Nora Sørena Casey

Nora Sørena Casey

I love to create vivid theatrical worlds that break free of reality. This emphasis on imagination takes many forms, including site-specific works, musicals, and plays that seamlessly move across time and space. From works like "False Stars," a collaboratively-created reclaiming of the family drama, to experimental new musicals like "Waiting" and "The Nature Room", my plays blend...
I love to create vivid theatrical worlds that break free of reality. This emphasis on imagination takes many forms, including site-specific works, musicals, and plays that seamlessly move across time and space. From works like "False Stars," a collaboratively-created reclaiming of the family drama, to experimental new musicals like "Waiting" and "The Nature Room", my plays blend humor and lyrical language to explore sex, love, identity and power in America today.

My work has been seen across New York at venues including The Signature Center, The Bushwick Starr, The New Ohio, Dixon Place, South Oxford Space, the Kraine, Symphony Space, Urban Stages, and the Paradise Factory, as well as in New England and Shanghai. Dramaturgy credits include developing new works with César Alvarez and Sarah Benson, Jackie Sibblies Drury, The Civilians, and Kareem Fahmy. I was the script assistant to David Henry Hwang on the Broadway revival of "M. Butterfly" and the world premiere of "Soft Power."

I have a BA in English from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University. Check out my website for more info, or feel free to reach out to me directly!

Plays

  • The Nature Room
    High in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in the middle of a majestic natural park, sits a small Natural History Museum and Gift Shop decorated to look like the forest outside. From within, Lee is trying to stop the development of the land. But when she enlists the help of an old friend, Lee invites more than memories into her refuge. The Nature Room is a comedy about love, survival, and the California Wolverine.
  • The Censorship of Dreams
    The world has been Restarted, and no one knows why. One day, people just woke up without their memories. They found themselves sharing houses with strangers—people who must have been their husbands and wives, parents and children, but they weren’t sure. All they knew was what the officials told them: the Restart was for the best, and that they would make new memories soon enough.

    The Man and the...
    The world has been Restarted, and no one knows why. One day, people just woke up without their memories. They found themselves sharing houses with strangers—people who must have been their husbands and wives, parents and children, but they weren’t sure. All they knew was what the officials told them: the Restart was for the best, and that they would make new memories soon enough.

    The Man and the Woman are one such couple. She’d like to think their marriage was a happy one, but he’s not convinced. He’s having trouble adjusting, refuses to sign up for a job, and he won’t let either of them sell their dreams. The officials will give good money to anyone who has their dreams extracted, but the Man believes that they are the only record of what society was like before the Restart.

    As the Woman gets more invested in her new job cataloguing dreams for the officials, the Man teams up with a group of rebels, trying to rediscover lost words that might give him access to the past. His actions place them both under suspicion. No one knows what the officials would do to them, but it can’t be good… right?

    The Censorship of Dreams is a story of love and ambition in a surveillance state, exploring the relationships between technology and poetry, individualist resistance and societal responsibility.
  • Absolutely Somewhere
    A new house. An old dog. Shampoo. Everybody’s looking for something.

    A one act play to be performed outside, Absolutely Somewhere asks how we build and hold onto our places in the world.
  • Waiting
    A hospital. The wild west. An Italian Restaurant with suspiciously small servings.The distinctions between time and space are collapsing for Kelly following the death of her father, and anything from a wedding toast to a sinister advertising campaign might hold the secret of where it all went wrong in this play with music.
  • False Stars
    Following news of their brilliant but estranged father’s stroke, Mychal reluctantly returns to their childhood home in Oxford, Mississippi. Upon arrival, they are confronted by a community grappling with death, love, scientific legacy, identity, and a few old ghosts. "False Stars" is a darkly humorous modern take on the Southern Gothic drama—in which strained relationships, covert queer love triangles...
    Following news of their brilliant but estranged father’s stroke, Mychal reluctantly returns to their childhood home in Oxford, Mississippi. Upon arrival, they are confronted by a community grappling with death, love, scientific legacy, identity, and a few old ghosts. "False Stars" is a darkly humorous modern take on the Southern Gothic drama—in which strained relationships, covert queer love triangles, and notebooks of mysterious origin lurk around every corner.
  • Take the Car
    Sex, drugs, and bus stops—it's all part of Jenny and Meg's half-assed attempt to make it through high school. But once Jenny's son Lucas comes into the scene, their haphazard life goes from amusing to dangerous. How do you raise a child if you never grew up yourself?

    Take the Car weaves together past and present to tell the story of who we are, who we were, and what the hell we think we're doing.
  • Resistance Training
    Nina feels hopeless and helpless in the aftermath of the 2016 election, something Chrissy just can’t accept—because Chrissy is her personal trainer. It is time to get fit, no matter what. A one act play about women working together and falling apart.
  • At World's End
    Two Emperor penguin parents face starvation for themselves and their baby, Baby Baby, until a strange new Macaroni penguin, Tuck Tuck, comes on the scene. Greedy for his food, they get concerned when the stranger and Baby Baby seem to be falling in love, until a surprising food source make heartbreak the least of anyone's worries.
  • Not Afraid
    Bets knows from experience that being a death metal aficionado and a Communist isn’t the best way to make friends, but things reach a new low when someone threatens to kill her. Worse, her best—and only—friend Hunter seems too busy trying to get rich to care. Which is worse: selling out or dying? When do you stop trying to save the world? Just how overrated is Metallica?