Anne Washburn

c/o New Dramatists
424 West 44th Street
New York, NY 10036
(212) 757-6960
(212) 265-4738 fax
Email: newdramatists@newdramatists.org
 

• ORESTES
• THE INTERNATIONALIST
• APPARITION
• THE LADIES
• THE COMMUNIST DRACULA PAGEANT
• EVERYTHING NOT PERMITTED IS FORBIDDEN (AND VICE VERSA)
• THE INTERVENTION

_{anne washburn}

ORESTES

by Euripides
Loosely translated. Or, very closely adapted.

2M, 1W - plus Chorus of 4 to 10

Set in front of the Palace of Atreus, Orestes and his sister Elektra mourn the loss of their father Agamemnon, and face the consequences of the murder of their mother Clytemnestra. One of the very last of Euripides’ plays, Orestes is challenging, ironic, difficult, dashing, heartbreaking and highly entertaining; deeply contemporary in tone. This translation is in service of the play.

Readings at Red Bull Theater Company and New York Theater Workshop (2005).
 

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THE INTERNATIONALIST
Full Length. A Foreign Play. Comic, Dark

4M, 2W

Lowell, an American on a business trip, disembarks in a foreign country, and is met at the airport by a beautiful colleague. He thinks he’s fallen into one of those great American movies where you go places and people are exotic and there is romance and adventure and your sense of what is possible is expanded and you become a worldly and sophisticated person. Instead he discovers that he isn't in that kind of movie at all, he’s in a different one, one of those foreign ones with no clear hero or moral, a movie in which experience does not necessarily redeem you. And, most importantly, no subtitles.

Vineyard Theater (Fall, 2006), 13P (Premiere, 2004). The Practical Theatre Company, Sydney, Australia (2005). Workshopped by Kretakor Szinhaz in Budapest, Hungary (2004) and in Berlin, Germany (2004). Written and developed with the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab (2003).

“Fresh, provocative, riveting, and more entertaining and satisfying than many of the long-running hits...” –Backstage

“A superb new play! A crack cast! Wicked... deliciously deadpan!”—The New York Sun
 

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APPARITION
Brief Full Length. Dark, Comic.

5 charismatic actors of any sort whatsoever
An Uneasy Play of the Under-known

Modern ghost stories alternate with bouts of fake Latin. The story of Macbeth is told and retold; waiting to go on, the actors playing the witches hold a head count and discover they are one too many. Demons appear in suburban back yards and reappear elsewhere in another narrative. A couple, in an attic, can’t decide if they are alive or dead.

Apparition uses stories, fragmented voices, challenged language, stage superstitions, discontinuous narratives, and the guileless pleasure of the supernatural to create a world which is intelligible, but not fully comprehensible.

Splinter Group Productions (2005). Premiere at Chashama (2003). R & D Workshop at Soho Rep (2003).

“Her situations are ineluctably theatrical”—The Village Voice

“An extraordinarily creepy meditation on fear”–TimeOut New York
 

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THE LADIES
Full-length Comedy for the Most Part

6W

Writer Anne Washburn and director Anne Kauffman set out to explore the lives of infamous first ladies Elena Ceausescu, Imelda Marcos, Eva Peron, and Jiang Qing (a.k.a. Madame Mao). They met over gin and coffee to discuss their research and, to make up for inscrutable handwriting, left the tape recorder running. A play about women and power as told through gossip, torch songs, historical analysis, spectacle, and damning transcriptions.

Produced by Cherry Lane Theater, The Civilians, and Dixon Place (2004). Reading at New Works Now at The Public Theater (2003), Workshop at New York Theater Workshop (2003).

“Brashly entertaining...full of moments of quirky insight”—The New York Times
 

_{anne washburn}

THE COMMUNIST DRACULA PAGEANT
Full-length Surreal Satire

8M, 1W (many of these roles can be played by women)
Comic, Dark.

By Americans, for Americas, a play about the Romanian Revolution of 1989.

The Romanian revolution was a coup disguised as a revolution, a bloody piece of theater in which thousands of Romanians lost their lives. THE COMMUNIST DRACULA PAGEANT is a piece of theater about Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, about lies, about confusion, about images, and about freedom—the food which makes you hungrier. Features Vlad Tepes, the historical Dracula.

Workshopped at Soho Rep (2001).

_{anne washburn}

EVERYTHING NOT PERMITTED IS FORBIDDEN (AND VICE VERSA)
10 to 15 Minutes Each. Dark, Comic.

3M, 3W

A Frenchman, kidnapping permits, corporate murder pre-dawn, condoms, a miniature of the tour d’eiffel, the threat of a lawsuit, hospital gowns, and the Alien Perspective.

Includes: Everything Not Permitted Is Forbidden (and Vice Versa), The Intervention (Published in Ten Minute Plays for 6 Actors by Actors Theater of Louisville and Smith & Krause), Surgery Patients, In The Night Office, Pearl.