Erin Austin

Erin Austin

Erin Austin is a playwright, screenwriter, producer, and educator currently living in Tampa, FL. Her most recent credits include collaborations with Jazzy Mae Productions, Trap Street, Greenhouse Theater, Tellin’ Tales Theatre, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Hub Theatre, and Chicago Dramatists. Erin is a proud co-founder and producing playwright with Living Room Playmakers: a playwrights collective that writes and...
Erin Austin is a playwright, screenwriter, producer, and educator currently living in Tampa, FL. Her most recent credits include collaborations with Jazzy Mae Productions, Trap Street, Greenhouse Theater, Tellin’ Tales Theatre, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Hub Theatre, and Chicago Dramatists. Erin is a proud co-founder and producing playwright with Living Room Playmakers: a playwrights collective that writes and produces site-inspired work in unexpected places. She’s taught theatre and writing at Saint Leo University, Northwestern University and The Chicago Academy for the Arts. She holds a BFA in Musical Theatre from the University of Miami and an MFA in Writing for the Screen + Stage at Northwestern University.

Her writing is a bit wacky, a bit musical, and, hopefully, quite hopeful.

Plays

  • The Midyear Review
    A very short play about auto-pilot office life, career ruts, the rhythmic monotony of corporate reviews, and risk-taking
  • Garbage People
    Two millenials are forced to reckon with their withering friendship and their previous sins against the planet when a literal trash monster comes looking for a human sacrifice.
  • Miss Major Cushman
    She's a wife, mother, actress and a failed union spy. Tonight, Pauline Cushman takes to the stage and tells her story. But how much of it is true is anyone's guess.
  • Always Greener cowritten with Tekki Lomnicki and Noah Fields and Tellin' Tales Theatre
    Terri has lived in Greenfields, an accessible community, since she was a baby. Like everyone else who lives there, she has a great job, a carefully-assigned spouse, and all of the care she needs. The quiet and predictable community is shaken, however, when Raven, an outsider, breaks into Greenfields to get the access they were lacking. Raven is like no other person that Terri has ever met. They wear colorful...
    Terri has lived in Greenfields, an accessible community, since she was a baby. Like everyone else who lives there, she has a great job, a carefully-assigned spouse, and all of the care she needs. The quiet and predictable community is shaken, however, when Raven, an outsider, breaks into Greenfields to get the access they were lacking. Raven is like no other person that Terri has ever met. They wear colorful clothes, they are non-binary, and most importantly, they know what it’s like to live outside of Greenfields. Terri and Raven become friends. Terri helps convince the town and their leader, Rick, that Raven should be allowed to stay in Greenfields. Raven pushes Terri to consider her own wants in life, leading her to the realization that she wants to leave Greenfields and experience the outside world. But due to Rick’s separatists tendencies, entering and leaving Greenfields is not only really scary, it’s difficult. With help from Raven, Terri makes her escape during the annual Greenfields triathlon. Terri leaves the sheltered world of Greenfields and enters a world that is similar to the one we live in. A world that forces Terri to feel disabled. Obstacles bombard Terri, but she learns to navigate this world. She learns what freedom is, she makes new friends, and she falls in love with Alex, who is experiencing early symptoms of a chronic disability. Meanwhile inside Greenfields, Rick becomes increasingly paranoid about losing control of the community. And he should be because Raven becomes an informal leader amongst their peers, prompting them to question the values and decisions made by him. Rick finds Terri in the outside world and tells her that she is forbidden from returning to Greenfields. But Terri is no longer afraid to defy powerful leaders and make her own choices. Terri returns to Greenfields with her new friends and her lover, determined to make her community better. After a spirited protest from the Greenfields citizens, Rick is ousted from his position. The dome that covered Greenfields, separating it from the outside world, is lifted. For the first time, the citizens of Greenfields are given the freedom to decide where and how they want to live.

    Always Greener is a magical musical about growing up, even once you think you’re already grown. It’s about taking chances, finding love, embracing fears, and challenging individual and collective mindsets.
  • Above the Ceiling
    Dottie is just another bored housewife until a young man with a sewing machine crawls in through her window. Based on a true story, Above the Ceiling examines what happens when an emboldened power-hungry woman moves her secret lover into her attic.
  • A Tangled Strand
    Noelle needs to move out of her apartment but she doesn't want to. Mike is the only one who has a chance of getting her to do it.

    This play was originally written for and performed in a basement apartment in Edgewater, Chicago as part of Living Room Playmakers Moving Stories.
  • David Makes His Rounds
    Former class clown, David, bursts into his 15 year high school reunion with an agenda: to apologize for his drunken, childish, and hurtful antics of the past. With his beautiful fiancé by his side, David wins over the room...until he bumps into Margot.
  • The Unlimited Year-Long Class Pack
    A scuffle over a refund on a year long class membership to a fancy yoga studio leads to an unexpected interaction between a woman with cancer and her yoga instructor.
  • The Corpse Flower
    It’s 2 am in the Missouri Botanical Gardens and it’s unseasonably warm for November. The garden’s main attraction, the rare corpse flower, is only a few hours from blooming and releasing its signature scent of death. While live-streaming cameras monitor every angle of the exotic plant, the Gardens themselves are empty… with the exception of two women.
  • Freedom OUT OF ORDER cowritten with Tellin' Tales Theatre and with music and lyrics by Megan Elk
    When eleven Chicagoans discover they are anything but typical, they must navigate their own path through a world of challenges including exams, dating, and job interviews— all while using public transportation. FREEDOM out of order is a musical about the never-ending journey towards self-acceptance and the extraordinary and creative ways we can travel through life. This musical is about people with disabilities. It is for everyone.
  • Insert Heart Here
    The war is coming to an end. The supply is running out. But when one more chance comes to help a patient, Midge has to decide who that patient will be. Can a healthy heart lead to a healthy soul? Insert Heart Here is an alternate-reality dark comedy about the beating heart and the way it travels, willingly and unwillingly, from person to person.
  • Those of You Who Wait
    Owen and Sarah spent a casual and booze-filled night together. Now, days later they are scheduled to meet again, this time in a busy tea shop. After a strange and ominous meeting with a rose-seller, Owen is reunited with his one-night stand.
  • Mary M.: Future Bible Babe
    When Mary M. gets busted for soliciting sexual favors in her high school chemistry classroom, her mother sends her to live with her sister’s family in Michigan for a while. To get back home, Mary makes a drastic decision. Mary M.: Future Bible Babe reimagines the myth of Mary and pushes her into the future, focusing on her life right before she became infamous.
  • Neurons and Photo Albums
    After receiving a damning diagnosis, Mom wants Claudia to take all of her photo albums.