Gab Reisman

Gab Reisman

Gab Reisman's plays explore the ways place writes itself on our bodies. Inherently queer, always political, and generally irreverent, her work examines what it means to sit on the doorstep of some big, uncertain change.

Besides her own work, Gab builds immersive and devised performances in non-traditional spaces, most recently with utopia-based trio Bender/Mars/Reisman, and her own...
Gab Reisman's plays explore the ways place writes itself on our bodies. Inherently queer, always political, and generally irreverent, her work examines what it means to sit on the doorstep of some big, uncertain change.

Besides her own work, Gab builds immersive and devised performances in non-traditional spaces, most recently with utopia-based trio Bender/Mars/Reisman, and her own incubator Brooklyn Yard.

Gab has developed work with Fusebox, Clubbed Thumb, Page 73, Sundance Theatre Lab, and The Playwrights' Center among others. She's received commissions from the Humana Festival of New Plays, EST/Sloan Project, the NOLA Project, New Plays at Barnard, Clubbed Thumb, and ZACH Theatre.

Gab is a MacDowell Fellow, an Orchard Project, Ingram New Works, and New Victory Lab alum and a former NNPN Playwright in Residence. She has taught playwriting and theatre making at The University of California Riverside, The University of New Orleans, NYU, and UT Austin.

Plays

  • The Seagull or How to Eat It by Gab Reisman
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    10
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, comedy + 2 more
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    Keyword: Chekhov, Chekhov Adaptation + 4 more
    Genre: adaptation, comedy, dark comedy, parody/spoof
    Keyword: Chekhov, Chekhov Adaptation, the south, Art and Artists, Depression, aging
    Simon is in love with Mandi. Mandi is in love with Connie. Connie is in love with Nina. Nina is involved with Barry who is married to Irene who is also adored by Ike who is married to Polly who is having an affair with Dr. Yvette Dorn. Also there’s Pete, Irene’s older brother, who’s partner is dead, I think? Or maybe they split up but are still friends? Anyway, everyone wants something they aren’t getting. Or...
    Simon is in love with Mandi. Mandi is in love with Connie. Connie is in love with Nina. Nina is involved with Barry who is married to Irene who is also adored by Ike who is married to Polly who is having an affair with Dr. Yvette Dorn. Also there’s Pete, Irene’s older brother, who’s partner is dead, I think? Or maybe they split up but are still friends? Anyway, everyone wants something they aren’t getting. Or everyone’s gotten something they didn’t want. Sometimes it’s fame and sometimes it’s pizza. But the longer we live the harder it is to separate one from the next.
  • Spindle Shuttle Needle by Gab Reisman
    Recommendations: 3
    ·
    Cast: 
    6
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    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 5 more
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    Keyword: women, war + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, fable/folktale, farce, period, political
    Keyword: women, war, pandemics, Napoleon, Grimm's Fairytale, fairy tale
    In a cottage surrounded by endless siege, at the dawn of Modern Capitalism, a motley group of women tell tales, pick nits, and stretch out the last bits of sustenance til the Market reopens. A dark and funny fable about what it means to be trapped indoors and how we figure out what to do next.
  • Are You There? *Co-written with Vivian Barnes and Jonathan Norton by Gab Reisman
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    2–18
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    Genre: comedy, drama + 5 more
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    Keyword: technology, 20th century history + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, drama, experimental, immersive, parody/spoof, period, political
    Keyword: technology, 20th century history, black history, science, telephones, internet
    From the cacophony of telephone party lines, to CB radios on lonely highways, to the glory days of online chat rooms, technology has revolutionized the way we communicate with each other. But is it always for the better? A collection of short plays on the high-tech evolution of our social interactions, originally commissioned for Actors Theatre Louisville's Professional Training Company as part of the 2020 Humana Festival.
  • Jeune Terre by Gab Reisman
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    10
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 5 more
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    Keyword: climate change, Louisiana + 2 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, docudrama/historic, drama, immersive, musical, political
    Keyword: climate change, Louisiana, play with songs, college
    The waters are rising around Jeune Terre, Louisiana, and the land is slipping away. As scientists and state administrators bargain over the town's future, a theatre troupe arrives to tell an old story in a new way, just in time for a quickly approaching storm. This inventive new play with songs explores what it means to live on the edge of invisibility in a time of atmospheric change
  • Flood City by Gab Reisman
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    7
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 9 more
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    Keyword: Johnstown Flood, disaster recovery + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, docudrama/historic, drama, experimental, farce, movement/physical, parody/spoof, period, political, satire
    Keyword: Johnstown Flood, disaster recovery, steel, American history, American politics, 19th century history
    In Johnstown, PA in 1889, The Great Flood has destroyed a bustling steel town, and left a motley crew of survivors and surveyors to clean up and rebuild. Meanwhile, at a bar in Johnstown a century later, newly-unemployed steel workers wax metaphoric about past lives and future ambitions. A dark-hopeful comedy about American disasters, entrepreneurship, and how we wait for what’s next.
  • Catch the Wall by Gab Reisman
    Recommendations: 2
    ·
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: drama, experimental + 3 more
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    Keyword: education, New Orleans + 4 more
    Genre: drama, experimental, movement/physical, political, young audiences
    Keyword: education, New Orleans, school reform, charter school, hip hop, African American
    When champion bounce MC, Benefit, dies unexpectedly, 6th graders Cleo and Justice set out to make a dance video so that their mentor’s memory can live on. But when Benefit’s ghost begins haunting the halls of their charter school, the girls must push back against their teacher’s expectations and find a story they can claim as their own.
  • Storm Still by Gab Reisman
    Recommendations: 5
    ·
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, comedy + 3 more
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    Keyword: Shakespeare, King Lear + 1 more
    Genre: adaptation, comedy, farce, movement/physical, parody/spoof
    Keyword: Shakespeare, King Lear, adaptation of King Lear
    While cleaning out their father's house, three estranged sisters perform a fast and loose reenactment of KING LEAR: part eulogy, part drinking game, part child's game of pretend.
  • The Panama Limited by Gab Reisman
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: adventure, comedy + 5 more
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    Keyword: love, trains + 2 more
    Genre: adventure, comedy, commedia dell'arte, dark comedy, drama, experimental, movement/physical
    Keyword: love, trains, travel, addiction
    Two would-be lovers try to figure out a better way to carry out their affair. Two wanna-be gutter punks travel to a far southern city in search of a fabled community. A train-shaped story on desire, transportation, and escape routes.
  • 70 Secrets of Marmalade Kittens by Gab Reisman
    Recommendations: 2
    ·
    Cast: 
    6–7
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 2 more
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    Keyword: Family Business, farm + 1 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, melodrama
    Keyword: Family Business, farm, Relationships
    Ceramic figurines from her childhood are tempting Quin Crowder with promises of escape from her life on an Iowa hog farm. Ten years later, the figurines have returned and her now-grown children must weigh the search for their vainished mother against selling the family business from under their father's nose