Joanna Castle Miller

Joanna Castle Miller

Joanna Castle Miller is a NY-based playwright, performer, and satirist. She was a recent New York Stage and Film Nexus Fellow and is currently under commission by We the Women Collective. Plays: CONVERSA (2024 Jewish Plays Project Finalist), INFERNA (workshop production/tour coming June 2024), EKPHRASIS (We the Women), Sh@med (Jewish Plays Project finalist, Kilroy’s List), around and around and around the...
Joanna Castle Miller is a NY-based playwright, performer, and satirist. She was a recent New York Stage and Film Nexus Fellow and is currently under commission by We the Women Collective. Plays: CONVERSA (2024 Jewish Plays Project Finalist), INFERNA (workshop production/tour coming June 2024), EKPHRASIS (We the Women), Sh@med (Jewish Plays Project finalist, Kilroy’s List), around and around and around the static sun (McNerney Prize Finalist), My Child Blank, The Storehouse (Perisphere), and Fox News the Musical (But What If We Did?). Her short plays include The World’s Next Tooth Fairy Is Marci Peterson, The Being Heard Academy, and Parasite. Film/TV: Sorta My Thing (Funny or Die), Ash (Generative Films), and Keep This Far Apart (We the Women). Producing work includes Live from Lincoln Center: Sweeney Todd (Creative Arts Emmy Winner), Where You Go (Generative Films), and Medea’s Got Some Issues (in partnership with the Embassy of Spain).

Joanna’s satire and monologues have been featured in McSweeney’s, The Hill, Applause Books, and The Belladonna, and her sketches can be found on Funny or Die, WhoHaha, and Comedy Cake. She is the creator and host of Red, White, and Dad – a web show chronicling her father’s 2016 campaign for POTUS.

As the founder and executive producer of Wait Don’t Leave Productions, Joanna focuses on projects related to historical memory. She currently serves on the team of Hire Survivors Hollywood as the Director of Outreach for Live Theatre. Born and raised in Memphis, she is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA and the Dramatists Guild and enjoys good bourbon, bad words, and quality time.

Plays

  • INFERNA by Joanna Castle Miller
    Recommendations: 12
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    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 2 more
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    Keyword: hell, evangelicalism + 7 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, political
    Keyword: hell, evangelicalism, theatre, Canon, sexual assault, Childhood, feminism, faith, abuse
    As a young playwright (Joanna Castle Miller) balances the childhood expectations of religion and theatre, she comes to realize the mentors she adores aren't who they appear to be, and neither are the scripts they've passed down to her. INFERNA is a funny, dark, but ultimately hopeful play that explores hell, complicity, and the absurd comedy of being a child.
  • CONVERSA by Joanna Castle Miller
    Cast: 
    1
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    Genre: biography, comedy + 6 more
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    Keyword: judaism, christianity + 5 more
    Genre: biography, comedy, dark comedy, docudrama/historic, drama, faith-based, political, satire
    Keyword: judaism, christianity, migration, conversion, colonization, Sephardic, evangelicalism
    Young Joanna knows all the Jewish prayers... and how they’re really about Jesus. That’s because her mother, who was once studying to become a rabbi, converted to evangelicalism through Jews for Jesus many years ago. With her mother's help, Joanna learns all the tricks of Christian missions, eventually becoming a missionary herself. But then something ancient draws her away, to traditions she never learned...
    Young Joanna knows all the Jewish prayers... and how they’re really about Jesus. That’s because her mother, who was once studying to become a rabbi, converted to evangelicalism through Jews for Jesus many years ago. With her mother's help, Joanna learns all the tricks of Christian missions, eventually becoming a missionary herself. But then something ancient draws her away, to traditions she never learned and dark histories she never studied. And to a tiny village where, centuries ago, her father’s father’s father made a very different choice.

    CONVERSA is a hopeful, epic solo show about identity, migration, and change, and how the worst parts of religion keep us from the best parts – the parts that help all of us survive persecution and find our way home.
  • SH@MED by Joanna Castle Miller
    Cast: 
    6–13
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 2 more
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    Keyword: social media, shame + 8 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, satire
    Keyword: social media, shame, guilt, internet, media, technology, Jewish, forgiveness, harassment, women
    When aspiring writer Tabatha Meier tweets a racially-charged joke, she faces fallout both personal and professional. Her boyfriend dumps her, she loses her job, and her devoutly religious mother feels embarrassed and betrayed. Little does Tabatha know that's only the beginning, as her public shaming reveals a dark secret and forces her whole family to face the past in a new way. SH@MED is a multimedia...
    When aspiring writer Tabatha Meier tweets a racially-charged joke, she faces fallout both personal and professional. Her boyfriend dumps her, she loses her job, and her devoutly religious mother feels embarrassed and betrayed. Little does Tabatha know that's only the beginning, as her public shaming reveals a dark secret and forces her whole family to face the past in a new way. SH@MED is a multimedia dramedy exploring online activism, the dimensions of shame, and how the digital world affects our personal narratives.
  • The Storehouse by Joanna Castle Miller
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: adaptation, biography + 4 more
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    Keyword: writing, privilege + 8 more
    Genre: adaptation, biography, docudrama/historic, drama, period, political
    Keyword: writing, privilege, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Jacobs, 18th century, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Civil War, slavery, White Feminism, intersectionality
    Attempting to become the first fugitive enslaved woman to publish her story by her own hand, Harriet Jacobs approaches the world-famous Uncle Tom's Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe for her help, and the result alters both of their lives and legacies forever. This play explores the structural forces that prevent people from telling their own stories and what is required of writers who create from a place of privilege.
  • around and around and around the static sun by Joanna Castle Miller
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    4–6
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    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 6 more
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    Keyword: magical realism, women + 8 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, experimental, fable/folktale, satire, science fiction, tragedy
    Keyword: magical realism, women, feminism, technology, gender, power, business, domestic violence, memory, History
    Kimberly creates a fake man to save her business and, for better or worse, sparks a movement that could overturn the world order. A full-length dark satire that explores gender, historical memory, and the way people use the power of time to keep oppressive hierarchies in place.
  • The World's Next Tooth Fairy Is Marci Peterson by Joanna Castle Miller
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    3–4
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    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 2 more
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    Keyword: fairy tale, tooth fairy + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, fable/folktale, fantasy
    Keyword: fairy tale, tooth fairy, mythology, retirement, ageism, youth
    Nancy has served faithfully as the world's tooth fairy since before the Black Plague. Now it's time to hand over her title. A modern fairy tale about retirement and youth.
  • Being Heard Academy by Joanna Castle Miller
    Cast: 
    3
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    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 3 more
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    Keyword: satire, magical realism + 3 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, fable/folktale, fantasy, satire
    Keyword: satire, magical realism, racism, White Supremacy, Segregation
    The prestigious Being Heard Academy has taught a select few to speak up for thousands of years; but when new students arrive, their voices threaten the school's most celebrated professor and the views he has perpetuated for a millennia.
  • Parasite by Joanna Castle Miller
    Recommendations: 7
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    Cast: 
    3–4
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    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 2 more
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    Keyword: bed bugs, insects + 5 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, horror, melodrama
    Keyword: bed bugs, insects, Brooklyn, hipsters, prison, fire, animals
    Lazy, worthless hipster Frank lives in a run-down Brooklyn apartment, where he wakes up one morning to find a crass bedbug named #742 - or Jim - has moved in with the entire bedbug clan.

    With his blood on the line and seemingly no escape, Frank must decide between the dwindling comfort of his passive existence and the terrifying unknown of *doing something.*