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Rebecca Nichloson (She/Her) is a Black, queer playwright, theatre maker, creative writer, singer/songwriter and leader in the public sector. She is the author of 50+ plays and creative works, including Submerged (An Opera); Dear America (libretto & vocals and vocal arrangement; Minnesota Opera); A Very Special Minnesota Garden (Minnesota Opera); Hue and Cry; Hello, I’m Eve (winner of the Jane Chambers Award); Mara, Queen of the World; The Wild, Bold Enlightenment of Satine; Cooking With Keisha; and Jill, Jack & the Martian Lady (a play she created for a children’s educational workshop). Her fiction and performance pieces include Children of the First Hummingbird, Zar-Baby, and Conjuring Transcendence, among others. She has been published in About Journal: Geographies of Justice, the Star Tribune, and anthologies, among others. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting from Columbia University and an M.A. in English Literature. She was also the recipient of a Commission from the Cedar Cultural Center for which she created Multicolored Musings: Jewels of Love, Loss, & Triumph (a three-part collection of songs exploring her African and African American heritage and passion for genre eclectic music) and received a 2020 honorable mention from the McKnight Foundation (Spoken Word). She is the recipient of a Loft Literary Center Mentorship Series Fellowship, a Sesame Street Writer’s Room Fellowship, the Liberace Award, the Howard Stein Fellowship, The Matthew’s Fellowship, an America-in-Play Fellowship, and two Many Voices Fellowship from the Minneapolis Playwrights Center (2008-2009). Rebecca’s work has been presented at the Walker Art Center, Signature Theatre Company (Columbia New Plays Now), Harlem Classical Theatre (Playwrights Playground), the Loft Literary Center, Pangea World Theatre, Red Eye Theatre, Pillsbury House Theatre and others. She is the founder/artistic director of Cleveland-Harris Theatre Company (a theatre, performance, and public imagination project based in Minneapolis). Learn more at www.RebeccaNichloson.com.
Plays
Play Synopsis: Hello, I’m Eve is a full-length play in episodic form (winner of the Jane Chamber's Award) that is unabashedly feminist. Through humor and tragedy it tells the stories of Black women from various segments of society, whose narratives are interwoven with that of the biblical Eve in a subversive context. Each scene tells a different story with a woman protagonist at its forefront -- challenging patriarchy, sexism, and queer-phobia. Throughout the piece, Eve’s unique journey unfolds as she struggles to decide whether to stay in the Garden of Eden with her husband Adam, or give into her thirst for knowledge. The cast is comprised of women and delves into the complexities of womanhood— past, present, and future. Script available upon request.
SETTING
The play is a plethora of stories experienced by women in different times and locations. However, the reigning story is that of Eve. The Garden of Eden should be represented visually in every scene, whether overtly or understated.
TIME
The past, present and future.
STAGE DESIGN
Minimalism and representation. Scene titles and projections encouraged.
Genre: Absurdism, Experimental, Radical Feminist
Length: 90 minutes to two hours
Play Synopsis: Ellise is a queer upper middle-class cooking show host struggling to maintain relationships with her domineering mother, her perfect sister Vivian, and her doll-obsessed husband Rupert — all while having an affair with Raine, her mother’s oncologist. Cooking with Ellise is a theatrical, comedic, and heart-warming exploration of the intimate bonds between mothers, daughters, sisters and lovers – the heart finding its path in the abstract world of life, death, and the beyond. Script available upon request.
Place
Minneapolis. Multiple locations, but primarily a kitchen, a television studio, and a therapist’s office.
Time
The present. The past. The afterlife.
Genre: comedy, drama
Length: 90 minutes to two hours
Age Appropriateness: 13+
Play Synopsis: When an ethereal light greets Mara, an enslaved Black woman on a plantation in 1832 Alabama, she learns the role she will play in a prophecy about a Warlock, a hummingbird, and the bones of West Africans who jumped from slave ships during the Middle Passage. A powerful story of personal and spiritual transformation with roots in Black past, present, and future. The actors in the play are Black, and they play all the characters in the piece. In doing so, the performers and audience experience a narrative born of America’s dark past in a way that center Black healing. Script available upon request.
Place
Mainly a cabin, a plantation, and the woods in 1832 Alabama. A bedroom in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Minimalism and representation encouraged.
Time
1832. 2023. 2043.
Genre: Drama
Length: 90 minutes to two hours
Age Appropriateness: 13+
Successes
AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS
- Jane Chambers Playwriting Award (for Hello, I’m Eve)
- Loft Literary Center Mentorship Series Fellowship
- 2020 honorable mention from the McKnight Foundation (Spoken Word)
- Sesame Street Writer’s Room Fellowship (2017)
- Liberace Award, the Howard Stein Fellowship, The Matthew’s Fellowship (Columbia University)
- America-in-Play Fellowship
- Many Voices Fellowship from the Minneapolis Playwrights Center (2008-2009)
STUDIED WITH
- Lynn Nottage (mentor 2013-2014)--winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize For Drama for Ruined. Charles Mee. Jr.—playwright and recipient of the gold medal for lifetime achievement in drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Frank Pugliese— former showrunner for House of Cards (Netflix). Kelly Stuart— playwright and author of The Interpreter of Horror at the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival, The Square Root of Terrible (a children's musical) at the Mark Taper Forum, and Mayhem and Homewrecker at the Evidence Room. Anne Bogart— former Artistic Director of SITI Company and recipient of a Doris Duke Artist Grant, a USA Fellowship, a Rockefeller Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Anthony Weigh—playwright and former Associate Artist at the Donmar Warehouse under commission to the National Theatre. Gregory Mosher—TONY award-winning director and producer in New York City and London. Former Columbia University School of the Arts Professor Arnold Aronson— theatre historian and author of Exhibition on the Stage: Reflections on the 2007 Prague Quadrennial (2008); Looking into the Abyss: Essays on Scenography (2005) and American Avant-Garde Theatre: A History (2001).