Amanda Shank

Amanda Shank

Amanda Shank is an artist and educator based in Los Angeles, California. With an experimental practice rooted in the interplay between text, image and performance, her work frequently explores themes of women’s identity and sexuality while also dismantling traditional notions of form, genre, chronology and performativity.

Amanda has developed projects with the John F. Kennedy Center for the...
Amanda Shank is an artist and educator based in Los Angeles, California. With an experimental practice rooted in the interplay between text, image and performance, her work frequently explores themes of women’s identity and sexuality while also dismantling traditional notions of form, genre, chronology and performativity.

Amanda has developed projects with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the National New Play Network, the Henson Foundation, Circle X Theatre, The Industry, the Prototype Festival, CalArts Center for New Performance, Los Angeles Performance Practice's LAX Festival and many more. She has presented work at venues such as the Ace Hotel DTLA, the Hammer Museum, Z Below and Automata Arts. As a playwright, her work has been published in the U.S. and translated internationally.

Selected scripts or bodies of work have been a recipient of the National New Play Network's Collaboration Fund (2016-17), finalist for the Sundance Theatre Lab in MENA (2016), the P73 Playwriting Fellowship (2015), a semi-finalist for the O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference (2015), and have twice received an honorable mention for The Kilroys' THE LIST (2014, 2015).

Amanda did her undergraduate study at Emerson College in Writing, Literature & Publishing and her MFA in Writing for Performance at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). She is currently Associate Dean for the School of Theater at CalArts and an Associate Artistic Director for CalArts Center for New Performance.

Plays

  • The Glass Man by Amanda Shank
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    2–4
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: female lead, magical realism
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: female lead, magical realism
    One morning, Henry announces to his wife, Joyce, that he is leaving to go fight in the war, “to be a hero.” Henry secretly suspects they are the last two people alive, while Joyce is certain it’s just been a particularly long, rainy winter. Joyce refuses to be left behind in their tenuous, rotting home and what follows is a single morning that irrevocably ruptures their sense of safety, resilience and trust....
    One morning, Henry announces to his wife, Joyce, that he is leaving to go fight in the war, “to be a hero.” Henry secretly suspects they are the last two people alive, while Joyce is certain it’s just been a particularly long, rainy winter. Joyce refuses to be left behind in their tenuous, rotting home and what follows is a single morning that irrevocably ruptures their sense of safety, resilience and trust.

    THE GLASS MAN is a play about middle-aged companionship, a fragile man, and a mythologized war that wants only old men for fighting. It is an exploration of an old love and a tired world simultaneously dismantling into their final breaths.
  • The Fasting Girls by Amanda Shank
    Cast: 
    6–9
    ·
    Genre: drama, experimental + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: women, girls + 7 more
    Genre: drama, experimental, period
    Keyword: women, girls, Sisters, science, religion, History, coming of age, youth, adaptation
    "The weight of the soul, don’t you want to know?"

    A hundred years ago or more, sixteen-year-old Eva is engaged to a man nearly twice her age. As Eva struggles to come to terms with the reality of the fate that awaits her, she slips deeper and deeper into an unreal state—a ghostly, surreal place where she is able to survive on prayer alone.

    Using the language of puppets...
    "The weight of the soul, don’t you want to know?"

    A hundred years ago or more, sixteen-year-old Eva is engaged to a man nearly twice her age. As Eva struggles to come to terms with the reality of the fate that awaits her, she slips deeper and deeper into an unreal state—a ghostly, surreal place where she is able to survive on prayer alone.

    Using the language of puppets and performing objects, THE FASTING GIRLS is a poetic mediation on the phenomenon of 19th century girls who starved themselves as a form of prayer, social rebellion, and personal control. An exploration of the collision between religion and medicine, between the body and the soul, this multimedia production is a carnal and cinematic glimpse into one girl’s struggle against the inevitability of life.
  • Handful by Amanda Shank
    Cast: 
    2
    ·
    Genre: drama, mystery/thriller
    ·
    Keyword: suspense, brothers + 3 more
    Genre: drama, mystery/thriller
    Keyword: suspense, brothers, family, death, teenage boys
    When the ashes of their recently deceased mother suddenly disappear, stoic and grief-stricken David suspects that his younger brother Michael is up to no good.
  • Prairie Fire by Amanda Shank
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: female lead, Surreal + 4 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama
    Keyword: female lead, Surreal, suspense, fire, prairie fire, American Midwest
    A small town in a large expanse of prairie.
    A teenage girl with an itch to burn it all down.
    A family trapped in celebration.
    Two lovers from another place.

    A series of episodic, interlocking stories surrounding a wild fire that unexpectedly destroys a small, Midwestern town, PRAIRIE FIRE is an exploration of the intersection between femininity and violence and a meditation...
    A small town in a large expanse of prairie.
    A teenage girl with an itch to burn it all down.
    A family trapped in celebration.
    Two lovers from another place.

    A series of episodic, interlocking stories surrounding a wild fire that unexpectedly destroys a small, Midwestern town, PRAIRIE FIRE is an exploration of the intersection between femininity and violence and a meditation on the cinematic possibilities of the theatrical form.
  • Thirteen's Spring by Amanda Shank
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, docudrama/historic
    ·
    Keyword: Anne Frank, adaptation + 2 more
    Genre: adaptation, docudrama/historic
    Keyword: Anne Frank, adaptation, 20th century history of women, coming of age
    THIRTEEN’S SPRING is a playful, poetic adaptation of 'The Diary of Anne Frank' centering on the final days before the Franks went into hiding in the summer of 1942. At this time, Anne was not yet the Anne Frank of modern legend but simply a thirteen-year-old girl on the cusp of young love. Created in collaboration with Moving Art Collective and loosely based on Anne’s earliest diary entries, THIRTEEN’...
    THIRTEEN’S SPRING is a playful, poetic adaptation of 'The Diary of Anne Frank' centering on the final days before the Franks went into hiding in the summer of 1942. At this time, Anne was not yet the Anne Frank of modern legend but simply a thirteen-year-old girl on the cusp of young love. Created in collaboration with Moving Art Collective and loosely based on Anne’s earliest diary entries, THIRTEEN’S SPRING renders Anne Frank through a contemporary sensibility full of humor, magic, and surprise.
  • Rabbit in the Blue by Amanda Shank
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: drama, experimental + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: female lead, American Midwest + 5 more
    Genre: drama, experimental, period
    Keyword: female lead, American Midwest, Surreal, suspense, dreams, memory, violence
    RABBIT IN THE BLUE is a vivid, intimate tale that explores the mysterious reappearance of twenty-year-old Daniel in the lonesome fields surrounding his childhood home.  Assumed by his family to be lost many years earlier, Daniel’s return unleashes a series of strange events and devastating consequences.

    While Daniel’s parents and younger sister grapple with his sudden return, Daniel is haunted by...
    RABBIT IN THE BLUE is a vivid, intimate tale that explores the mysterious reappearance of twenty-year-old Daniel in the lonesome fields surrounding his childhood home.  Assumed by his family to be lost many years earlier, Daniel’s return unleashes a series of strange events and devastating consequences.

    While Daniel’s parents and younger sister grapple with his sudden return, Daniel is haunted by his first love, Laura.  Stuck within his old childhood bedroom, Daniel races through a series of pungent, lustful and increasingly violent memories of Laura.  As Daniel’s family struggles to understand where he’s been, Daniel attempts to piece together his chaotic past and the tragic circumstances that brought him home.

    Set in an isolated, mythic interpretation of the 1930s American Midwest, RABBIT IN THE BLUE explores the intersection between modernity and nostalgia, desire and violence, and the vanishing distinction between what is real and what is imagined.