One of the 10 most produced plays this 2018-2019 season- American Theater Magazine

Good fences make good neighbors … right?

A hilarious hot-button comedy
You can’t choose your neighbors. In this brilliant new comedy, cultures and gardens clash, turning well-intentioned neighbors into feuding enemies. Pablo, a rising attorney, and doctoral candidate Tania, his very pregnant wife, have just purchased a home next to Frank and Virginia, a well-established D.C. couple with a prize-worthy English garden. But an impending barbeque for Pablo’s colleagues and a delicate disagreement over a long-standing fence line soon spirals into an all-out border dispute, exposing both couples’ notions of race, taste, class and privilege.

“Guthrie’s ‘Native Gardens’ is the best stage comedy of the summer”

– Star Tribune
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“Native Gardens is a true breath of comic fresh air. It’s a biting, perceptive, and ultimately hopeful sendup to our fraught relationships with those around us – even right next door. Beyond snappy one-liners and garden hose fights, the play challenges audiences to look beyond petty differences and rediscover our shared decency.”

– DC Theatre Scene
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“The Guthrie has extended “Native Gardens” another week, and that’s a good thing, because it’s a perfect summer play. It has sharp, witty writing, lots of laughs, a strong cast, a beautiful set, a sense of currency and immediacy, and an ideal summer length: 90 minutes, no intermission. Everything about it clicks and hums.”

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– Minnesota Post
Cast & Crew
2 women // 2 men

2-4 extras

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Production History:
Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, The Guthrie Theater, Arena Stage, Victory Gardens, Old Globe Theater, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Trinity Repertory Theater, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Intiman Theater, Florida Studio Stage, Vermont Stage, WaterTower Theater

Based on the hilarious and heart-wrenching book by Luis Alberto Urrea- Inspired by the Movie The Maginificent Seven, Nayeli leaves with her best friends goth Vampi, and gay-bar ownder Tacho, to sneak into the US to bring seven Magnificent Mexican Men to defend their town from drug dealers. The epic journey from Sinaloa, Mexico- to- San Diego and finally to Kankakee Illinois- is laugh out loud funny and gut wrenching at the same time.

Legacy of Light
“What is the science of love?”

Two women scientists, living hundreds of years apart, explore the meaning of love, motherhood, family, art and science in this contemporary comedy. Legacy of Light juxtaposes the story of Émilie du Châtelet, a mathematician, scientist, and lover of the great 18th-century philosopher Voltaire, who became unexpectedly pregnant at 42, and that of a 21st-century physicist desperately trying to conceive a child.

“This is a work with its heart in the right place, one in which the comic machinations emanate from a source of bona fide light.”

– Peter Marks, Washington Post

“Zacarías has written this entertaining play with a shrewd eye for the economies and interests of today’s theater. It is a flight of fancy with a relevant component, containing expansive roles that will be popular with performers. Women, especially, will admire the strength, intellectual depth and human qualities of the play’s female characters.”

– VARIETY

“Legacy of Light is an intellectual joyride from start to finish that confronts a universal question: How do women balance a passionate yearning for science with maternal instinct?”

– Rosalind Lucy, DC Theater Scene

“If Karen Zacarías’ new play Legacy of Light is any indication of where play writing is headed then pop the champagne, we have a lot to celebrate.”

– Stark Insider

The Book Club Play
“Book Club is like Lord of the Flies with Wine and Dip”

A hit comedy about books and the people who love them. When the members of a devoted book club become the subjects of a documentary filmmaker and accept a provocative new member, their long-standing group dynamics take a hilarious turn. Sprinkled with wit, joy and novels galore.

“A delightful, fresh comedy.”

– Talkin’ Broadway

“The Book Club Play is a dangerous comedy about community, loving books, high and low culture, and the absolute terror of group dynamics.”

– Molly Smith, Artistic Director – Arena Stage

“Quite simply, the funniest play I’ve seen in years. Watch with horror, glee and recognition as this book club implodes—only to shed new light on its all-too-familiar members.”

– Blake Robison, Artistic Director Cincinnati Playhouse

Winner of the 2018 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Musical Adaptation. Ella of Frell is given the ‘”gift” of obedience by Lucinda, her misguided Fairy Godmother, and is forced to do anything people command her. On her adventure to rid herself of the curse, she must outwit ogres, sidestep giants, befriend a prince, survive her step-family, and ultimately find the power to be her true self. PRP_9915
First Stage, Milwaukee
“ELLA ENCHANTED heroically speaks to the value of words…the battle between saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’ wages a magical war…delightful and utterly disarming…A story that gives every child a chance to be heroic every day.” – Broadway World

Jane is an ordinary girl, complete with a mom and a bratty little brother. But Jane is on the verge of some big changes. Middle school is looming, and that’s both exciting and a little scary. And yet nothing compares with the jolt she gets when she wakes up one morning to discover she has acquired spots, furry ears and a tail! Not only that, but her neighborhood seems to be turning into a jungle! This delightfully inventive new musical takes a wild and wonderful approach to everything kids have to go through before they’re truly “grown up.”