Phoebe Eaton

Phoebe Eaton

PHOEBE EATON is multi-award-winning journalist, playwright, and screenwriter. Much of her creative work draws on her investigative journalism, and her awards include: Mexico's International Journalism Award 2021; the Newswomen's Club of New York Front Page Award 2020, and a New York Press Club Award in 2017.

A 2022 TrackingB TV pilot finalist-winner—her work also shortlisted for 2021...
PHOEBE EATON is multi-award-winning journalist, playwright, and screenwriter. Much of her creative work draws on her investigative journalism, and her awards include: Mexico's International Journalism Award 2021; the Newswomen's Club of New York Front Page Award 2020, and a New York Press Club Award in 2017.

A 2022 TrackingB TV pilot finalist-winner—her work also shortlisted for 2021's American Zoetrope Screenwriting Award—she has been a 2020-2022 Harvardwood Jeff Sagansky TV Writers Program selectee and 2023 Harvardwood Writers Competition finalist, a 2019 Writers Guild East Writers Room finalist, a 2018 Imagine [Entertainment] Impact Content Accelerator finalist (top 1% of 4,000), and a 2017 Helene Wurlitzer Foundation playwright fellow. She was also a 2018-19 ScreenCraft Stage Play Award finalist for her play A FIELD GUIDE TO THE AMAZON and now excerpted in Smith & Kraus’s THE BEST WOMEN’S STAGE MONOLOGUES 2021. Another full-length, WOMAN DESCENDING A STAIRCASE (excerpted in Applause Book's SHE PERSISTED: MONOLOGUES BY WOMEN 2021 and in Smith & Kraus’s THE BEST WOMEN’S STAGE MONOLOGUES 2019), was a 2017-18 Woodward-Newman Drama Award finalist and short-listed for the 2019 Austin Film Festival Stage play/playwriting Award.

Eaton's theater and film work considers complex issues involving sex workers; the queer/transgender individual; the mentally ill; PTSD war veterans; immigrants; women; the Black experience; Muslim identity; crime; and the soullessness/hypocrisies of big business and government.

A member of the Actors Studio Playwright/Directors Unit, the Dramatists Guild, and a PEN Prison Writing Program mentor, Eaton is also a past recipient of a Scriptapalooza TV Writing Prize (BREAKING BAD: "RESURRECTION"), for which she drew on sources in the FBI and DEA, rustling up her own meth cook-slash-explosives expert, known to his militia following as "Uncle Fester."

Development; Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive (Gary Garrison/Mark Bly/Marsha Norman). Tina Satter/Half Straddle Writing/Directing Workshop. Readings Dramatists Guild, Kennedy Center, Naked Angels, LAMA.

Eaton is also an award-winning investigative long-form feature writer for the New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, Vanity Fair, the New York Observer, Harper’s Bazaar, Men’s Vogue, GQ (UK), and The Daily Beast among many others, her work also appearing in the Guardian, the Saturday Telegraph magazine, the Observer magazine, et al. A 2021 winner of Mexico's International Journalism Award, in 2020 she won a Front Page Award/Investigative Reporting across all media for a series on Harvey and Bob Weinstein in Air Mail weekly. In 2017, she was also the winner of a New York Press Club Journalism Award for her cartel reporting in Guerrero state, Mexico. Eaton has sat ringside at mafia-murder prosecutions and at the trial of extradited Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, exclusively interviewing his family in Culiacán and up in the Sierra Madre. (Kindle Single series “IN THE THRALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING: THE SECRET HISTORY OF EL CHAPO, THE WORLD’S MOST NOTORIOUS NARCO” excerpted in the New York Post on 2/3/19 and #1 “Organized Crime” Kindle Single its first week out and No. #7 Amazon Hot New Releases/Organized Crime).

Education: University of Chicago, Harvard University, Columbia University. Grew up in New York and in the Republic of Ireland.

Plays

  • A Field Guide to the Amazon by Phoebe Eaton
    Cast: 
    4–9
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: metoo, sexual assault + 8 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, experimental, political
    Keyword: metoo, sexual assault, Muslim, suicide, tabloid, journalists, lawyers, female lawyer, sexual harassment, rape
    An activist-attorney tangoes with a woman claiming sexual assault about filing a sensational lawsuit. The case’s Muslim paralegal tries to navigate a path through the fog of relative morality as her boss’s lonely suicidal daughter quietly forces a forbidden connection.

    Upcoming excerpts in THE BEST WOMEN'S STAGE MONOLOGUES 2021 (Smith & Kraus) and SHE RESISTED: MONOLOGUES BY WOMEN 2021 (...
    An activist-attorney tangoes with a woman claiming sexual assault about filing a sensational lawsuit. The case’s Muslim paralegal tries to navigate a path through the fog of relative morality as her boss’s lonely suicidal daughter quietly forces a forbidden connection.

    Upcoming excerpts in THE BEST WOMEN'S STAGE MONOLOGUES 2021 (Smith & Kraus) and SHE RESISTED: MONOLOGUES BY WOMEN 2021 (Applause Books)

    Goodman Theatre literary manager Jonathan L. Green: “A sharp analysis of contemporary society. Dialogue is snappy and distinctive.”

    Yale Repertory Theatre: “Witty [and] fast-paced…characters spar with one another with agility and deftness.”

    2019 O’Neill Conference: “Your voice, and your ideas, have made a significant impact on our office.”

    2019 Papatango New Writing Prize committee (Second Round): “You write some really cracking dialogue. Nicely structured, and there is real skill on display throughout.”
  • Woman Descending a Staircase by Phoebe Eaton
    Cast: 
    4–8
    ·
    Genre: biography, dark comedy + 4 more
    ·
    Keyword: mental illness, Closeted gay men + 8 more
    Genre: biography, dark comedy, drama, experimental, period, tragedy
    Keyword: mental illness, Closeted gay men, gay conversion therapy, suicide, infidelity, 1950s, feminism, divorce, sound effects, artistic rivalry
    Back in London as her marriage to faithless fellow poet Ted Hughes is imploding, Sylvia Plath, now 30, debates whether to set her divorce in motion. As her mental state worsens, she starts unpacking her woes to Professor Trevor Thomas, her closeted art-historian neighbor (and a wannabe painter) in the flat below, the pair of them ultimately discovering shocking common ground and a kind of friendship and mutual...
    Back in London as her marriage to faithless fellow poet Ted Hughes is imploding, Sylvia Plath, now 30, debates whether to set her divorce in motion. As her mental state worsens, she starts unpacking her woes to Professor Trevor Thomas, her closeted art-historian neighbor (and a wannabe painter) in the flat below, the pair of them ultimately discovering shocking common ground and a kind of friendship and mutual compassion.



    As seen in BEST WOMEN'S STAGE MONOLOGUES of 2019 (SMITH & KRAUS): “Suicide as Art”
    Three upcoming excerpts in SHE RESISTED: MONOLOGUES BY WOMEN 2020 (Applause Books)

    Plath is as sensitive about being called crazy as the professor is about his homosexuality, then a jailable offense in the UK, where it is classified as mental illness, and he remains deep in the closet. These are two people living in exile and not coping well as the play toggles back and forth between their mirror-image sitting rooms all the way to the finish line of this poetic whydunnit. Indeed they loathe each other until they discover devastating common ground. A new full-length work in a Surrealist, free-verse style charting Plath's path to self-destruction and an unlikely final friendship.

    Author's Note: Professor Thomas is a gay man in Britain in an era when same-sex relations are illegal. Arrested for a bathroom liaison as a young man, he saw a promising museum career destroyed. Attempting to "cure" himself, he married, had children. His wife left him, and he decamped to the States for a spell. Even after England/Wales decriminalized homosexual acts "in private" (1967), and homosexuality was eventually declassified as mental illness, he remained primarily closeted the rest of his life. (Long after the law changed, gay men remained a target of police entrapment, beatings, and blackmail.) In January, 2017, the "Alan Turing law" posthumously pardoned thousands of men convicted on these grounds and related "gross indecency" offenses.

    2017-18 Woodward/Newman Drama Awards: "From hundreds of plays, yours was selected by our committee as being among the best of the best. That's no small feat."

    Playwrights Horizons literary director Sarah Lunnie: "A yearning and melancholic drama, rendered in lovely precise language."

    Clubbed Thumb: ”Theatrically inventive.”

    2017 Papatango New Writing Prize committee: "An effective and insightful depiction of a notorious and profoundly sad episode. The script's ambition to collide poetic voices with theatricality is apparent and laudable."
  • Pan by Phoebe Eaton
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 4 more
    ·
    Keyword: writers, feminism + 8 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, experimental, farce, romantic comedy, satire
    Keyword: writers, feminism, Satyr play, Sex, clock ticking, conservative, infidelity, romantic rivalry, heavy drinking, privilege
    A writer-roué presents the promise of a more exciting, fulfilling life as he pursues best friends whose dreams have dead-ended. (And his dream has dead-ended, too.) Pan incarnate, his boozy pranks and twisty horndog sexuality will alter the characters' lives forever in this modern-day satyr play. There’s a fair amount of phallic imagery whistling around the stage, between the bottles of booze and dick talk...
    A writer-roué presents the promise of a more exciting, fulfilling life as he pursues best friends whose dreams have dead-ended. (And his dream has dead-ended, too.) Pan incarnate, his boozy pranks and twisty horndog sexuality will alter the characters' lives forever in this modern-day satyr play. There’s a fair amount of phallic imagery whistling around the stage, between the bottles of booze and dick talk. But go deeper, and Pan is also about the value people assign themselves and others. How brute competition still drives mating, and how the rules of attraction remain engraved in DNA, untouched by feminism. Pan might be the bastard daughter of God of Carnage and Carnal Knowledge.

    Playwrights Horizons lit director Sarah Lunnie: “A linguistically rich and endlessly clever comedy of manners.”

    Clubbed Thumb associate artistic director Michael Bulger: “Park Avenue under the microscope of comedy is refreshing."
  • actress/waitress/model/'ho by Phoebe Eaton
    Cast: 
    4–5
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: feminism, racism + 8 more
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental, farce
    Keyword: feminism, racism, acting class, hookers, call girls, waitress, identity, white privilege, sexual obsession, foot fetish
    Jerilynn Fike is being hazed by prima donna NYC acting coach Diana De Cordova, who warns if she's not careful, the only work she'll get is "the girl face-down in a pool of blood." At her waitress day job, after a bit of casual racism in the workplace aimed at co-worker Lamonica Gates, the pair exact revenge and Jerilynn finds herself out of a job. A black comedy about ambition/fluidity of...
    Jerilynn Fike is being hazed by prima donna NYC acting coach Diana De Cordova, who warns if she's not careful, the only work she'll get is "the girl face-down in a pool of blood." At her waitress day job, after a bit of casual racism in the workplace aimed at co-worker Lamonica Gates, the pair exact revenge and Jerilynn finds herself out of a job. A black comedy about ambition/fluidity of identity, drawing on interviews with sex- and fetish-workers in addition to actors. Cast is all-female and an hommage to the work of Maria Irene Fornés and Rainier Werner Fassbinder (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant) -- with a Tabasco shot of Robert O'Hara and Jean Genet.

    New Georges new-play advocate Sonya Sobieski: “Great fun.”
  • Abigail by Phoebe Eaton
    Recommendations: 2
    ·
    Cast: 
    3–4
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: infidelity, The Crucible + 6 more
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental, science fiction
    Keyword: infidelity, The Crucible, white privilege, Robots, ethics, feminism, sexual assault, house husband
    The Blaneys get some household help. With unintended consequences. An experiment with time and sound inspired by the Salem Witch trials--and rebuttal to Miller's The Crucible.
  • Castro's Convertible by Phoebe Eaton
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy, docudrama/historic + 5 more
    ·
    Keyword: Rap battle, rap + 8 more
    Genre: comedy, docudrama/historic, fantasy, farce, political, satire, verse
    Keyword: Rap battle, rap, hamilton, African American, Latino, nuclear war, Trump, Shakespeare, Kennedy assassination, Cuba
    JFK and Castro throw it down, yo
    A little après-death afterlife taekwondo

    Castro awaits his motorcade in Havana, only to realize he's now, in fact, dead when his chariot to the afterlife finally pulls up: a '62 Bonneville convertible with Shakespeare at the wheel--arch-nemesis Jack Kennedy riding shotgun. A heated discussion ensues: here in the Hereafter, Shakespeare continues to...
    JFK and Castro throw it down, yo
    A little après-death afterlife taekwondo

    Castro awaits his motorcade in Havana, only to realize he's now, in fact, dead when his chariot to the afterlife finally pulls up: a '62 Bonneville convertible with Shakespeare at the wheel--arch-nemesis Jack Kennedy riding shotgun. A heated discussion ensues: here in the Hereafter, Shakespeare continues to write the tragedies of heads of state. Next on his plate: JFK-- only this being present day, Shakespeare's writing JFK's biopic, for which he means to interview Castro on controversial points of history.

    The trio is soon in the thick of battle, throwing it down over scandalous doings then and U.S. foreign policy now: Castro, still terminally paranoid. JFK, still wrestling down his thick Boston accent. Shakespeare, ever the commercially minded sellout, swinging like a pendulum between the two, from iambic pentameter to rap -- Bard of the Schoolyard.

    A sameness of issues today reveals itself. When is involvement interference? What to do about nations making far-ranging decisions whose own citizens only ever have a keyhole view of the big picture? Or their picture simply doesn't mesh with our picture? The play comments on the ostrich-y 'Don't-ask-what-your-country-does-for-you' attitude we 've generally adopted here in the States. And has a relevancy now that president Trump has scrapped the Iran nuclear deal and has hinted at using nuclear weapons on ISIS. Russia has also asked Trump to pressure NATO to withdraw troops from Europe's Russian border, a response to its sudden escalated presence there and disclosure of its largest ever nuclear missile, Satan 2 -- capable of obliterating an area the size of France.