Carey Perloff

CAREY PERLOFF is a director, playwright, producer and educator who served as Artistic Director of the American Conservatory Theater from 1992-2018 and at CSC (NYC) from 1986-1992. PERLOFF has staged dozens of classical and contemporary plays across America and Canada, and nurtured a three-decade collaboration with Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard resulting in her new book PINTER AND STOPPARD: A DIRECTOR’S VIEW (Bloomsbury Methuen 2022). Recent directing work includes LEOPOLDSTADT(Huntington and STC), LEHMAN TRILOGY (Huntington and St. Louis Rep), AS YOU LIKE IT (ASanta Cruz Shakespeare), GHOSTS (trans. Paul Walsh) at Seattle Rep and Williamstown, PALE FIRE by Colm Toibin at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, MERCHANT OF VENICE starring Seana McKenna at the Shakespeare Company, Calgary, and A THOUSAND...

CAREY PERLOFF is a director, playwright, producer and educator who served as Artistic Director of the American Conservatory Theater from 1992-2018 and at CSC (NYC) from 1986-1992. PERLOFF has staged dozens of classical and contemporary plays across America and Canada, and nurtured a three-decade collaboration with Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard resulting in her new book PINTER AND STOPPARD: A DIRECTOR’S VIEW (Bloomsbury Methuen 2022). Recent directing work includes LEOPOLDSTADT(Huntington and STC), LEHMAN TRILOGY (Huntington and St. Louis Rep), AS YOU LIKE IT (ASanta Cruz Shakespeare), GHOSTS (trans. Paul Walsh) at Seattle Rep and Williamstown, PALE FIRE by Colm Toibin at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, MERCHANT OF VENICE starring Seana McKenna at the Shakespeare Company, Calgary, and A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS at Arena Stage. Perloff has staged numerous plays at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and at theaters across Canada. As a playwright, Perloff’s work includes VIENNA, VIENNA, VIENNA (Finalist, Jewish Play Project 2023, workshopped at Sutdios of Key West 2025 and Steamboat Springs New Play Festival 2025), IF GOD WERE BLUE (Workshopped at the Colorado New lay Summit 2025, written on a Bogliasco Foundation Residency, workshopped at New York Stage and Film and at the Roundabout, Vivienne Benesch, dir.), EDGARDO OR WHITE FIRE (workshopped at Writers Theater 2024, WTF commission, 2022 Finalist, O’Neill Playwrights Conference), HIGHER (Winner, 2011 Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation Theater Visions Award, premiered at A.C.T., Mark Rucker, dir., developed at DNA Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Christopher Ashley, dir.), LUMINESCENCE DATING (Sloane Foundation Commission, Bay Area Theater Critics Best Original Script premiered at Ensemble Studio Theater, NYC, Will Pomerantz, dir., and then at Magic Theatre, SF, Mark Rucker, dir.), KINSHIP (premiered at the Theatre de Paris starring Isabelle Adjani, Domenique Born, dir., US Premiere at WTF starring Cynthia Nixon, Jo Bonney, dir.) and THE FIT (SF Playhouse 2019, Bill English, dir., developed at NYSF and WTF). Perloff is the author of BEAUTIFUL CHAOS: A LIFE IN THE THEATER (City Lights Press 2015) which was named San Francisco’s “One City One Read” selection for 2015. In 2007, Perloff was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, and has been awarded honorary degrees from University of San Francisco and A.C.T. She is working on a Director Commission for SRT of the OEDIPUS cycle with John Douglas Thompson, and has been commissioned by Digital Theatre+ to create a new digital rehearsal series. (Careyperloff.com)

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Scripts

KINSHIP

by Carey Perloff

Cast Size
3
Genre
drama

A middle-aged female journalist becomes obsessed with a young writer in her employ, and ends up crossing every line to keep him in her orbit. She ultimately discovers that he's the son of a close friend.

A middle-aged female journalist becomes obsessed with a young writer in her employ, and ends up crossing every line to keep him in her orbit. She ultimately discovers that he's the son of a close friend.

HIGHER

by Carey Perloff

Cast Size
5
Genre
drama

Two architects who also happen to be lovers compete to design a memorial in Israel. The process wreaks havoc on their relationship and that of the next generation... but although the competition ultimately combusts, the affair somehow survives.

Two architects who also happen to be lovers compete to design a memorial in Israel. The process wreaks havoc on their relationship and that of the next generation... but although the competition ultimately combusts, the affair somehow survives.

THE FIT

by Carey Perloff

Cast Size
5
Genre
comedy,
parody/spoof

In a toxic tech office (is there any other kind?!) in Silicon Valley, a venture capitalist is betting on lab-grown meat, while being perpetually outwitted by a new associate named Sakina who is on to him and his tricks. But it's the Filipina office cleaner who discovers what's going on behind the scenes and finally brings down the firm. An office comedy for our misogynistic pseudo-enlightened times!

In a toxic tech office (is there any other kind?!) in Silicon Valley, a venture capitalist is betting on lab-grown meat, while being perpetually outwitted by a new associate named Sakina who is on to him and his tricks. But it's the Filipina office cleaner who discovers what's going on behind the scenes and finally brings down the firm. An office comedy for our misogynistic pseudo-enlightened times!

VIENNA VIENNA VIENNA

by Carey Perloff

2
Cast Size
3
Genre
dark comedy,
drama

Three generations of Jewish women travel together to Vienna, where the grandmother (a refugee who fled Vienna in 1938) is set to receive an award. The women wrestle with their past, bemoan the present, eat a lot of cake and discover things about their future when they get inside the old family apartment and confront everything they've lost. Loosely inspired by THREE SISTERS, there is a fair amount of Chekhov...

Three generations of Jewish women travel together to Vienna, where the grandmother (a refugee who fled Vienna in 1938) is set to receive an award. The women wrestle with their past, bemoan the present, eat a lot of cake and discover things about their future when they get inside the old family apartment and confront everything they've lost. Loosely inspired by THREE SISTERS, there is a fair amount of Chekhov woven into VIENNA VIENNA VIENNA

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EDGARDO OR WHITE FIRE

by Carey Perloff

Cast Size
5
Genre
docudrama/historic,
drama,
movement/physical,
mystery/thriller,
period

Based on a true story, the play begins at the end of the life of Edgardo Mortara, an Italian Jew who had been abducted by the Pope in 1858 when he was 7 years old because he had supposedly been baptized. Raised at the Vatican, Mortara fled Italy and became a priest in Belgium, dying two months before the Nazis invaded Belgium in 1940. EDGARDO OR WHITE FIRE imagines what would have happened had Mortara been alive...

Based on a true story, the play begins at the end of the life of Edgardo Mortara, an Italian Jew who had been abducted by the Pope in 1858 when he was 7 years old because he had supposedly been baptized. Raised at the Vatican, Mortara fled Italy and became a priest in Belgium, dying two months before the Nazis invaded Belgium in 1940. EDGARDO OR WHITE FIRE imagines what would have happened had Mortara been alive at that moment of reckoning-- as the knock on the door comes and he flashes back across the trauma of his life, his past and present collide in the cataclysmic decision about whether to walk out the door and confront his accusers.

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IF GOD WERE BLUE

by Carey Perloff

1
Cast Size
6
Genre
comedy,
docudrama/historic,
drama,
mystery/thriller,
period

A wildly competitive group of painters vies for a big church commission in Renaissance Rome... while a woman poet named Beatrice ends up shaping the competition with her passionate advocacy for dangerous expression. This is a play about money, painting, censorship, the Church, and the endlessly messy process by which art gets made.

A wildly competitive group of painters vies for a big church commission in Renaissance Rome... while a woman poet named Beatrice ends up shaping the competition with her passionate advocacy for dangerous expression. This is a play about money, painting, censorship, the Church, and the endlessly messy process by which art gets made.