Gena Treyvus

In the north wing of the 21st floor of Bellevue Hospital in New York City, Nicole is the new girl in the psych ward. 21 North follows not only Nicole, but an ensemble of teenagers, many of whom have been hospitalized for months already. 21 North follows the development of friendships in this heavily surveillanced space, where patients paradoxically also have a very large amount of unstructured time. The characters fall in love and hurt each other and do whatever they can manage to pass the time. This is a play about people making community during their toughest moments.

Strawberries at the Datcha starts in 1996 in Zhodino Belarus. 15-year-old Yelena develops a new relationship with her classmate Nicholai, while simultaneously grappling with experiences of antisemitism. When her family gets approved to immigrate to the United States via a refugee visa, she struggles with what it means to lose her home and her friendships. Yelena and her family move in with Irina, their only family member in America, and the rest of the play takes place in the kitchen of Irina’s home in the Russian-Jewish neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay in New York City. Yelena’s family navigates living in a city where they’re safe enough to engage with their culture and religion for the first time, while also struggling to pay their bills and find employment in a country that doesn’t speak their language. Much of this play follows Yelena through a series of brief, inconvenient, and expensive landline phone calls to Nicholai back home.