Erika Phoebus (she/her) is an NYC-based playwright whose work has been developed and/or produced at the Great Plains Theatre Conference, New Ohio Theatre, Sam French OOB Festival, Primary Stages ESPA, So-Fi Festival, Torn Page, Theatre 4the People, Actors Theatre of NY, and the McKittrick Hotel (home of Sleep No More). She's received residencies through Fresh Ground Pepper’s BRB retreat and Theatre 4the People @theBarn, was a winner of the Samuel French OOB festival, and was a finalist for the Soho Rep Writer Director Lab (2022-23). Her play Shark Week is published by Concord Theatricals. She is also a trained intimacy professional and continues to expand her education and understanding of consent-based practices at Intimacy Directors & Coordinators (IDC) and Theatrical Intimacy Education (TIE). It is a core mission of hers to develop and support consent-based practices in new work development and playwright-centered spaces.
She's taught playwriting at Bowie High School (Austin, TX), Westerly High School (Westerly, RI), Arizona Actors Academy (Phoenix, AZ), and offers playwriting workshops, script consultations, and dramaturgical support online and in NYC. William Esper Meisner Conservatory alum. B.F.A. Creative Writing from Brooklyn College. A proud member of the Dramatist Guild. www.erikaphoebus.com IG: @epheobs
Plays
It's 1563...ish, and Anny Chapman wants to get pregnant. No wait, Anny Chapman is SUPPOSED to want to get pregnant, or else she could be tried as a witch. Problem is, Anny Chapman has never… had… an orgasm? And everyone of the time knows a husband and wife must both do such a thing in order to conceive. As secret fertility treatments from the local alewife, Besse, births an unexpected love between them, the world outside threatens to knock down their door. Meanwhile, the Virgin Mary has arrived on the scene, and she wants her autonomy back… A dark comedy, a love story, a ritual, a spell; Witch Play searches for all the places our pleasure may go, after we’ve chosen to unleash it.
Nadia and Ty are best friends. And live in an abandoned fairground, under a decaying rollercoaster. Natalie and Ash are confused. Are they really best friends, or maybe something more? When Natalie starts having flashbacks about a time before 'the grounds,' she starts to piece together the tattered truth of her buried trauma. In the tradition of Peter Pan, KISS IT, MAKE IT BETTER asks one question: can growing up really mean forgetting?
1943. Amsterdam. The resistance. Two young girls return to their old stomping grounds, a neighborhood jazz bar now catering to the secretly jazz loving Nazi SS. The younger of the sisters, Nessa, is the lookout, the older there to seduce a Nazi officer to the woods to meet his maker. When Nessa finds herself the object of the officer’s affection, she must quickly learn how to turn herself from prey to predator in a body she is just starting to understand.
Kyri and Alex are synced. Like... literally. They always get their periods at the same time. But Kyri’s got a secret, and it’s going to take a post-storm ocean, forgotten tampons, and a little help from a drag queen shark, to finally be able to say what’s right for her body and for her life.
Winner: Samuel French Short Play Festival
Published by Concord Theatricals
Juliet's trapped inside the play. Rosaline's trapped outside the play. It *is* Romeo's play GODDAMMIT!!!... until the play starts looping in on itself.