Recommended by Abe Johnson

  • Abe Johnson: Three Anne Franks

    Wry, sharp-toothed, and keenly aware of faux-progressive theater, this play is a can't-look-away exploration of three actors being told to embody the "perfect victimhood" of Anne Frank while interrogating their own relationships with her mythos. I love this refreshing, irreverent, and deeply interesting play! This script would *shine* onstage while stirring up some fascinating conversations in the audience.

    Wry, sharp-toothed, and keenly aware of faux-progressive theater, this play is a can't-look-away exploration of three actors being told to embody the "perfect victimhood" of Anne Frank while interrogating their own relationships with her mythos. I love this refreshing, irreverent, and deeply interesting play! This script would *shine* onstage while stirring up some fascinating conversations in the audience.

  • Abe Johnson: Pluck

    Dark, dangerous, sharp, and just scandalous enough to keep us on our toes, I adore this monstrous play. The twins are fascinating in their toxic, razor's edge intimacy. Cleo's relationship with gender dysphoria is refreshing, subtle, and expertly buried underneath the scandal of the chatroom scenes. Those chatroom scenes, too, feel at once dangerous and dramaturgically thrilling. Jesus, I'll be thinking about this play for a while. Excellent, excellent, excellent.

    Dark, dangerous, sharp, and just scandalous enough to keep us on our toes, I adore this monstrous play. The twins are fascinating in their toxic, razor's edge intimacy. Cleo's relationship with gender dysphoria is refreshing, subtle, and expertly buried underneath the scandal of the chatroom scenes. Those chatroom scenes, too, feel at once dangerous and dramaturgically thrilling. Jesus, I'll be thinking about this play for a while. Excellent, excellent, excellent.

  • Abe Johnson: howling: a fairy tale

    A gorgeous and inventive play that brings its language, character contexts, and visual poetry to a truly decadent level. I was breathless by the ending. This play wrestles with the tangled relationships of history, trauma, and family as we follow Birdie on her path to both honesty and autonomy. What a dark, special, sure-footed script. It would be a delight to see this onstage!

    A gorgeous and inventive play that brings its language, character contexts, and visual poetry to a truly decadent level. I was breathless by the ending. This play wrestles with the tangled relationships of history, trauma, and family as we follow Birdie on her path to both honesty and autonomy. What a dark, special, sure-footed script. It would be a delight to see this onstage!

  • Abe Johnson: Maybe This Time Is Different

    This play has such delightful surrealism threading through each of the scenes, counterbalanced by the fingerprints of capitalism that reflect on every surface. So smart! A theatrical, nuanced, and human take on how a group of characters on the poverty line reach and stumble toward the promise of better lives.

    This play has such delightful surrealism threading through each of the scenes, counterbalanced by the fingerprints of capitalism that reflect on every surface. So smart! A theatrical, nuanced, and human take on how a group of characters on the poverty line reach and stumble toward the promise of better lives.

  • Abe Johnson: Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

    This play. This PLAY! Vivid, gutsy, hilarious, dangerous, cerebral, and theatrical to the max, smart producers should jump at the chance to premiere this script. Coby's razor-sharp craft and rich dramaturgy are expertly buried underneath the bubbly theatrical worlds that the characters move through. The character dynamics, too, are studies in the brutal civility with which America's history of eugenics is (not) discussed. The power struggles between these women are SO visceral and SO immediate, and watching them unravel (especially in the 1820s Connecticut scene... I scream!!!!!!) is a...

    This play. This PLAY! Vivid, gutsy, hilarious, dangerous, cerebral, and theatrical to the max, smart producers should jump at the chance to premiere this script. Coby's razor-sharp craft and rich dramaturgy are expertly buried underneath the bubbly theatrical worlds that the characters move through. The character dynamics, too, are studies in the brutal civility with which America's history of eugenics is (not) discussed. The power struggles between these women are SO visceral and SO immediate, and watching them unravel (especially in the 1820s Connecticut scene... I scream!!!!!!) is a horrific delight. I'll be thinking about this play for years.

  • Abe Johnson: Where the Lovelight Gleams

    A gorgeously crafted play that is at once intimate and massive. I am in love with *all* of this script, but I especially love how subtly the environment takes on its own character, plot, and pseudo-speech. We are always aware of its flames, and that danger is such a brilliant and natural way to learn about the 3 incarcerated women at the forefront of the play. I especially appreciate the way that McCloskey never spoon-feeds us any platitudes, instead trusting the audience to sit in this purgatory and make what we will of the beautiful, horrible cinders. What a play!

    A gorgeously crafted play that is at once intimate and massive. I am in love with *all* of this script, but I especially love how subtly the environment takes on its own character, plot, and pseudo-speech. We are always aware of its flames, and that danger is such a brilliant and natural way to learn about the 3 incarcerated women at the forefront of the play. I especially appreciate the way that McCloskey never spoon-feeds us any platitudes, instead trusting the audience to sit in this purgatory and make what we will of the beautiful, horrible cinders. What a play!

  • Abe Johnson: this is not the reunion

    Maddie is a master of writing characters who are at once desperate for change and terrified of it. That
    duality creates beautiful, subtle tension in this play where campers are torn between the idyllic versions of who they were at camp, now grown into adults still chasing self-improvement. The world of this play is such a delight to rest into. Wry, subtle, surreal, and so refreshing, this is a quick-paced read that would shine on a larger stage or be an awesome script for college-aged-groups looking to produce new voices.

    Maddie is a master of writing characters who are at once desperate for change and terrified of it. That
    duality creates beautiful, subtle tension in this play where campers are torn between the idyllic versions of who they were at camp, now grown into adults still chasing self-improvement. The world of this play is such a delight to rest into. Wry, subtle, surreal, and so refreshing, this is a quick-paced read that would shine on a larger stage or be an awesome script for college-aged-groups looking to produce new voices.

  • Abe Johnson: We're Just Redoing The Kitchen

    Omniscient Barbara Walters, disembodied hands, and the hanging cloud of Corporate Sponsorships swirl together in this delightfully theatrical exploration of what it means to deconstruct and reconstruct a kitchen. Or a body. Or a family. Everything (!!!) in this play crackles. The dialogue rides a hilarious but sharp line as newscasters joke about putting Skyler down "like a deer." The tension of Skyler's injury permeates every scene–– testing her physical limits and the family's optimism. Striking images of anonymous hands poke and prod Skyler through kitchen construction, physical therapy and...

    Omniscient Barbara Walters, disembodied hands, and the hanging cloud of Corporate Sponsorships swirl together in this delightfully theatrical exploration of what it means to deconstruct and reconstruct a kitchen. Or a body. Or a family. Everything (!!!) in this play crackles. The dialogue rides a hilarious but sharp line as newscasters joke about putting Skyler down "like a deer." The tension of Skyler's injury permeates every scene–– testing her physical limits and the family's optimism. Striking images of anonymous hands poke and prod Skyler through kitchen construction, physical therapy and into a new (though delicate) comeback. I love this play!

  • Abe Johnson: An American Animal

    Oh my god this play. Simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming, "An American Animal" features exciting theatricality, dynamic characters with refreshing humanity, timely themes of American isolation and fear, and genuinely funny/intimate dialogue against a massive Yellowstone landscape. The YA-summer-romance plotline is told with clarity and heart, refreshingly balanced alongside the just-as-swoonworthy nurturing of the wolfpack that Paz, Chloe, and Willa are tracking. This play is so, so special and the ending feels like a gorgeous, queer expansion into the people that the summer allowed...

    Oh my god this play. Simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming, "An American Animal" features exciting theatricality, dynamic characters with refreshing humanity, timely themes of American isolation and fear, and genuinely funny/intimate dialogue against a massive Yellowstone landscape. The YA-summer-romance plotline is told with clarity and heart, refreshingly balanced alongside the just-as-swoonworthy nurturing of the wolfpack that Paz, Chloe, and Willa are tracking. This play is so, so special and the ending feels like a gorgeous, queer expansion into the people that the summer allowed Chloe and Willa to become. Beautiful! Can't wait to see this produced!

  • Abe Johnson: FULLERTON

    AH! The balance of pain and humor in this play is surgical. At once, FULLERTON feels like... a California ghost story about the places we leave? But also a love letter to the way that absence drives us to make beauty for ourselves? And also that sensation of when it’s the end of the Prom night, and everybody’s smiling and sweaty, but on the drive home all of the possibilities of the night start dimming into reality? Wow??? Read it, produce it, please and thank you <3

    AH! The balance of pain and humor in this play is surgical. At once, FULLERTON feels like... a California ghost story about the places we leave? But also a love letter to the way that absence drives us to make beauty for ourselves? And also that sensation of when it’s the end of the Prom night, and everybody’s smiling and sweaty, but on the drive home all of the possibilities of the night start dimming into reality? Wow??? Read it, produce it, please and thank you <3