The Upstage Podcast Ann Marley

Alexandra Curth is a writer, dramaturg, and props and scenic artist based in Philadelphia. She has served as the scenic charge for EgoPo’s production of A Human Being Died That Night, UPenn’s Beckett Shorts and Villanova’s workshop production of The Gambler. She was the props designer for Tribe of Fools’ Fly Eagles Fly, and is currently working on UPenn’s upcoming production Of Government, and Villanova Theatre’s Importance of Being Earnest. Alexandra has worked in Chicago, Portland, and Lancaster as a teaching artist and theatre administrator.

Dead Doll

by Alexandra Curth

Welcome to the inside world of sex dolls. Buck has a garage filled with 100 dolls that he doesn’t know his daughter thinks are her toys, that his new girlfriend found them, too, or that they have consciousnesses of their own.

Stage Directions: Andrea Rumble-Moore

Lolly: Megan Slater

Mim: Kristin Curley

Lash: Elizabeth Meisenzahl

Que: Rebecca Whitten

Buck: CJ Miller

Lacey: Casey Berner

Rosemary: Shawneen Rowe

Uni: Adrena Williams

Amber Palmer is a playwright currently based out of Kalamazoo Michigan. Her work has been read at Activate Midwest: New Play Festival (Kalamazoo, MI), Flint Repertory Theatre New Works Festival, Pegasus Playlab (Orlando, FL), Bristol Valley Theater’s New Play Initiative (Naples, NY) and Theatre Kalamazoo New Play Festival. A monologue from her play “It’s a Small World (or The Robot Play)” is published in Best Men’s Monologues of 2019 (Smith and Kraus). Her play “The Speedy Gonzales Memorial Turtle Sanctuary” is a finalist for City Theatre's National Award for Short Playwriting (2019) and a regional finalist for the Gary Garrison 10 Minute Play Award (Region 3, 2018). She will graduate with her M.F.A. in Playwriting from Western Michigan University in Spring 2020. Her work can be seen this fall at Tipping Point Theatre's Sandbox Play Festival.

Three one act plays by Amber Palmer focusing on the Midwestern Queer perspective.

The Upstage chats with Shawneen Rowe, writer of CROOKED SHADOWS! Shawneen Rowe (AEA) has been performing and teaching theatre her whole life. She has recently added a Masters in Theatre from Villanova University to her BFA from New York University and many new tools to her toolbox including Dramaturgy, Playwriting and her new solo piece Crooked Shadows.

Selected credits: Leonato/Much Ado About Nothing; Barbara/August: Osage County; Bella/Lost in Yonkers; Lady Macbeth/Macbeth; Mrs. Allonby/A Woman of No Importance; Bunny/House of Blue Leaves; Nurse/Romeo and Juliet.

Stories are gifts we give to each other. We laugh together. We cry together. We heal together. Loved ones are kept alive for generations through the retelling of their tales. Shawneen struggles to step out of the shadows and into the light by revisiting the stories of her Grandma Rosa. Woman. Mother. Warrior. Curator of Family Herstory. Trigger warning: domestic violence.