Aleks Merilo

Aleks Merilo

Aleks Merilo is an award-winning playwright from Palo Alto, CA. His script, THE SNOWMAKER, was winner of the Playwrights First Award, The Chameleon Theatre Circle New Play Contest, Playhouse on The Square’s New Works @ The Works Festival, and was a finalist for the Oregon Play Prize. His play THE WIDOW OF TOM’S HILL played off-broadway at 59E59, where BroadwayWorld called it “A truly distinctive piece of...
Aleks Merilo is an award-winning playwright from Palo Alto, CA. His script, THE SNOWMAKER, was winner of the Playwrights First Award, The Chameleon Theatre Circle New Play Contest, Playhouse on The Square’s New Works @ The Works Festival, and was a finalist for the Oregon Play Prize. His play THE WIDOW OF TOM’S HILL played off-broadway at 59E59, where BroadwayWorld called it “A truly distinctive piece of theater.” His play EXIT 27 was called “The best original play to be produced this season” by The Houston Chronicle, was voted best new play by BroadwayWorld, Houston, and played most recently at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. He has an MFA in playwriting from UCLA, lives in the Pacific Northwest, and is represented by the Robert A. Freedman Dramatic Agency. Aleksmeriloplaywright.com.

Plays

  • TEOTWAWKI
    From a remote survival shelter in a desolate corner of Arizona, a young woman sends out a radio message to anyone who might be listening.
  • Montreal
    [Full-Length] MONTREAL (4m/3f): In 1943, the Hegleburgs were young aristocrats at the very top of Estonian society. By 1944, they were refugees fleeing war and surviving in poverty. Over 3 decades, a father, mother, and son try to rebuild a life in a new land after war erases their country and fractures their family.
  • The Nearest Far Away Place
    [Monologue] A young woman hitchhikes across state lines, but is reluctant to tell anyone why.
  • To Mr. Wilson, c/o Shapiro & Gold
    [Full-Length] After a volatile four year bond with a promising but unmotivated student, a young teacher is accused of actions that could end his career. He does not deny accusations against him. What if he was fired because of his most important lesson?
  • The Hanging Girl
    [Full-Length] Newly expelled and seemingly futureless, Sonny and his friends engage in a final night of revelry that will end with one of them going missing. 18 years earlier, Sonny's parents were involved in a crime that would never be reported. These two stories collide in the present day in the play THE HANGING GIRL.
  • The Snowmaker
    Winner, Playwrights First Award
    Winner, Chameleon Theatre Circle New Play Contest
    Top 3 Finalist, The Oregon Play Prize

    [Full-Length] In the dead of winter, a teenage girl’s estranged father unexpectedly takes her to a cabin in the isolated woods of Montana. She doesn’t know where he has been for the last 10 years. And she doesn’t know who he is searching for at night, when he...
    Winner, Playwrights First Award
    Winner, Chameleon Theatre Circle New Play Contest
    Top 3 Finalist, The Oregon Play Prize

    [Full-Length] In the dead of winter, a teenage girl’s estranged father unexpectedly takes her to a cabin in the isolated woods of Montana. She doesn’t know where he has been for the last 10 years. And she doesn’t know who he is searching for at night, when he stares out the window, with a sawed-off shotgun by his side.
  • The Widow of Tom's Hill
    2nd Place Winner, The Julie Harris Playwriting Award
    Finalist, Woodward/Newman Award For Playwriting, Bloomington Playwrights Project

    [Full-Length] In 1918, the worst plague in human history hit America. When a small Washington town finds itself the subject of a military quarantine, a young sailor and a 19 year-old widow from opposite sides of the blockade engage in a dangerous game of cat...
    2nd Place Winner, The Julie Harris Playwriting Award
    Finalist, Woodward/Newman Award For Playwriting, Bloomington Playwrights Project

    [Full-Length] In 1918, the worst plague in human history hit America. When a small Washington town finds itself the subject of a military quarantine, a young sailor and a 19 year-old widow from opposite sides of the blockade engage in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse, putting their lives, and souls, in the balance.

    “A haunting play [and] truly a distinctive piece of theatre… See this intriguing play. It is a cautionary tale that you will think about long after the curtain call.” -Broadwayworld.com
  • Exit 27
    Winner, the Inkslinger Playwriting Competition, Louisiana University
    Winner, Project Playwright, The Sanguine Theater
    Winner, New by Northwest Playwriting Contest, CoHo Productions
    Winner, Best New Play, Broadway World, Houston
    Finalist, Woodward/Newman Award For Playwriting, Bloomington Playwrights Project

    [Full-Length] Since the year 2000, the citizens of one town...
    Winner, the Inkslinger Playwriting Competition, Louisiana University
    Winner, Project Playwright, The Sanguine Theater
    Winner, New by Northwest Playwriting Contest, CoHo Productions
    Winner, Best New Play, Broadway World, Houston
    Finalist, Woodward/Newman Award For Playwriting, Bloomington Playwrights Project

    [Full-Length] Since the year 2000, the citizens of one town have abandoned nearly fourteen hundred boys in the Utah Desert. They are called the Lost Boys of Utah. EXIT 27 is based on their stories.

    "EXIT 27 is by far the best original play to be produced this season. Remember the name Aleks Merilo. He has written one of the most astounding, suspenseful, and enlightening plays of the season."

    -Buzz Belmont, Houston Chronicle

    “This resoundingly incredible play deftly moved me more than anything I have ever witnessed, stirring my mind and breaking my heart many times and on many different levels…I sat stoically through the first third of the first act, doing my best to control my emotions…Yet, as James Monaghan's Dodge delivered his first monologue, I lost myself. Silent tears streamed down my face throughout the remainder of the first act, as I was left utterly bereft and broken…”

    - David Clarke, BroadwayWorld.com
  • Little Moscow
    Winner, 1st Place, Dubuque New Play Contest

    [One Act Play] In LITTLE MOSCOW, an aging Russian immigrant recalls a time when his sister brought a Jewish stranger into their home, and a family dinner that would have repercussions for half a century.
  • Blur in the Rear View
    Winner of the Adjudicators Award, Spokane Civic Theater Short Play Festival, Spokane, WA
    Winner of the James Rogers Playwriting Award, University of Kentucky.
    Winner of the Dylan Days Playwriting Contest, Hibbing, MN

    [One-Act] Unseen for 8 years, a quiet, hardened, and heavily tattooed young man named Jasper appears one night, standing in the dirt road outside a modest small town...
    Winner of the Adjudicators Award, Spokane Civic Theater Short Play Festival, Spokane, WA
    Winner of the James Rogers Playwriting Award, University of Kentucky.
    Winner of the Dylan Days Playwriting Contest, Hibbing, MN

    [One-Act] Unseen for 8 years, a quiet, hardened, and heavily tattooed young man named Jasper appears one night, standing in the dirt road outside a modest small town home. The house may or may not belong to Rory, Jasper’s high school girlfriend, who remembers him fondly, but has never spoken his name to anyone. Who Jasper is, where he has been, and his unspoken motives are slowly revealed during a startling chain of events in this drama.
  • The Last Bride Of Ansbruk Village
    [10-Minute Play] Many years ago, in a small corner of Washington state, a wedding unlike any other took place in the last place one would expect. This wedding is the story of THE LAST BRIDE OF ANSBRUK VILLAGE (4m/2f, 1 set)
  • Blue Bench
    [10-Minute Play] Hoping to meet women, a young man sneaks backstage at the worst circus in Paris. He instead finds himself confronted by a haunted figure who will change his life forever, and learns the secrets of the BLUE BENCH.
  • Tango Mike
    [10-Minute Play] In TANGO MIKE, two retired servicemen, negotiate a series of personal crises, joys, and bad jokes in a life-long journey that ultimately captures the depth and value of true friendship.
  • Bloody Mary
    [10-Minute Play] Three girls play a seemingly innocent game, which disguises much darker events in the life of one of them.
  • The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether
    [10-Minute Play] An adaptation of the Edgar Allen Poe story of the same name, a charismatic Doctor shows off the methods of France's most highly regarded insane asylum.
  • Starfish
    [10-Minute Play] A tight-knit group of friends protect one of their own in a difficult time... Until it goes against their immediate interests.
  • Shalah
    [Full-Length] What makes a loving father become a monster? What turns a naive young Jew named Shalah into the ruthless and brutal villain known as Shylock? Set in the years before THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, SHALAH (4m/2f, 1 set) is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s most controversial play, told from the point of view of the Shylock’s daughter, Jessica.