Emily Russell

Emily Russell

Emily Russell, originally from the midwest and now located in California's Bay area, is an emerging playwright and theatre facilitator who aspires to merge the political and the personal. Emily is a member of the Dramatist’s Guild and received formal playwriting training from the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance and Stanford University Theater and Performance Studies. She is the...
Emily Russell, originally from the midwest and now located in California's Bay area, is an emerging playwright and theatre facilitator who aspires to merge the political and the personal. Emily is a member of the Dramatist’s Guild and received formal playwriting training from the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance and Stanford University Theater and Performance Studies. She is the recipient of a Hopwood award for dramatic writing. She has had multiple ten-minute play political satires produced, and other work formally developed at Blank Space Workshop, the Dragon Theatre, the University of Michigan, and the University of California Irvine. "Fire and Ice" was part of Blank Space Workshop’s inaugural season, and featured in Broadway World and Arts at Michigan. Her full-length play, BEAT, was slated for production in Playfest in April 2020 at the Walgreen Drama Center in Ann Arbor.

As an academic, she has been awarded nationally competitive awards for her hands-on fieldwork in peacebuilding and conflict research, including grants from the National Science Foundation and the Knight-Hennessy Scholarship at Stanford University. This work influences the subject matter which she writes about for the stage. She co-founded Playwriting for Peace as a Davis Projects for Peace fellow, which launched as a creative arts initiative in postwar Pristina, Kosovo (2019).

Plays

  • and for your last breath? by Emily Russell
    Recommendations: 6
    ·
    Cast: 
    2
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: COVID, California Wildfires + 4 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, political
    Keyword: COVID, California Wildfires, apocalypse, evacuation, Berkeley, breath
    two 20-somethings sharing an apartment in Berkeley wake up the morning of September 9, 2020 to a red-orange sky. they find themselves caught in a double-bind: with wildfires outside pushing them to evacuate, and COVID forcing them to stay in, the two contemplate what it means to face the absurd, apocalyptic world together, when the simple act of breathing has become a fraught task.
  • BEAT by Emily Russell
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: drama, political + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: gun violence, abortion + 3 more
    Genre: drama, political, tragedy
    Keyword: gun violence, abortion, motherhood, American politics, protest
    HOPWOOD AWARD FOR DRAMATIC WRITING at the University of Michigan, 2020

    It's 2020 in middle America. BEAT meets at the confluence of life-giving and life-taking, following the interconnected stories of daughters, mothers, friends, and the ones in-between. As they strategize for a less gun-violent world, they become recipients of different forms of violences, enacted by strangers, spouses, and...
    HOPWOOD AWARD FOR DRAMATIC WRITING at the University of Michigan, 2020

    It's 2020 in middle America. BEAT meets at the confluence of life-giving and life-taking, following the interconnected stories of daughters, mothers, friends, and the ones in-between. As they strategize for a less gun-violent world, they become recipients of different forms of violences, enacted by strangers, spouses, and the state. What lives are protected under the guise of "the right to life?" or the right to guns? What does it mean to be the ones who survive? Trauma and its politicization is explored in this story of motherhood, sisterhoods, and survivors.
  • Fire and Ice by Emily Russell
    Recommendations: 10
    ·
    Cast: 
    2
    ·
    Genre: adventure, comedy + 3 more
    ·
    Keyword: Iceland, globalization + 2 more
    Genre: adventure, comedy, political, romantic comedy, young audiences
    Keyword: Iceland, globalization, isolation, nature
    In the rugged Icelandic landscape, an American human rights researcher meets an Icelandic local in a geothermal hotspring. The two discuss and navigate the complex dynamics of globalization, which has brought environmental harm to much of Iceland's natural lands as well as brought people from around the world together. The short play hinges on taking a plunge — into the cold, the unknown, and the unlikely.

Recommended by Emily Russell

  • The Contract by Kimberly Ridgeway
    21 Mar. 2021
    “ Had the privilege of hearing this play at a digital reading with the Dragon Theatre. Ridgeway creates robust character arcs in this humorous play where the setting -- of sharing a building with a lover -- complicates the relationship between the two. Femme power in this story! ”
  • Goat Song by Matt Harmon
    3 Jan. 2021
    “ Watching this play debut with Alleyway was such a highlight of quarantine! This one-man show is so captivating, I never wanted to miss a line or detail. A seriously important, timely piece. ”
  • Exhibits in the Zoo by Matt Harmon
    10 Dec. 2020
    “ The awards tacked onto this play speak for themselves — this is a story with abundant importance. Harmon's critical perspective of a dark time of our human past is told by a protagonist who faces unique, identity-based challenges as a young boy who is mute. It is a remarkable story told with all of our senses, bringing the theatre into a new understanding about how we communicate as individuals, families, and societies. Despite its heavy themes, the play is characteristic of Harmon's style with wit, laughter, and youth intact. ”
  • Grand Canyon by Scott Stolnack
    11 Jul. 2020
    “ I had the privilege of attending a virtual reading of this work and was taken with the beautiful and conflicted fusion of the natural world and the human world — and what we do when facing transcendence beyond the human world in natural, mortal landscapes. This piece teaches us that no place is grand enough to hold our grief (and the lives we lose), but it's the best we've got. ”
  • Bottle Episode by Maximillian Gill
    11 Jul. 2020
    “ I had the joy of attending a debut virtual reading of this captivating piece, and was especially taken by the humanizing of the bottle. Emotive imagery and tongue-in-cheek descriptions give the bottle a humanlike experience of mortality, eternal sunshine, and the emptying feeling we hold as we approach it. ”
View all 13 recommendations