Sloka Krishnan

Sloka Krishnan

Sloka Krishnan is a playwright-lyricist interested in magic, extravagance, ritual, camp, and the disavowal of moral purity and coherent identity. His writing has been described as subversive, multilayered, and eviscerating (by a boy he once slept with) and as darkly surreal comedy (by a legitimate online publication).

Now based in San Francisco, he is a 2024-2025 Resident Playwright with the...
Sloka Krishnan is a playwright-lyricist interested in magic, extravagance, ritual, camp, and the disavowal of moral purity and coherent identity. His writing has been described as subversive, multilayered, and eviscerating (by a boy he once slept with) and as darkly surreal comedy (by a legitimate online publication).

Now based in San Francisco, he is a 2024-2025 Resident Playwright with the Playwrights Foundation. He was previously a 2020 recipient of an Artist Project Grant from the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, a 2017-2018 Horizon Theatre Playwright Apprentice (Atlanta, GA), and a 2017 Lambda Literary Fellow in Playwriting. His work has been developed and performed by Cutting Ball Theatre (San Francisco); Happy Accident Theatre, Horizon Theatre Company, Out Front Theatre, and Working Title Playwrights (Atlanta); Forum Theatre and the Rainbow Theatre Project (DC).
​
Upcoming projects include a staged reading of Maybe Politics Are Over through Working Title Playwrights' Ethel Woolson Lab (May 2024).

Plays

  • The Bugs by Sloka Krishnan
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: public health, surveillance + 2 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, farce
    Keyword: public health, surveillance, family drama, transgender characters
    Genevieve Ingleside, disgraced future Baroness of Savannah, has escaped her family’s stifling country estate and found a life for herself in the city, navigating newfound intimacies in a time of plague and surveillance. Her grandmother, meanwhile, remains at home. When both find themselves in the crossfire of a public health and/or -relations crisis, they are forced to reconsider the strength of their family...
    Genevieve Ingleside, disgraced future Baroness of Savannah, has escaped her family’s stifling country estate and found a life for herself in the city, navigating newfound intimacies in a time of plague and surveillance. Her grandmother, meanwhile, remains at home. When both find themselves in the crossfire of a public health and/or -relations crisis, they are forced to reconsider the strength of their family ties ... and of their facility with a pair of gardening shears.
  • Maybe Politics Are Over by Sloka Krishnan
    Cast: 
    10
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: Trump administration, poisoned eroticism + 5 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, experimental, political
    Keyword: Trump administration, poisoned eroticism, male entitlement, activist paradigms, separatism, exhaustion, play with music
    In a fragmenting world, four politicians jockey for power and grapple with desire; three hapless do-gooders parrot rhetoric they've been fed and clamor for change they can’t envision; and a trio of outcasts retreat to the woods for a peace that they too find unsustainable. Moving with the lightning speed of the 24-hour news cycle, rich with music and movement, filthy with sex and boiling with rage, Maybe...
    In a fragmenting world, four politicians jockey for power and grapple with desire; three hapless do-gooders parrot rhetoric they've been fed and clamor for change they can’t envision; and a trio of outcasts retreat to the woods for a peace that they too find unsustainable. Moving with the lightning speed of the 24-hour news cycle, rich with music and movement, filthy with sex and boiling with rage, Maybe Politics Are Over is an unsparing look at the fury, destructiveness, and exhaustion of our times.
  • The Grand Transsexual Draweth Nigh by Sloka Krishnan
    Cast: 
    9
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 4 more
    ·
    Keyword: transgender characters, Characters of Color + 1 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, experimental, mystery/thriller, political
    Keyword: transgender characters, Characters of Color, desirability politics
    The Grand Transsexual Draweth Nigh is a darkly comedic magical trans Halloween revenge mystery; a plea for ritual and transcendence; and an exploration of identity, authenticity, assimilation, and the ways in which we are consumed and alienated by our own desires, specifically in the contexts of queer/trans subcultures and racialized and gendered hierarchies of desirability. It follows a young gay trans man of...
    The Grand Transsexual Draweth Nigh is a darkly comedic magical trans Halloween revenge mystery; a plea for ritual and transcendence; and an exploration of identity, authenticity, assimilation, and the ways in which we are consumed and alienated by our own desires, specifically in the contexts of queer/trans subcultures and racialized and gendered hierarchies of desirability. It follows a young gay trans man of color and three of his friends on the night when they once and for all become the devourers, not the devoured.
  • Babble by Sloka Krishnan
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: libraries, knowledge production + 2 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, farce
    Keyword: libraries, knowledge production, information access, gay desire
    In a pristine library that has been emptied of books, three agitated stakeholders fight over the future of the institution and the future of knowledge. Babble is a campy and surreal parable about the dangers of decorum.
  • Trickle-Down by Sloka Krishnan
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy, musical + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: queer joy, LGBT Coming of Age + 1 more
    Genre: comedy, musical, political, romantic comedy
    Keyword: queer joy, LGBT Coming of Age, queer coming of age
    Trickle-Down, a ten-minute musical, is a sweet coming-of-age lesbian revenge rom-com in the form of a gay romp across Ronald Reagan’s grave.