Salwa Meghjee

Salwa Meghjee

Salwa Meghjee is a playwright from Orlando, Florida. Her work tries to illuminate and soothe the big, unnameable feelings we all experience and can’t otherwise explain. Her plays include U-Haul Mesbians (2023 O’Neill National Musical Theater Conference Semi-Finalist), Ender’s Gay (2024 Fault Line Theater’s Irons in the Fire Finalist), The Conference of the Birds (Mudlark Theater’s That’s How We Grew the World...
Salwa Meghjee is a playwright from Orlando, Florida. Her work tries to illuminate and soothe the big, unnameable feelings we all experience and can’t otherwise explain. Her plays include U-Haul Mesbians (2023 O’Neill National Musical Theater Conference Semi-Finalist), Ender’s Gay (2024 Fault Line Theater’s Irons in the Fire Finalist), The Conference of the Birds (Mudlark Theater’s That’s How We Grew the World Festival), Word Play (The Once and Future Festival), Obligate Carnivores (Trove Trinket Series), and, written with her twin sister Samah, The Mysterious Mystery of the Lost Letters (Brooklyn Publishers). She co-founded the feminist theatre company The Golden and served as its Artistic Director for three years. She holds a BA in English from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Writing for the Screen and Stage from Northwestern University.

Plays

  • Ender's Gay
    Laiba is a queer teenage Muslim girl who is obsessed with proving that Ender from the 1985 sci-fi novel Ender's Game is gay, despite the author's documented homophobia. She comes to believe she is Ender and must fall in gay love with her classmate Jannat to save the world.
  • Keep Happy
    It's my birthday! I cry on my birthday, every year. It's an integral part of the experience. Let's celebrate!

    A one-person show/party about the rituals of birthdays and chronic mental illness.
  • Word Play
    When the Warden of Words outlaws the creation of new words, the words refuse to print in protest. Haiku poet Paulie and his half-paper friend Ellouie must adventure to convince the words to print again and to repair Ellouie’s paper heart that is ripping apart.
  • The Conference of the Birds
    A short play adaptation of The Conference of the Birds by Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar, commissioned by Mudlark Theater. Will the birds of Evanston make it to Lake Michigan to find a mythical leader who will save them?
  • Obligate Carnivores
    Maira tries to turn her cat Juicy Lucy vegan. When Lucy stops eating, Maira starts feeding the cat pieces of her own flesh.
  • U-Haul Mesbians
    When Alaina and Zaamenah reveal to their traditional Muslim families that Alaina's birthday party is actually their lesbian wedding, their families put them on trial for their crimes of lying and homosexuality. A play with music about marrying culture, religion, and the modern world.
  • The Mysterious Mystery of the Lost Letters
    Zoe is an assistant to Detective Davis Darvis, an incompetent amateur who does not appreciate her talents. When he accepts a case regarding an old woman’s stolen letters, he rejects Zoe’s proposal to help. She teams up with her friend Isaac in a race to solve the case before Darvis does, using her wit combined with Isaac’s botanical knowledge to aid their search. Their adventure brings them across an elderly...
    Zoe is an assistant to Detective Davis Darvis, an incompetent amateur who does not appreciate her talents. When he accepts a case regarding an old woman’s stolen letters, he rejects Zoe’s proposal to help. She teams up with her friend Isaac in a race to solve the case before Darvis does, using her wit combined with Isaac’s botanical knowledge to aid their search. Their adventure brings them across an elderly pro-wrestler, a duck-obsessed cult, a knitting gang, and more as they try to find the lost letters.
  • Kill the Depression Before It Kills You
    After Kitty undergoes brain surgery to cure her depression, she begins to have visions of her middle school biology teacher, Mrs. Melancholy, who died by suicide drinking frog dissection formaldehyde.
  • Intake: Hawaii
    Desperate for better treatment for her mental illness and a way to pay off her medical debt, Jane joins the cast of "Intake: Hawaii," a reality show that takes place in a psychiatric hospital. The goal of “Intake” is to find the perfect treatment regimen: a combination of medication, therapy, and any other forms of treatment that might be helpful to the contestants. This is achieved through a series...
    Desperate for better treatment for her mental illness and a way to pay off her medical debt, Jane joins the cast of "Intake: Hawaii," a reality show that takes place in a psychiatric hospital. The goal of “Intake” is to find the perfect treatment regimen: a combination of medication, therapy, and any other forms of treatment that might be helpful to the contestants. This is achieved through a series of chaotic and increasingly strange games.