Aleta Barthell

Aleta Barthell

Aleta Barthell is a playwright/screenwriter/teacher.  Aleta is the recipient of a grant from California Humanities for a dramatist-based project called SAVING STORIES: A Toolkit in the Age of Covid-19. Her play, Window of Shame, was a finalist for the 2021 National Playwrights Conference at the O’Neill Center. The same play was also a finalist for the 2016 HUMANITAS/CTG Playwriting Prize. Her play, Night...
Aleta Barthell is a playwright/screenwriter/teacher.  Aleta is the recipient of a grant from California Humanities for a dramatist-based project called SAVING STORIES: A Toolkit in the Age of Covid-19. Her play, Window of Shame, was a finalist for the 2021 National Playwrights Conference at the O’Neill Center. The same play was also a finalist for the 2016 HUMANITAS/CTG Playwriting Prize. Her play, Night Witches: Flight into Fantasy, was a part of the New Village Arts Theatre’s “2019 Final Draft Festival.” She is a teaching artist with Playwrights Project and founder of the youth theater education program, Kids Act, at New Village Arts Theatre. She holds a B.S. from Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and has trained at BADA (Oxford, England); Shakespeare and Company (Lenox, MA). She studied playwriting and screenwriting at UCSD with Allan Havis. She is a Dramatists Guild Member and an Ambassador for the San Diego area. 

Plays

  • NIGHT WITCHES: FLIGHT INTO FANTASY by Aleta Barthell
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: 20th century history of women, 20th century women in military + 6 more
    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama, fable/folktale, fantasy
    Keyword: 20th century history of women, 20th century women in military, Female Pilot, Russian history, Russian folk tale, Valilisa the Beautiful, baba yaga, magical realism/supernatural
    NIGHT WITCHES: Flight into Fantasy
    Gliding silently through the sky with engines idled, an all-female WWII Russian air-regiment drops bombs on their German targets with precision clockwork all night long. When the commander, Irina, is hit and forced to land behind enemy lines, she weaves her way through hostile territory, both real and fantastic, hoping to find her way back home to her regiment…if it is still there.
  • WINDOW OF SHAME by Aleta Barthell
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    11–12
    ·
    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: ghost story, 18th century history + 2 more
    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama, mystery/thriller
    Keyword: ghost story, 18th century history, African American, spiritual songs
    In 1834, Doctor and Madame LaLaurie are famous in the French Quarter for their elegant parties in their resplendent home, but suspicions arise after a young slave woman jumps to her death, leaving Sally, the cook who is chained in the kitchen, to risk her own life to expose the horrifying secret that lives upstairs.

    Drama, based on a New Orleans' ghost story.