatre. She is an O'Neill finalist & semi-finalist, a BAPF finalist, a Kilroy List selection, an Alliance Theatre Reiser Lab recipient, a multi-year participant in both Florida Rep's PlayLab and Actor's Express Threshold New Play Series, and the recipient of a SHEwrites developmental workshop selection in partnership with Synchronicity Theatre and the Playwrights Center. Musicals, for which she is the lyricist/librettist, have been awarded productions and readings in NYC by the National Alliance for Musical Theatre Festival of New Musicals, the New York Musical Theatre Festival, and York Theatre Company, as well as Coastal Carolina University. She has a BA in Theatre (Northwestern University) and MFA in Graphic Design (University of Memphis) and occasionally has flashbacks to her previous life as a college professor. Daryl is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and is claimed as a dependent by several dogs and cats.

Plays

  • I'm Right Here
    Lori Ackerman is a resilient, resourceful spark plug of a mom and truck driver. She’s also got a chronic undiagnosed illness. She’s also been labeled by doctors as “hysterical,” and not the funny kind. When Lori encounters brilliant but struggling neurodiverse family physician Dr. Pamela Slusarski, the two embark on a fact-finding mission that uncovers not just Lori’s truth, but Pamela’s as well, in the process...
    Lori Ackerman is a resilient, resourceful spark plug of a mom and truck driver. She’s also got a chronic undiagnosed illness. She’s also been labeled by doctors as “hysterical,” and not the funny kind. When Lori encounters brilliant but struggling neurodiverse family physician Dr. Pamela Slusarski, the two embark on a fact-finding mission that uncovers not just Lori’s truth, but Pamela’s as well, in the process revealing a wonderfully peculiar connection. Turns out answers aren’t just about science; they’re about being able to see the human being right in front of you.
  • We Are All Waves on the Same Ocean
    Dr. Tamra Berry’s career as an Atlanta shrink is not going the way she planned. Neither is her marriage. Neither is her yard, where a giant tree recently came down during spring storms. And tonight, she’s trying to unwind from all that, not to mention from simply existing as a Black woman, when a quirky, bright young person shows up at her fence gate. But it’s not just any young person. It’s Josephine Carlisle...
    Dr. Tamra Berry’s career as an Atlanta shrink is not going the way she planned. Neither is her marriage. Neither is her yard, where a giant tree recently came down during spring storms. And tonight, she’s trying to unwind from all that, not to mention from simply existing as a Black woman, when a quirky, bright young person shows up at her fence gate. But it’s not just any young person. It’s Josephine Carlisle. Jo, who was just a kid when they last met. Jo, who was drowning in acute mental illness when they last met. Jo, who now appears better but will sometimes answer a question with dance rather than words. They’re both searching for something. Redemption? Revelation? A way forward?
  • Mountain Mamas
    Patsy Armstrong is a coal miner. Just like her daddy, Earl. And just like her mother, Wanda, who was one of the first women ever hired underground in a union mine and, at 60 years old, is still there. As of this week, Patsy’s back in her mother and daddy’s house, after a mining accident that left her with no ability to move or communicate. Her bright 18-year old daughter, Livvy, now lives there too. In a home...
    Patsy Armstrong is a coal miner. Just like her daddy, Earl. And just like her mother, Wanda, who was one of the first women ever hired underground in a union mine and, at 60 years old, is still there. As of this week, Patsy’s back in her mother and daddy’s house, after a mining accident that left her with no ability to move or communicate. Her bright 18-year old daughter, Livvy, now lives there too. In a home that’s full of humor and generosity and rowdiness and grit. But a home—not to mention a whole dang planet—that’s under more pressure than maybe it’s ever been. When the family gets news about the settlement from Patsy’s accident, Livvy jumps into the fray. And Patsy, now forced to listen and observe more than she ever did as a healthy person, is plagued by nightmares and revelations she’s able to share only with us. In this story of resilience and redemption, it doesn’t take long for her to realize she has to learn a new way of being if she’s gonna save her entire world.
  • Safety Net
    Chris Dove is the only female fire captain in an Alabama town at war with opioids, and she’s facing it head-on, heart-out and under scrutiny. Meanwhile, her arthritic spitfire-of-a-mother, Xenia, now living with Chris after a bad fall, worries for her child’s right mind and tries to conjure stability with a bundt cake and a Bible verse. When Chris’ childhood friend, Val—a recovering addict Chris brought back...
    Chris Dove is the only female fire captain in an Alabama town at war with opioids, and she’s facing it head-on, heart-out and under scrutiny. Meanwhile, her arthritic spitfire-of-a-mother, Xenia, now living with Chris after a bad fall, worries for her child’s right mind and tries to conjure stability with a bundt cake and a Bible verse. When Chris’ childhood friend, Val—a recovering addict Chris brought back from an overdose just a year earlier—drifts into their lives, they find themselves at a tipping point between what’s safe and what saves.
  • Split in Three
    The Mississippi Delta. 1969. The Supreme Court has put its foot down and in this last county, desegregation must dissolve. Poor, white sisters, Nola and Nell, one grounded by cynicism and the other by faith, live day-to-day. Until they discover a mixed-race, highly-educated sister they never knew they had. And in a place where separation begets isolation, difference turns out to be a saving grace.
  • Mercy Me
    Percy Wright has always had an active imagination. Maybe that’s why her real life never fully launched. Now she finds herself back in the tiny Missouri town where she survived her teenage years. Because her mother is dying. But not fast enough. For either one of them. While Percy struggles with her mother’s needs, not to mention teaching night classes in horticulture at the junior college extension for adult...
    Percy Wright has always had an active imagination. Maybe that’s why her real life never fully launched. Now she finds herself back in the tiny Missouri town where she survived her teenage years. Because her mother is dying. But not fast enough. For either one of them. While Percy struggles with her mother’s needs, not to mention teaching night classes in horticulture at the junior college extension for adult learners, she loosens weird memories. As the past comes into focus and truths she took for granted start to dissolve, Percy finds herself at a crossroads. A play about grief and rage, but mostly about how humor, wonder, and forgiveness can help us transcend the unthinkable.
  • The Flower Room
    Ingrid is an uptight academic who researches sexual behavior in world cultures while remaining completely closed off from her own sexual self. When she loses her university job, she turns to writing erotica to pay the bills – unleashing her own journey of sexual discovery.
  • Medica
    In a remote surgical tent during a 25-year war, in a time later than now, and in a world where all healers are women, 60-year old Dr. Minnie Vega is going to snap. Until young Dr. Irene Wilde, green but gifted in mysterious ways, enters her solitary reality, along with the troops involved in a sudden offensive. And the two Medica butt heads and fix soldiers who, for some reason, all look the same. And radios...
    In a remote surgical tent during a 25-year war, in a time later than now, and in a world where all healers are women, 60-year old Dr. Minnie Vega is going to snap. Until young Dr. Irene Wilde, green but gifted in mysterious ways, enters her solitary reality, along with the troops involved in a sudden offensive. And the two Medica butt heads and fix soldiers who, for some reason, all look the same. And radios breathe and defy space and time. And light comes out of fingers. And really, all these doctors want to know is: can it be possible to take care of yourself while you’re healing everyone else?
  • Freed Spirits
    A great play for Halloween. Brainy outcast, Susan Dickey, gives tours at Atlanta’s historic Oakland Cemetery in hopes that its vibrant past might make her own present feel less stuck. Mostly, she wanders the brick walkways amidst the towering mausolea quite alone, until one spring day when a freak tornado cuts a swath through her sanctuary and churns up not only a buried mystery, but also a cadre of urban...
    A great play for Halloween. Brainy outcast, Susan Dickey, gives tours at Atlanta’s historic Oakland Cemetery in hopes that its vibrant past might make her own present feel less stuck. Mostly, she wanders the brick walkways amidst the towering mausolea quite alone, until one spring day when a freak tornado cuts a swath through her sanctuary and churns up not only a buried mystery, but also a cadre of urban misfits. Despite being sociopaths, introverts, and cantankerous geniuses, they’ll come together to confront unexplained visions in an attempt to save themselves and the cemetery from oblivion.
  • POPart: The Musical
    Book & Lyrics by Daryl Lisa Fazio • Music by Aaron McAllister

    We’re off to see the wizard when young, impressionable, and slightly batty Kitty Katz enrolls in art school in this irreverent and campy original musical. Kitty’s suburbia-to-ghetto-to-SHoHo story will allow us glimpses of acceptance, genius, insanity, and plenty of the stuff called art.
  • lift, a new musical
    Book and Lyrics by Daryl Lisa Fazio • Music by Aaron McAllister.

    In a spunky working-class Ohio town, 8-year old Ethan Hale falls through the ice and is miraculously saved. But no one sees the rescue. And no one steps forward as the hero. So when Ethan, who not long ago lost his dad in a freak accident, insists that it was a "birdman," his friends and family grapple with questions about...
    Book and Lyrics by Daryl Lisa Fazio • Music by Aaron McAllister.

    In a spunky working-class Ohio town, 8-year old Ethan Hale falls through the ice and is miraculously saved. But no one sees the rescue. And no one steps forward as the hero. So when Ethan, who not long ago lost his dad in a freak accident, insists that it was a "birdman," his friends and family grapple with questions about faith and their desperation to connect as the truth unfolds.
  • Greyhounds
    Circumstance brings together two vastly different women at a rural Oklahoma bus stop in the wee hours, beginning a dance of hurt, humor, and intense longing for connection that could bridge the gap over two painful pasts. A horrible discovery mid-way through the night proves to be a catalyst for revelation, transformation, and, ultimately, that desperate link. Are these women truly opposites? Who will they be when the next bus comes?
  • Deer Play
    When Mississippi good ol’ boy and champion deer hunter, Oscar Moak, one day doesn’t seem able to shoot, he and a very charming doe take his family on a wild ride. While Oscar shuts down, the doe coaxes him out. While Oscar’s father loses the will to fight, his mother takes home renovations into her own hands, and his devoted wife discovers adrenaline. If you’re afraid to die, does it also mean you’re afraid to live?