Meg Miroshnik

MEG MIROSHNIK’s plays include The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls (Yale Rep; Alliance), The Tall Girls (Alliance; O’Neill; La Jolla Playhouse DNA Series), The Droll (Pacific Playwrights Festival) and Lady Tattoo (Pacific Playwrights Festival). Awards: Whiting Award, Susan Smith Blackburn finalist, Alliance/Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Award. Publications: Samuel French. Commissions: South Coast Rep, Steppenwolf, and Yale Rep. MFA: Yale School of Drama under Paula Vogel. Affiliation: Core Writer at the Playwrights’ Center. Meg hails from Minneapolis and currently lives in Los Angeles. www.megmiroshnik.com

Scripts

The Droll {Or, a Stage-Play about the END of Theatre}

by Meg Miroshnik

4

Cast Size

7

Genre

docudrama/historic,

drama,

political,

science fiction

It is one year after the End Of Theatre and fourteen-year-old Nim Dullyn has just witnessed his first DROLL - an underground performance of comedic excerpts from famous plays. Seduced by the magic of the stage, Nim sets out for the Cittie with this illegal theatrical troupe. He is pursued by the beastly Roundheads, fundamentalists who deem theatre an abomination during this time of Sicknesse and Troubles...

It is one year after the End Of Theatre and fourteen-year-old Nim Dullyn has just witnessed his first DROLL - an underground performance of comedic excerpts from famous plays. Seduced by the magic of the stage, Nim sets out for the Cittie with this illegal theatrical troupe. He is pursued by the beastly Roundheads, fundamentalists who deem theatre an abomination during this time of Sicknesse and Troubles. Inspired by the theatre closures of Puritan England, The Droll asks: what evil would you do in the name of laughter?

The Tall Girls

by Meg Miroshnik

Cast Size

6

Genre

drama,

movement/physical,

period

The tiny hamlet of Poor Prairie doesn’t see a lot of folks coming into town, least of all men – they’ve all left to find desperately needed work. So when one gets off the train, everybody talks, especially the high school girls looking for a meal ticket. The marryin’ kind.

But this man is mysterious. He’s from Poor Prairie, but nobody knows where he’s been and his story’s got some…gaps. A few things are clear...

The tiny hamlet of Poor Prairie doesn’t see a lot of folks coming into town, least of all men – they’ve all left to find desperately needed work. So when one gets off the train, everybody talks, especially the high school girls looking for a meal ticket. The marryin’ kind.

But this man is mysterious. He’s from Poor Prairie, but nobody knows where he’s been and his story’s got some…gaps. A few things are clear, though – he’s teaching at the high school, he knows basketball, and most importantly, he has the only inflated basketball in town.

As for that meal ticket? He may just have that after all, if he can get his Poor Prairie girls good enough at basketball to sell a few tickets. And keep ‘em from marryin’ off. And out of fights. And out of the sights of the Committee on Play, Girls Division (it’s the 1930s – when basketball was “dangerous” for girls). And stay ahead of that mysterious past…

Inspired by the flourishing and the decline of high school girls' basketball teams in the 1930s rural Midwest, The Tall Girls asks: who can afford the luxury of play? And what is the cost of childhood? Featuring a stong ensemble of female characters, The Tall Girls examines issues of class and gender amidst the historic 1930s Dust Bowl.

The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls

by Meg Miroshnik

1

Cast Size

6

Genre

adventure,

comedy,

dark comedy,

fable/folktale,

fantasy,

horror

Once upon a time – in 2005 – a twenty-year-old girl named Annie returned to her native Russia to brush up on the language and lose her American accent. Underneath a glamorous Post-Soviet Moscow studded with dangerously high heels, designer bags, and luxe fur coats, she discovers an enchanted motherland teeming with evil stepmothers, wicked witches, and ravenous bears. Annie must learn how to become the heroine...

Once upon a time – in 2005 – a twenty-year-old girl named Annie returned to her native Russia to brush up on the language and lose her American accent. Underneath a glamorous Post-Soviet Moscow studded with dangerously high heels, designer bags, and luxe fur coats, she discovers an enchanted motherland teeming with evil stepmothers, wicked witches, and ravenous bears. Annie must learn how to become the heroine of a story more mysterious and treacherous than any childhood fairy tale: her own. This subversive story haunts the audience and carries a powerful message for young women living in a world where not everything ends up happily ever after.