Masha Obolensky

Masha Obolensky (she/her) is a Boston-based playwright. Her play Interior of the Artist Without Her Sister was selected as a Finalist for the 2023 Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and was further developed in a summer workshop at the Huntington Theatre in July 2023.

Her collaboration with the Huntington has also included the radio play Speaking Up as part of the “Dream Boston” series, and a 2014 summer workshop of Brazen (co-written with Melia Bensussen), which was later developed at Emerson College and performed at the Paramount Theater.

Masha’s play Not Enough Air was produced by Chicago’s TimeLine Theatre and nominated for five Joseph Jefferson Equity Awards, including Best New Play and Best Production. It was also produced by the Nora Theatre in Cambridge (directed by...

Masha Obolensky (she/her) is a Boston-based playwright. Her play Interior of the Artist Without Her Sister was selected as a Finalist for the 2023 Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and was further developed in a summer workshop at the Huntington Theatre in July 2023.

Her collaboration with the Huntington has also included the radio play Speaking Up as part of the “Dream Boston” series, and a 2014 summer workshop of Brazen (co-written with Melia Bensussen), which was later developed at Emerson College and performed at the Paramount Theater.

Masha’s play Not Enough Air was produced by Chicago’s TimeLine Theatre and nominated for five Joseph Jefferson Equity Awards, including Best New Play and Best Production. It was also produced by the Nora Theatre in Cambridge (directed by Melia Bensussen) and named one of the Boston Globe’s “10 Best of 2010.”

Other works include Marvelous Fruit, The Girl Problem, Historic Beauty, Brazen, and the widely produced 10-minute piece Girls’ Play, presented at venues such as the Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Festival.

Masha is a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship and the PEN New England Discovery Award. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from Boston University and currently teaches Theatre at the International School of Boston. She is also a founding member of the playwrights’ group MUTT, formed with her Huntington Playwriting Fellows cohort.

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Scripts

Interior of the Artist Without Her Sister

by Masha Obolensky

Cast Size
9—15
Genre
docudrama/historic,
experimental

When her sister, Virginia Woolf, dies by suicide the painter Vanessa Bell is plunged into the past as she struggles to understand who she is in the world without this central relationship in her life. A theatrical piece that draws from and is inspired by the autobiographical writings of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. This new play explores grief, identity, the effects of inner passivity and repressed memory...

When her sister, Virginia Woolf, dies by suicide the painter Vanessa Bell is plunged into the past as she struggles to understand who she is in the world without this central relationship in her life. A theatrical piece that draws from and is inspired by the autobiographical writings of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. This new play explores grief, identity, the effects of inner passivity and repressed memory, loving someone with a mental illness, the transformative power of art, and the ability we have to reimagine the past and change our present.

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Not Enough Air

by Masha Obolensky

Cast Size
6
Genre
biography,
docudrama/historic,
drama,
experimental,
movement/physical,
period

In 1927, Sophie Treadwell attended the notorious trial in which Ruth Snyder and her lover Judd Gray were accused of the violent murder of Ruth Snyder’s husband. The trial attracted huge public interest. The media frenzy continued unabated until the defendants were executed by electric chair in January 1928, Ruth Snyder becoming the first woman to be executed by electric chair in The United States.

At this...

In 1927, Sophie Treadwell attended the notorious trial in which Ruth Snyder and her lover Judd Gray were accused of the violent murder of Ruth Snyder’s husband. The trial attracted huge public interest. The media frenzy continued unabated until the defendants were executed by electric chair in January 1928, Ruth Snyder becoming the first woman to be executed by electric chair in The United States.

At this time, Sophie Treadwell was a journalist for the Herald Tribune, a professional playwright, a theatre producer, a novelist, and a member of the Lucy Stone League. NOT ENOUGH AIR is a speculation on the period in her life when she both attended the Ruth Snyder/ Judd Gray trial as a journalist and wrote MACHINAL, a play inspired by that trial.

An exploration of the creative process and the fine line an artist walks when creating fiction from real life, NOT ENOUGH AIR also examines sensationalism, obsession, and the social institutions and environments that define expectations for women’s behavior.

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Marvelous Fruit

by Masha Obolensky

Cast Size
2
Genre
comedy,
dark comedy,
experimental

Fran, quickly approaching 80, wakes up to her own life. With the help of "the interweb," she finds a warehouse party and an underground sensation called a "miracle berry," miraculous fruit that promises to make Tabasco sauce taste like donut glaze and pickles taste like watermelon. The berries spark a thousand tiny changes in the lives of Fran and her paranoid shut-in husband Jerry — but how do we know when...

Fran, quickly approaching 80, wakes up to her own life. With the help of "the interweb," she finds a warehouse party and an underground sensation called a "miracle berry," miraculous fruit that promises to make Tabasco sauce taste like donut glaze and pickles taste like watermelon. The berries spark a thousand tiny changes in the lives of Fran and her paranoid shut-in husband Jerry — but how do we know when change is worth the price? A play about aging, friendship, and the power of the mind, Marvelous Fruit asks if sourness can ever taste sweet.

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Girls Play

by Masha Obolensky

1
Cast Size
2
Genre
dark comedy

Martha has a crush on her teacher and rehearses a romantic scene between the two of them with her friend Ruth who has a crush on her.

Martha has a crush on her teacher and rehearses a romantic scene between the two of them with her friend Ruth who has a crush on her.