Savannah Reich

Savannah Reich

Savannah Reich is a playwright and screenwriter based in West Philadelphia. She holds an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, where she studied with Rob Handel. Her plays have been produced at theaters and universities across the country, commissioned or developed by Walking Shadow Theater Company, the University of Minnesota, SuperGroup, The Flea, Seven Devils New Play Conference, and the Playwrights Center,...
Savannah Reich is a playwright and screenwriter based in West Philadelphia. She holds an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, where she studied with Rob Handel. Her plays have been produced at theaters and universities across the country, commissioned or developed by Walking Shadow Theater Company, the University of Minnesota, SuperGroup, The Flea, Seven Devils New Play Conference, and the Playwrights Center, and supported by residencies at Tofte Lake Art Center and MassMoCA. Her screenplay “Beebe and Barton” was the winner of the Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize in 2015, and her short film “Men Among Men” was the winner of the Bill Murray Comedy Award at the Twin Cities Film Festival (judged by Bill Murray himself!). She was a 2020/21 McKnight Fellow at the Playwrights Center, and her play “Oedipus in Seattle” was the winner of the audience choice award at the 2022 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. She currently teaches playwriting and screenwriting at the University of the Arts.

Plays

  • A Series of Meetings
    Why are there so many meetings? And why are they all terrible? Are we just not trying hard enough? Our facilitators have spent the past year meeting once a week to figure out what is wrong with all our meetings and now, they are ready to share their findings with you at a one-time only, very special meeting- so well planned, so thoughtful, so perfect that it will heal everything that divides us.
  • Tristan Tzara Was My Best Friend In Junior High
    Based on the structure of a Passover seder, but led by Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara. Instead of commemorating the Jews fleeing Egypt, this dinner party / ritual commemorates the time that all of Tristan's friends suddenly didn't want to do Dada anymore, and they all invented surrealism without inviting him. An intimate immersive piece about the nature of community: do we want in or out? Is both an option?
  • Caveman Play
    Rocky and Dandelion are the first Cave-people to adopt agriculture. Douglas is the first domesticated animal. Together, they have prepared a presentation for you, the other Cave-people, to tell you all about the joys of agriculture. Agriculture is really great. You’re going to love it.

  • Hatchet Lady
    This play is nominally about the Temperance activist Carry Nation, but is secretly about the messy, messy path to real change. Our collective desire towards destruction, self-destruction and otherwise. Believing in your own hallucinations. Writing while drunk. My personal desire to see women break things. Prairie fire, burn it all down.

    Also it's a punk rock musical- Score available upon request.
  • Pestilence: WOW!
    1348, Avignon, France: a third of the population has been wiped out by the Bubonic Plague. The other two thirds is extremely freaked out. Part reality television, part psychedelic fever dream, this is a play about humans and the way we deal with real, actual tragedy: totally inadequately, and like assholes.
  • Stupid Ghost
    The Ghost lived in the woods, Minding Her Own Business and definitely Not Haunting Anyone, until one day she saw a Pretty Girl and followed her home. It totally wasn’t even a thing. The Girl was probably not even going to notice.
  • Paradise Park Zoo
    The animals at the zoo are very busy; experimenting with meditation, processing their relationships, honing their wilderness survival skills. None of them are talking about the cages. The cages are not important.
    A three act epic meditation on capitalism, the radical left, and the impossible task of imagining ourselves free.