Ashley Naftule

Ashley Naftule

Ashley Naftule is a resident playwright and the Associate Artistic Director at Space55 theatre in downtown Phoenix. They've written and produced six full-length plays: "Ear," "The First Annual Bookburners Convention," "The Canterbury Tarot," "Radio Free Europa," "The Hidden Sea," and "Orange Skies." Both "Ear" and "Bookburners...
Ashley Naftule is a resident playwright and the Associate Artistic Director at Space55 theatre in downtown Phoenix. They've written and produced six full-length plays: "Ear," "The First Annual Bookburners Convention," "The Canterbury Tarot," "Radio Free Europa," "The Hidden Sea," and "Orange Skies." Both "Ear" and "Bookburners" received AriZoni theater award nominations for Best Original Writing, and "Radio Free Europa" and "The Hidden Sea" won AriZoni Best Original Writing Awards for 2020 and 2021.

As a freelance journalist, his work has been published in The AV Club, Pitchfork, Daily Bandcamp, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Vice, The Outline, Longreads, Phoenix New Times, Echo Magazine, AZCentral, and The Cleveland Review of Books. His short fiction has been published in Coffin Bell Journal, AEther/Ichor, The Molotov Cocktail, Cabinet of Heed, Grasslimb, Dark City Mystery Magazine, Hypnopomp, Write Ahead/The Future Looms, and Planet Scumm (forthcoming). His micropoetry chapbooks Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth and Epoch & Olivetti Sing All The Hits are available (respectively) via Rinky Dinky Press and Ghost City Press.

Despite the uncanny resemblance, he bears no relation to country singer Vince Gill nor is in any way an evil Vince Gill doppelganger that escaped from The Black Lodge.

Plays

  • Orange Skies by Ashley Naftule
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: dark comedy, apocalypse + 5 more
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental, satire
    Keyword: dark comedy, apocalypse, transphobia, conspiracy theories, birds, corporate greed, cowgirl
    The town of Rosewater is afraid. Not of the raging forest fire that keeps getting closer to them, or the inexplicable increase in animal attacks, or the sinkholes opening on Main Street, or the nearby army base firing off mortars like they’re under attack. They’re worried about what’s in their tap water, and God help whoever they think is to blame for it.

    Set in the modern era, the world of...
    The town of Rosewater is afraid. Not of the raging forest fire that keeps getting closer to them, or the inexplicable increase in animal attacks, or the sinkholes opening on Main Street, or the nearby army base firing off mortars like they’re under attack. They’re worried about what’s in their tap water, and God help whoever they think is to blame for it.

    Set in the modern era, the world of "Orange Skies" is populated by a cast of characters that includes drug dealers, librarians, birdwatchers, mail order brides, soldiers, and a close personal friend of Elvis Presley. "Orange Skies" is a dark comedy about conspiracy theories, mass hysteria, corporate greed, transphobia, and immortal cowgirls. It’s a play about the collapse of civilization and what comes next.

  • Radio Free Europa by Ashley Naftule
    Cast: 
    6–13
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental + 3 more
    ·
    Keyword: UFO, family + 5 more
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental, horror, radio drama, science fiction
    Keyword: UFO, family, Philip K. Dick, radio, modern radio play, Talk radio, conspiracy
    Broadcasting from the Nevada desert, Delilah Peel hosts the nation’s most popular late night AM radio talk show. Fielding paranoid calls about UFOs, Bigfoots, dead pop stars, and chupacabras is all in a day’s work for Peel. But when her equipment begins picking up ominous transmissions from beyond the stars, she starts to worry that she’s turning into one of her callers. Inspired by Art Bell's Coast to...
    Broadcasting from the Nevada desert, Delilah Peel hosts the nation’s most popular late night AM radio talk show. Fielding paranoid calls about UFOs, Bigfoots, dead pop stars, and chupacabras is all in a day’s work for Peel. But when her equipment begins picking up ominous transmissions from beyond the stars, she starts to worry that she’s turning into one of her callers. Inspired by Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM, the works of Philip K. Dick, and the strange recordings of The Conet Project, Radio Free Europa is a darkly comic exploration of one woman’s struggle to find a signal in a universe full of noise.
  • Ear by Ashley Naftule
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 3 more
    ·
    Keyword: Vincent Van Gogh, asylum + 7 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, experimental, fantasy, horror
    Keyword: Vincent Van Gogh, asylum, comic surrealism, sound design, sound effects, experimental, Mental Health, cannibalism, shamanism
    After giving his girlfriend his ear as an anniversary gift, a troubled man ends up in a mental hospital where his new best friend is a cannibal and his doctor is crazy than he is. To make matters even worse: he's still hearing things out of his missing ear.

    As for the lady who received his unfortunate gift: she's starting to hear things too. Bursts of noise, music, prophetic noises,...
    After giving his girlfriend his ear as an anniversary gift, a troubled man ends up in a mental hospital where his new best friend is a cannibal and his doctor is crazy than he is. To make matters even worse: he's still hearing things out of his missing ear.

    As for the lady who received his unfortunate gift: she's starting to hear things too. Bursts of noise, music, prophetic noises, and radio plays.... streaming out of a severed ear in a jewelry box.

    EAR is a black comedy about missed connections, mental illnesses, supernatural phenomena, and the hazards of receiving therapy from a Freudian with a raging coke problem and an all-too literal Oedipal complex.
  • The Canterbury Tarot by Ashley Naftule
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: comedy, commedia dell'arte + 6 more
    ·
    Keyword: tarot, Chaucer + 8 more
    Genre: comedy, commedia dell'arte, dark comedy, experimental, fable/folktale, fantasy, movement/physical, pantomime
    Keyword: tarot, Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, puppets, dance, Drinking Games, experimental, Jodorowsky, storytelling, monologues
    Set in a tavern outside space and time, "The Canterbury Tarot" puts on an occult spin on Geoffrey Chaucer's immortal classic. A group of pilgrims, waylaid by a violent storm, take refuge in a tavern and pass the time by telling stories. But rather than letting the Wife of Bath or the Miller or Knight do the talking, the pilgrims in this tavern are Major Arcana pulled from a deck of Tarot cards:...
    Set in a tavern outside space and time, "The Canterbury Tarot" puts on an occult spin on Geoffrey Chaucer's immortal classic. A group of pilgrims, waylaid by a violent storm, take refuge in a tavern and pass the time by telling stories. But rather than letting the Wife of Bath or the Miller or Knight do the talking, the pilgrims in this tavern are Major Arcana pulled from a deck of Tarot cards: Death, The Tower, The Chariot, The Empress, The Star, The Fool, Judgment, and The Wheel of Fortune.

    Inspired by the works of Chaucer, Neil Gaiman, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Annie Baker, "The Canterbury Tarot" is a freewheeling journey through a strange series of stories about druidic sacrifices, haunted heiresses, radiated messiahs, and the inevitable heat death of the universe.
  • The Hidden Sea by Ashley Naftule
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: dreams, shipwreck + 5 more
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental, fantasy, romantic comedy
    Keyword: dreams, shipwreck, mermaids, budding romance, surreal elements, body horror, alternate timelines
    Sophia Islet has trouble sleeping. It isn’t insomnia or sleep apnea that troubles her: it’s her vivid nightmares of drowning and the very real underwater creatures that follow her back to her flooding apartment when she wakes up that give her grief. While Sophia struggles to cope with her impossible situation, over half a century in the past two sailors on a raft—Hans & Nikolai—try to stay afloat as sharks...
    Sophia Islet has trouble sleeping. It isn’t insomnia or sleep apnea that troubles her: it’s her vivid nightmares of drowning and the very real underwater creatures that follow her back to her flooding apartment when she wakes up that give her grief. While Sophia struggles to cope with her impossible situation, over half a century in the past two sailors on a raft—Hans & Nikolai—try to stay afloat as sharks circle them & a mysterious siren tempts them with promises of love & immortality under the sea. Inspired by body horror, sea shanties, the weird fiction of Caitlin R. Kiernan, and Terry Gilliam movies, The Hidden Sea is a darkly comic tale about anxiety, cosmic synchronicities, mermaids, and lovestruck pet shop boys.
  • The First Annual Bookburners Convention by Ashley Naftule
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: lovecraft, horror + 8 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, horror, mystery/thriller
    Keyword: lovecraft, horror, occult, bookstore, family, workplace comedy, Weird-fiction, urban fantasy, Twilight Zone, Borges
    Every day feels exactly the same for the employees at the Opera Street Bookstore: talking about pop culture, taking never-ending smoke breaks, and dealing with insane customers. Their dead end jobs turn deadly, though, when a sketchy customer sells them a strange book. Written in "the language of angels," it becomes the store's most in-demand rare book. The only problem? The people who want to...
    Every day feels exactly the same for the employees at the Opera Street Bookstore: talking about pop culture, taking never-ending smoke breaks, and dealing with insane customers. Their dead end jobs turn deadly, though, when a sketchy customer sells them a strange book. Written in "the language of angels," it becomes the store's most in-demand rare book. The only problem? The people who want to get their hands on it aren’t people at all. A play about slackers & sinister forces, "The First Annual Bookburners Convention" is a dark comedy about bookworms, cosmic horror, and what you stand to lose when you keep looking at life through the rear-view mirror.