Noelle Viñas

Noelle Viñas is a writer and educator from Springfield, Virginia and Montevideo, Uruguay. Her play DERECHO (2019 John Gassner Playwriting Award, 2020 Himan Brown Award) had a world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse after being developed at La Jolla's DNA Festival, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and NYC Latinx Playwrights Circle. Other productions include FEEL THE SPIRIT (Shotgun Players, Colt Coeur), ZOOM INTERVENTION for Weston Playhouse (NY Times Critic's Pick), and the book for THE LONG HORIZON, a TYA space musical for Imagination Stage. She's also self-produced her own work in San Francisco and Boston. As an educator, she's run high school theater programs in Northern Virginia and San Francisco. In higher ed, she's taught English Comp at Brooklyn College and been a visiting artist who...

Noelle Viñas is a writer and educator from Springfield, Virginia and Montevideo, Uruguay. Her play DERECHO (2019 John Gassner Playwriting Award, 2020 Himan Brown Award) had a world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse after being developed at La Jolla's DNA Festival, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and NYC Latinx Playwrights Circle. Other productions include FEEL THE SPIRIT (Shotgun Players, Colt Coeur), ZOOM INTERVENTION for Weston Playhouse (NY Times Critic's Pick), and the book for THE LONG HORIZON, a TYA space musical for Imagination Stage. She's also self-produced her own work in San Francisco and Boston. As an educator, she's run high school theater programs in Northern Virginia and San Francisco. In higher ed, she's taught English Comp at Brooklyn College and been a visiting artist who led a practicum on dramatic writing at Marist College.

Her work has been developed or in residence as a member of the Working Farm at SPACE on Ryder Farm, New York Stage and Film, Tofte Lake Center, Playwrights Foundation, the Civilians R&D Group, and Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Most recently, her play Cóndor (o, no es dictadura) (2022 O'Neill Finalist, 2023 Venturous Award Finalist) received a Weissberg Finishing Commission from Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, and IAMA Theatre commissioned and workshopped her two-person play I SAID EVOLUTION. She's also fallen in love with TV writing after staffing on the Peacock show, MRS. DAVIS. Viñas resides between Brooklyn and LA, and is learning to take herself less seriously all the time. B.A. Emerson College; MFA Brooklyn College.

Scripts

I SAID EVOLUTION

by Noelle Viñas

Synopsis

Initially commissioned by IAMA Theatre Company in Los Angeles, CA. Seeking more development.

While Lidia is at a bucolic artist’s residency, her brother Mo interrupts with a literal get outta jail ask… a callback to a weirdass game they used to play as kids. Damn, what is it about fucking siblings? Over the course of the next year, the whole world between two queer siblings is rendered raw with resentments...

Initially commissioned by IAMA Theatre Company in Los Angeles, CA. Seeking more development.

While Lidia is at a bucolic artist’s residency, her brother Mo interrupts with a literal get outta jail ask… a callback to a weirdass game they used to play as kids. Damn, what is it about fucking siblings? Over the course of the next year, the whole world between two queer siblings is rendered raw with resentments, desperate confessions, dark humor, and devastating love. As each interaction compounds, can the love between them be strong enough to find new roots when toxic soil is all they’ve known? And will these two even survive apart?

cóndor (o, no es dictadura)

by Noelle Viñas

Synopsis

2024 Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company Weissberg Finishing Commission.
Alejandra is a high school teacher less than a year into grieving her father. It's 2017, and it's possible an authoritarian president was elected in the United States. But instead of dealing with grief or the state of the U.S., she's been having these WEIRD dreams. Dreams that tell her that her Uruguayan family is trying to hide something. And...

2024 Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company Weissberg Finishing Commission.
Alejandra is a high school teacher less than a year into grieving her father. It's 2017, and it's possible an authoritarian president was elected in the United States. But instead of dealing with grief or the state of the U.S., she's been having these WEIRD dreams. Dreams that tell her that her Uruguayan family is trying to hide something. And maybe that something is a whole dictatorship and their role in it? Anyway, she's on the surrealist case with birds, trapdoors, and ghosts because she's gonna get to the bottom of it, especially since a good mystery is ALWAYS a good way to avoid dealing with her feelings. What could go wrong?

DERECHO

by Noelle Viñas

Synopsis

2020 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Winner, The John Gassner Playwriting Award. Honorable Mention for the 2019 Jane Chambers Award.

Hoping to join the wave of women of color elected for public office, Eugenia Silva fights to bring an old friend onto her primary campaign in the Virginia General Assembly. As a storm brews, tensions between her ambitions and her sister Mercedes begin overshadowing the need to...

2020 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Winner, The John Gassner Playwriting Award. Honorable Mention for the 2019 Jane Chambers Award.

Hoping to join the wave of women of color elected for public office, Eugenia Silva fights to bring an old friend onto her primary campaign in the Virginia General Assembly. As a storm brews, tensions between her ambitions and her sister Mercedes begin overshadowing the need to reconnect with her roots and family. As the past manifests and interrupts the present, the sisters must confront how traditional Latino values conflict with an American definition of success that is always changing. How can they swim back to each other when fragmented identity threatens to tear them apart?

Pastures Green

by Noelle Viñas

Synopsis

WORK IN PROGRESS, SEEKING DEVELOPMENT: Mariela grows up afraid to reveal her true feelings about women, fearing rejection from her community and iglesia. Meanwhile, Addie plummets towards her white picket fence future with creeping regrets of unexplored experiences. Their worlds collide when they both seek out advice from the same bruje, opening up a quantum possibility in which a shared ache bridges two worlds.

WORK IN PROGRESS, SEEKING DEVELOPMENT: Mariela grows up afraid to reveal her true feelings about women, fearing rejection from her community and iglesia. Meanwhile, Addie plummets towards her white picket fence future with creeping regrets of unexplored experiences. Their worlds collide when they both seek out advice from the same bruje, opening up a quantum possibility in which a shared ache bridges two worlds.

Feel The Spirit

by Noelle Viñas

Synopsis

[Commissioned for Zoom by Shotgun Players - Produced by Shotgun Plays in April 2021 and by Colt Coeur in New York in June 2021]

Gabriela is a young, queer pastor attempting to navigate her new congregation’s shift to online worship due to COVID-19. As seasons change outside and the flat timeline of quarantine continues, the church fights to maintain a practice that rotates around fellowship and community across...

[Commissioned for Zoom by Shotgun Players - Produced by Shotgun Plays in April 2021 and by Colt Coeur in New York in June 2021]

Gabriela is a young, queer pastor attempting to navigate her new congregation’s shift to online worship due to COVID-19. As seasons change outside and the flat timeline of quarantine continues, the church fights to maintain a practice that rotates around fellowship and community across generations and cultures when they can’t hug, cook, or sing together.

Zoom Intevention

by Noelle Viñas

Synopsis

Short play commissioned by Weston Playhouse Theatre Company and directed by Estefanía Fadul. Ursula (originally played by Liza Colón-Zayas) struggles against technology and her own anger to communicate a message of love and support to her son. Jesse Greene called this play "the evening's standout" of 14 other monologues and "beautifully structured and as long as it needs to be" in The New York Times.

Short play commissioned by Weston Playhouse Theatre Company and directed by Estefanía Fadul. Ursula (originally played by Liza Colón-Zayas) struggles against technology and her own anger to communicate a message of love and support to her son. Jesse Greene called this play "the evening's standout" of 14 other monologues and "beautifully structured and as long as it needs to be" in The New York Times.

PENGUIN PLAY

by Noelle Viñas

Synopsis

Valentina is the only caretaker for her terminally-ill younger sister, Sofia, who hopes to also be part of a renowned climate change theater troupe Valentina works for. When a penguin god is invited into both the hospital room and the artistic process, both sisters must confront what it means to let go of the things that tie us to this earth and fly in a new form.

Valentina is the only caretaker for her terminally-ill younger sister, Sofia, who hopes to also be part of a renowned climate change theater troupe Valentina works for. When a penguin god is invited into both the hospital room and the artistic process, both sisters must confront what it means to let go of the things that tie us to this earth and fly in a new form.

breakroom

by Noelle Viñas

Synopsis

WORK-IN-PROGRESS, SEEKING DEVELOPMENT (and a brilliant scenic design team): Mary and Brina are two sisters who live nomadically and care for each other due to Brina's self-destructive tendencies. When they start a "break room" business in a non-existent Nevada, old wounds begin to bleed, broken objects come alive to wreak havoc in the town, and young Amelia (the child of one of them and a violinist) begins a...

WORK-IN-PROGRESS, SEEKING DEVELOPMENT (and a brilliant scenic design team): Mary and Brina are two sisters who live nomadically and care for each other due to Brina's self-destructive tendencies. When they start a "break room" business in a non-existent Nevada, old wounds begin to bleed, broken objects come alive to wreak havoc in the town, and young Amelia (the child of one of them and a violinist) begins a journey towards healing what her family could not. Originally developed as part of the Inkwell's Wellspring Initiative in 2015, it requires further development and collaboration to be ready for staging.

La profesora

by Noelle Viñas

Synopsis

Tachi, a Uruguayan-educator in the US, must confront her boss about getting fired for a lesson on the Uruguayan communist Nibia Sabalsagaray and discovers some painful truths along the way.

One-Act solo show commissioned by TheatreFirst in Berkeley, CA. Produced in Feb 2018, but still in development for translation into Spanish and possible extension into full length.

Tachi, a Uruguayan-educator in the US, must confront her boss about getting fired for a lesson on the Uruguayan communist Nibia Sabalsagaray and discovers some painful truths along the way.

One-Act solo show commissioned by TheatreFirst in Berkeley, CA. Produced in Feb 2018, but still in development for translation into Spanish and possible extension into full length.

Apocalypse, Please

by Noelle Viñas

Synopsis

Remy, a programmer who encrypts a cellular radiation protection service called SafeShell at MIT, finds herself the subject of international and mythological attention when implicated in radiation corruption that kills 2/3 of the United States. Her own sense of guilt and delusion corrupt reality, along with space and time - or maybe it's just Excalibur. This play was re-written and co-produced with Kevin Vincenti...

Remy, a programmer who encrypts a cellular radiation protection service called SafeShell at MIT, finds herself the subject of international and mythological attention when implicated in radiation corruption that kills 2/3 of the United States. Her own sense of guilt and delusion corrupt reality, along with space and time - or maybe it's just Excalibur. This play was re-written and co-produced with Kevin Vincenti for a world premiere at PianoFight in San Francisco in March 2017. Further inquiries should contact the playwright.

nevermind

by Noelle Viñas

Synopsis

Morgan writes poems with lowercase letters about growing up below the Mason-Dixon line (which always looks different when you come back from your college up north). Morgan talks shit about the southeastern university her dysfunctional sometimes-boyfriend goes to, despite visiting for the excessive drinking culture. But what happens when Morgan stops observing and realizes she might accidentally have written...

Morgan writes poems with lowercase letters about growing up below the Mason-Dixon line (which always looks different when you come back from your college up north). Morgan talks shit about the southeastern university her dysfunctional sometimes-boyfriend goes to, despite visiting for the excessive drinking culture. But what happens when Morgan stops observing and realizes she might accidentally have written herself into a corner with her faux-Southern narrative?