c/o Val Day
William Morris
1325 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10019
212-903-1192
Agent Email: vday@wma.com, vfd@wma.com
Melanie is originally from
Duluth, Minnesota, where she developed a keen appreciation for the dramatic
extremes of the characters and climate around her. Her love of such a
careening environment has informed her work ever since. Her plays are driven
by people who are compelled, by personality and by place, to seek answers to
life’s most human and confusing questions. Her voice is idiosyncratically
comic, exuberantly theatrical, and emotionally real.
Melanie has received two McKnight Advancement Grants and two Jerome
Fellowships (The Playwrights’ Center), two Samuel Goldwyn Awards and the
Francesca Primus Prize. Her work has been seen at The Guthrie Theater,
Manhattan Theatre Club, Steppenwolf Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville,
Dallas Theater Center, London’s Royal Court Theatre and the O’Neill Theatre
Center. Commissions include The Guthrie Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Arena
Stage, and the Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis. She is a core
member of The Playwrights’ Center.
Quake
Comedy, 80 minutes
3W, 2-3M
Flexible, minimal set
Lucy is on a cross-country journey, looking for the love of her life.
Her travels take her across the American landscape through eccentric
encounters and relationships in which time and emotion pass in a warped
instant. When her quest becomes intertwined with that of a quirky female
serial killer (an astrophysicist gone bad), the landscape changes once
again as they cross state lines and fault lines, exploring the geography
of the human heart.
Hyde Park Theatre, Austin (2003);
Quantum Theatre, Pittsburgh (2002); Theatre Pangaea, Los Angeles (2001);
Actors Theatre of Louisville, Humana Festival (2001); Dallas Theater
Center (2000), Royal Court Theatre (workshop, 2000)
Cradle of Man
Comedy/Drama, 120 minutes
3W, 2M
Flexible, environmental
In this comedy with dramatic twists, two American couples meet near
Olduvai Gorge, the birthplace of mankind, and their comedic, romantic
and existential crises are exposed. Facades crack under the
sub-equatorial sun to reveal the anthropology of each relationship.
Lives come apart and bodies come together in this extraordinary place,
where the drama of what makes us human—and humane—plays out on a daily
basis. And where the survival of the fittest means only the strongest
couple survives.
Florida Stage (world premiere,
2006); Women’s Project and Productions (New York premiere, 2006); Eugene
O’Neill Theatre Conference (workshop production, 2005); Atlantic Theatre
(reading), Hartford Stage (reading, 2005). Winner of a McKnight
Advancement Grant (2004); a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist (2005);
and a Weissberger Award nominee (2005).
Blur
Comedy/drama, 80 minutes
3M, 3W
Set: flexible, minimal
This comedic drama follows young Dot DiPrima as she confronts the ways
in which her world and wisdom evolve after discovering she’s losing her
eyesight. Never self-pitying, only spirited and spiritual, Dot rebuilds
her life, creating a family of society’s outsiders whose true beauty
isn’t always visible to the human eye. The people and experiences she
draws to her take her on a comedic and compassionate ride to a place of
true vision.
Meadows Basement (2005); Hyde Park
Theatre (2002); Dallas Theater Center (2002); Manhattan Theatre Club
(2001); Public Theater (workshop, 1999); Denver Center for the Arts
(workshop, 1999). Winner of the Francesca Primus Prize (1999) and a
Samuel Goldwyn Award (1999).
Tallgrass Gothic
Drama, 80 minutes
2W, 4M
Flexible, minimal set
Set in the rural, stark and beautiful Americana of the Great Plains,
this spare drama is a loose adaptation of the sensual and brutal
Jacobean tragedy, The Changeling. At the center of this universe is
Laura, whose drive, passion and instincts are awakened when her love for
one man is threatened by her fear of another. The rules of this isolated
place make reason impossible, and Laura’s solution is found in a person
who provides the only, and most violent, resolution. It’s a subject
whose resonance has proven relevant and undeniable from the 17th century
to today’s headlines.
Actors Theatre of Louisville, Humana
Festival (2004); Portland Center Stage, Just Add Water Festival
(workshop, 2003); The Playwrights’ Center Playlabs (workshop, 1999)
Beautiful Again
Comedy, 80 minutes
3W, 1M
Flexible set
In this off-center domestic comedy, Jack Cuzzo is seeking transformation
through bigger and better hairdos and his enticing barber, Doris Bodoni.
Jack’s daughter, Lou, is seeing ghosts. And his wife, Katie, refuses to
see the shifting reality that’s taking shape in her own home. Jack
believes success is finally within his reach (as a condiment salesman),
but this potential throws his longstanding perception of himself—and of
those who love him—for a loop. This Italian-American family maneuvers
through their world with tremendous humor, oblivious passion, and a
slightly metaphysical curiosity as they try to redefine and reinforce
their identities.
Commonweal Theatre (2003); Arena
Stage (workshop, 2001); Bay Area Playwrights Festival (workshop, 1996).
Winner of the Samuel Goldywn Award (1996) and an Ohio Arts Council
Fellowship (1993).
The Sparrow Project
Drama, 80 minutes
2W, 1M
Flexible, minimal set
In this cryptic and spare drama, Sara and Sammie are twenty-something
twins leading a life of studied isolation, decadence and denial in a
one-room New York apartment. They’re sustained by a distant trust fund
and their own brand of odd ennui. Their relationship to each other,
simultaneously intense and innocent, forces them to bring in an outsider
to blast apart their embryonic connection.
Steppenwolf Theatre (2005); Hidden
Theatre/The Playwrights’ Center (2001).