Megan Tripaldi (She/Her/They/Them) is an actor, bi-coastally produced playwright, and educator living and working in Portland, ME. They graduated from the University of Southern Maine with a BA in Theatre in 2012 and from Goddard College with a Masters Degree in Playwriting in 2023. They have had plays produced in Maine, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Washington, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, and Canada. They love performing with and writing for their company, Polyphonic Theatre Ensemble (now a federal non-profit!) and creating new and exciting pieces for the PortFringe Theatre Festival every year. Megan’s “day job” is at STAGES Youth Theater, which has always held a special place in their heart.
Plays
FULL-LENGTH.
Medusa is dead; Stheno and Euryale, her two sisters, remain. As a century passes they are left behind to process their grief over her demise and their grief over being trapped in the shadows by the gods and to figure out who they are without her.
FULL-LENGTH.
Em and Web are two people who, in spite of loving each other, have quite a bit of baggage and face obstacles in their romantic relationship. The play demonstrates how real relationships not only take work, but can also prove amazing in the simplest of moments.
FULL-LENGTH.
At their brother's funeral a brother and sister try and come to grips with his passing by using sex, alcohol, and the funeral home staff. But soon they realize that they can't hide from their grief for long.
ONE ACT.
Three Furies are sick of the Greek Patriarchy, so they decide to revamp the story of Aphrodite for a more progressive audience. Interweaving through the story they tell, the Furies become the characters that Aphrodite meets as well as Aphrodite herself, proving time and time again that there is both Love and War in all of us.
ONE-ACT.
An adaptation of the myth of Phaedra focusing on mental health and memory. How do we remember tragedy? How do we live with it? How do we survive it?
ONE-ACT.
Four Angels have been kicked out of heaven. With the assistance of a recording left by their formers they need to choose whether to navigate the complexities of being human or oblivion.
ONE-ACT.
A frustrated knitter laments the decision to summon the forces of darkness in order to finish all the presents she has to knit for the holiday season.
ONE-ACT, SOLO
1941, London. The Blitz.
The sounds fill the night like uproarious thunder, striking the earth with their lightning as if from the fist of a vengeful god. It is the sound of horror; it is the music of war.
The streets are filled with heaps of crumbled rock and ash; precious possessions charred and broken. Bodies; so many bodies. There is no water, no food, no clean clothes; only the ones he left behind can carry her through the streets to a safe haven. In the chaos she finds a moment, a place where she can hide. And it is here that she meets her angel. It is here that the world will end.
ONE-ACT.
Four students have to rehearse the big fight scene from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", but soon what starts as a simple reading turns into a real fight, knives and all.
ONE ACT.
Three children have to learn to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and avoid the terrors of a country turned against itself. But the turmoil of their lives gets turned up to eleven when the people that they're running from find their hiding spot.
ONE-ACT, TYA.
A young mouse has to step up and become the hero when the stars are stolen from above her home, bringing the Forest of Orion into total darkness.
ONE-ACT, TYA.
A modern retelling of "The Three Little Pigs" that focuses on an unlikely hero.
Bernard is a descendant of a long line of "Big Bad Wolfs". His brother, Zack is all for keeping the legacy, (or so he says), but Bernard finds himself drawn to more artistic endeavors. When he meets the three siblings who run The 3LP Theatre Company he realizes that he doesn't need to run away from his problems, he just needs to act his way out of them.
ONE-ACT, TYA.
An epic reimagining of the classic tale: The Frog Prince.
Hans (Hank) is a prince on a mission to find out what kind of prince he actually is. Is he a fighting prince? A prince who goes on adventures? A romantic prince? Who knows!
While on a mission to save his kingdom from starvation Hank meets a mysterious stranger who leads him into the swampy forest and turns him into a frog. Thus begins the epic adventure of Hank's dreams full of animal sidekicks, faeries, long-lost siblings, and sticky high-fives.
ONE-ACT.
Two orphaned sisters try to ride out a tornado in their basement, and are forced to confront both their own relationship and their individual relationships to their grief.
ONE-ACT.
A masked hero and a bystander get trapped in an office building while his mysterious arch nemesis is wreaking havoc outside. As more time goes by we see his insecurities come out and the bystander's plans unfold.
TEN-MINUTE.
While on a field trip to a science museum, two educators are trapped in a hallway while an animatronic dinosaur rages out of control in the next room.
TEN-MINUTE.
Two roommates struggle to find out what do do about the mysterious "thing" on their floor.
TEN-MINUTE.
A man wakes up to find that he is dead and that means quite a bit of paperwork.
Successes
My full-length play, Gorgons is a semi-finalist in the Epiphanies New Works Festival 2022!
My ten-minute play, Guided is being published as a Pitkin Review web exclusive at Goddard College!
My ten-minute play, The Afterlife Transit Office has been selected to be performed at the ISU New Play Festival at Idaho State University!
My ten-minute play, Living Bones has a virtual production through the Equity Library Theater of New York Winter 2022 Virtual Play Festival!
My poem-opera, The Ballad of Charybdis, is being published in the In-Between Literary Journal!