Alica Daine Benning

Alica Daine Benning

Alica hails from a small town in rural Arizona, where she cultivated her passion for writing and performing from a young age. She escaped her hometown to study theatre performance at the University of Southern California, and has since pursued a career as a bicoastal actor and writer.

After receiving her BFA in Acting from USC, Alica studied Theatre Performance at the CAP21 Conservatory in New...
Alica hails from a small town in rural Arizona, where she cultivated her passion for writing and performing from a young age. She escaped her hometown to study theatre performance at the University of Southern California, and has since pursued a career as a bicoastal actor and writer.

After receiving her BFA in Acting from USC, Alica studied Theatre Performance at the CAP21 Conservatory in New York City and apprenticed at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Alica is currently pursuing an MFA in Writing for the Screen and Stage at Northwestern University.

Alica is passionate about telling stories that center around mental health and mental illness, dysmorphia, internalized misogyny, and the femme experience. Her plays explore the intersections of wellness and identity through complex and relationship-driven narratives.

Plays

  • Grown
    Two precocious children and their babysitter invoke this body horror nightmare play when their debate about Roe v. Wade gets out of hand and the unborn antichrist raises hell upon the earth.
  • Woo Girls!
    Over the course of one ill-fated Girls’ Night Out, five unhinged women are forced to acknowledge their relationships to patriarchy in order to reconnect with each other and save their friendship. :)
  • sleepover
    ani and beatrice, two young girls having a sleepover (or are they?), navigate the intricacies of female friendship while teaching each other self-love and acceptance in this surrealist dream play about femininity, love, cruelty, and compassion.
  • BREAK
    When local success story Annie returns to her small, southwestern hometown after a ten-year hiatus, she must ask for her old job back at the local bar and confront the consequences of her choice to strike out alone years ago. BREAK tells the heartbreaking story of what it's like to be a woman in a small town, and the consequences of trying to escape, as well as those of staying behind.
  • Workplace
    A new play which dissects the experience of being a young person in a professional world, navigating new relationships, examining power dynamics in the workplace, and dealing with their consequences.