Peter Gil-Sheridan

Peter Gil-Sheridan is a Latinx playwright and was a founding member of The Pool, a pop-up theatre company formed with Lynn Rosen and Susan Bernfield that produced his play The Rafa Play in rep with Rosen’s and Bernfield’s work at the Flea Theatre in NYC. He is a regular writer-in-residence with the Silverton Theatre Mine in Silverton, CO where he’s generated several new plays. He also wrote the feature film, Hungry, commissioned by Amar Srivastava that is slated for production in January 2019. He was a contributor to Artbarn 2017 in Tacoma, Washington, a site-specific immersive piece about women created in residence at the Warner Gym on the University of Puget Sound under the direction of Jess K. Smith. Peter was a guest at the University of Iowa’s New Play Festival where he also gave a...

Peter Gil-Sheridan is a Latinx playwright and was a founding member of The Pool, a pop-up theatre company formed with Lynn Rosen and Susan Bernfield that produced his play The Rafa Play in rep with Rosen’s and Bernfield’s work at the Flea Theatre in NYC. He is a regular writer-in-residence with the Silverton Theatre Mine in Silverton, CO where he’s generated several new plays. He also wrote the feature film, Hungry, commissioned by Amar Srivastava that is slated for production in January 2019. He was a contributor to Artbarn 2017 in Tacoma, Washington, a site-specific immersive piece about women created in residence at the Warner Gym on the University of Puget Sound under the direction of Jess K. Smith. Peter was a guest at the University of Iowa’s New Play Festival where he also gave a video talk on the art of dramatic writing for Iowa’s renowned International Writing Program’s online course “Power of the Pen: Identities and Social Issues in Poetry and Plays” and was a recipient of the Iowa Playmakers Residency.

His play Cockfight was originally written at Soho Rep’s Writer/Director Lab and was further developed by PlayPenn in Philadelphia.  His play Ritu Comes Home, originally commissioned by InterAct in Philadelphia as part of their 20/20 Commission program had its world premiere there in 2015. It will be recorded for podcast by The Parsnip Ship in the 2021-2022 Season.
 
Other plays include Courtney and Caroline, a piece written and performed in Farmington, NM with Navajo and non-Navajo community members about religious and cultural traditions in the area, What May Fall, commissioned by the Guthrie and performed there. Topsy Turvy Mouse was produced by the Cherry Lane and Borderlands Theatre in Tucson and was the winner of The Smith Prize awarded by the National New Play Network (NNPN) for outstanding political work. Other work developed by the Lark’s Playground, New York Theatre Workshop, NJRep, and Queens Theatre in the Park.
 
Residencies include the P73 Residency Jerome Fellowship in Minneapolis, The Sundance Institute, The Millay Colony, The Ucross Foundation, and the Tofte Lake Residency. Peter has also been a member of I73, Page 73’s weekly writing group in New York. He’s performed his solo piece People Tell Me Things at several venues across the U.S. including Ars Nova’s ANTFest, Identity, Inc. in Farmington, NM, at Ucross in Wyoming and on Martha’s Vineyard. Peter is a Professor of Playwriting at Vassar College. MFA: Iowa, BA: Fordham.

Scripts

This Space Between Us

by Peter Gil-Sheridan

Synopsis

When Jamie quits his job at a high-powered law firm to take a non-profit position in Kenya, he begins to slowly absent himself from his friendships, his relationship with his boyfriend, and most of all from his conservative Cuban-American family. Jamie’s search for something more and withdrawal from his old life brings his concerned family and friends together in unanticipated ways, with irreversible...

When Jamie quits his job at a high-powered law firm to take a non-profit position in Kenya, he begins to slowly absent himself from his friendships, his relationship with his boyfriend, and most of all from his conservative Cuban-American family. Jamie’s search for something more and withdrawal from his old life brings his concerned family and friends together in unanticipated ways, with irreversible consequences for all of them.

Ritu Comes Home

by Peter Gil-Sheridan

Synopsis

The plot involves a gay male couple, one of them (David Bardeen) a fastidious guy – don’t look cross-eyed at his new rug because he might accuse you of ruining it. The other, an actor, (Jered McLenigan) is more erratic and affected – but no matter their traits, both characters have their hearts and spirits in a good place at their middle-class Bryn Mawr home. For years, one of them has been sending about perhaps...

The plot involves a gay male couple, one of them (David Bardeen) a fastidious guy – don’t look cross-eyed at his new rug because he might accuse you of ruining it. The other, an actor, (Jered McLenigan) is more erratic and affected – but no matter their traits, both characters have their hearts and spirits in a good place at their middle-class Bryn Mawr home. For years, one of them has been sending about perhaps $30 each month to an agency to sponsor a poor child, in this case Ritu of Bangladesh. In turn, she writes him monthly notes about her life and acknowledges the generosity. She’s now a teenager.

One morning after a particularly drunken night at the house with an ever-present outgoing Latino woman who is their best pal (Annie Henk), all three wake up to an astonishing sight: Ritu. She has mysteriously appeared, girlish and wide-eyed and incomprehensible as she babbles on about the comforts of the house in her native tongue (which, to the audience but not the other three characters, is English).

Suddenly, these hip and free-wheeling (or sophisticated and childish) and thoroughly self-possessed adults are confronted with a teenager among them. They fret and even begin to despair, but they cope.

-Howard Shapiro, WHYY, Philadelphia