Mallery Avidon

Mallery Avidon

Mallery Avidon is a playwright, screenwriter, teacher & dramaturg. Mallery's plays have had World Premieres at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisvile, The Flea Theatre, Target Margin Theatre and Here Arts Center in New York City and Pavement Group in Chicago among others. Her plays queerSpawn and Mary-Kate Olsen is in Love are published by Dramatists Play Service and...
Mallery Avidon is a playwright, screenwriter, teacher & dramaturg. Mallery's plays have had World Premieres at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisvile, The Flea Theatre, Target Margin Theatre and Here Arts Center in New York City and Pavement Group in Chicago among others. Her plays queerSpawn and Mary-Kate Olsen is in Love are published by Dramatists Play Service and have been produced by Professional Theatres, Community Theatres and Educational Institutions around the country. She is currently at work on The Best Coast, a play in Two Acts and an Alphabet being developed by Seattle Repertory Theater.

Mallery is an Alumni of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, The Sundance/Ucross Plawyrights and Composers Residency and Ledig House@ Arts Omi. Mallery is a former co-curator of the Bushwick Starr Reading Series and an Artistic Associate of Target Margin Theater and New Georges. Her work has been developed thru new play programs all over the country and she holds a BFA in Theater with a focus on Original Works from Cornish College of the Arts and an MFA in Literary Arts with a focus on Playwrighting.
Mallery was a Staff Writer for Season Two of HBO's High Maintenance, she has an original television pilot in development with Paul Giammatti's production company and is repped for Televison and Theater by United Talent Agency.

Mallery currently teaches playwriting at Cornish College of the Arts and thru ACT Theatre's Young Playwrights Program at Garfield High School, in Seattle, WA. She has taught both Playwriting and Screenwriting at Brown University and mentors writers one on one, both on specific plays and career development. Former students and Mentees include Leah Nanako Winkler and Kelsey Wilk.

Mallery is a West Coast playwright and splits her time between Los Angeles, Seattle and Eugene, Oregon. She is invested in using theater for social justice and some of her favorite teaching jobs include working with incarcerated women in Washington State creating plays for them to perform and writing a play commissioned by a high school in Springfield, Oregon for the students to perform.

She is at work on her first novel and available for mentorship on a sliding scale basis. Please contact her if you are interested.

Plays

  • A Very Incomplete History of the Blue Planet by Mallery Avidon
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    4–20
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    Genre: comedy, drama + 5 more
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    Keyword: LGBTQ, high school + 1 more
    Genre: comedy, drama, experimental, period, romantic comedy, science fiction, young audiences
    Keyword: LGBTQ, high school, aliens
    Two Aliens Travel Back in Time and witness positive love scenes between LGBTQIA youth that take place in a forest turned Wal-Mart Parking lot throughout recent American History from the 1950s into the Near Future. Teens, Aliens, Love. What More Could You Want
  • queerSpawn by Mallery Avidon
    Cast: 
    6
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    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 2 more
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    Keyword: LGBTQ, gay and lesbian + 7 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, fantasy, political
    Keyword: LGBTQ, gay and lesbian, queer, dan savage, pop culture, gay parenthood, high school, bullying, imaginary friend
    queerSpawn tells the story of The Kid, a fourteen-year-old starting high school in a small town. Everyone knows he has two moms, and that's just the beginning of his trouble. While dodging bullies, The Kid invents a group of imaginary friends with whom to share his troubles, including sex/relationship advice columnist Dan Savage and Dr. McSteamy from TV's Grey’s Anatomy. But as his reality becomes...
    queerSpawn tells the story of The Kid, a fourteen-year-old starting high school in a small town. Everyone knows he has two moms, and that's just the beginning of his trouble. While dodging bullies, The Kid invents a group of imaginary friends with whom to share his troubles, including sex/relationship advice columnist Dan Savage and Dr. McSteamy from TV's Grey’s Anatomy. But as his reality becomes more and more hazardous, their "help" becomes less and less helpful. Staring down four more friendless years, what is a Kid to do?

    "[C]ompassionate and bleakly funny…an all-too-apt expression of the interior world of a high school freshman looking at four years of the loneliness and despair that have become his everyday companions. How can you really believe that things will get better when they never seem to change?" —NY Times.

    “queerSpawn is difficult to watch, but that's part of the point…[The play is] a sort of philosophical dialogue between The Kid and the social forces that have shaped his personal hell. Playwright Mallery Avidon's original research was supported by Colage, the only national organization for people raised in LGBTQ families, where she had the opportunity to interview teens and young adult children about their experiences at home and in the world. It's a timely, unique, and fascinating piece." —BroadwayWorld.com.

    This Play is Published for a preview, acting editions & licensing information: http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=5029
  • O Guru Guru Guru, or why I don't want to go to yoga class with you by Mallery Avidon
    Cast: 
    6
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    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 2 more
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    Keyword: ashram, yoga + 5 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, experimental
    Keyword: ashram, yoga, women, spirituality, julia roberts, India, eat pray love
    Lila grew up in an ashram, but she does not want to go to yoga class with you. Not because she doesn’t like stretching or has no discipline or worries she might be bad at it. Not because she doesn’t like you. The reason Lila doesn’t want to go to yoga class is not easy to explain—but let her try. A disarming look at the precarious process of becoming yourself.

    This play is published in the...
    Lila grew up in an ashram, but she does not want to go to yoga class with you. Not because she doesn’t like stretching or has no discipline or worries she might be bad at it. Not because she doesn’t like you. The reason Lila doesn’t want to go to yoga class is not easy to explain—but let her try. A disarming look at the precarious process of becoming yourself.

    This play is published in the Humana Festival 2013 Anthology: https://www.playscripts.com/play/2631
  • Mary-Kate Olsen is in Love by Mallery Avidon
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    6–12
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 2 more
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    Keyword: contemporary, college + 5 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, fantasy, satire
    Keyword: contemporary, college, girls, women, Surreal, funny, millennials
    Grace is 27, married to her high-school sweetheart, makes good money, and should be way happier than she is. But her husband lost his job and now all he does is play Xbox and smoke pot and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen might be her best friends but maybe they only like her because she's their new target demographic. Or maybe…they're actually going to save her. A funny play about sad people.
    ...
    Grace is 27, married to her high-school sweetheart, makes good money, and should be way happier than she is. But her husband lost his job and now all he does is play Xbox and smoke pot and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen might be her best friends but maybe they only like her because she's their new target demographic. Or maybe…they're actually going to save her. A funny play about sad people.

    "The script levels some delightfully devastating shots at pop culture and its reductive treatment of women. But playwright Mallery Avidon is after something meatier than just SNL-style ridicule. She's chronicling her generation's struggle for self-definition…Avidon's style is fresh, contemporary, and…touchingly sentient." —Show Business Weekly.

    "In Mallery Avidon's angst-ridden dream-comedy MARY-KATE OLSEN IS IN LOVE, a woman's lot is a sorry thing. She can't find happiness as long as she looks outward for validation, but look inside, and she may simply be a hash of pop-culture references peppered with a sense of yearning…It's a problem honestly come by: ‘How do we know what to want?'" —Time Out NY.

    "MARY-KATE OLSEN IS IN LOVE raises the terrifying possibility that the onslaught of marketing campaigns and a blind faith in the inevitability of upward mobility have created unrealistic expectations for a generation of Americans, hopes that are bound to crash and burn in a conflagration of disappointment." —TheaterMania.com.

    For More Information, Acting Editions & Licensing: http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=5027

    For A Preview of the Script: http://www.dramatists.com/previews/5027.pdf
  • everyone they knew was famous by Mallery Avidon
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 1 more
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    Keyword: family
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama
    Keyword: family
    A funny sad family play about cousins and grandparents and smoking pot and secrets and skateboarding and growing up.