I'm the most frequently produced female playwright in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is my infrequently updated website.
Plays by Megan Cohen. Script info, production history, and excerpts.
Recent Thoughts & Upcoming Events. What I'm thinking about & doing. Ok, it's a blog.
Megan Cohen's Bio. Who I am, and which Megan Cohen this site belongs to. There are a fair number of us around.
my email is: meganATmegancohenDOTCOM
Friends, Allies, Associations
Cutting Ball Theater, where I am the literary manager, which means I read-n-talk-about scripts, run talkbacks-n-audience-discussions, produce the "hidden classics" reading series and "risk is this..." new works festival, and generally hang out digging the scene.
American Conservatory Theater, my once and future artistic home in San Francisco, CA. To discover the shocking truth about my time there, read my dramaturgy post on the A.C.T. blog.
Stanford University, where yes, yes, I went to school, and now because of it everyone who asks me where I went to school thinks I'm a snob.
The San Francisco outpost of the flying-monkey blockbuster musical "Wicked," where I assisted in the Company Management office.
The Discovery Channel's Planet Green, where I worked as a blogger about green living and sustainability.
The Blue Cat Screenplay Competition, where I was a reader for the 2008 contest, judging screenplays and giving detailed feedback to authors.
My profile page on Yelp.com, the thunderously hip website that employed me to create content for their New York launch. Several of my pieces, including personal favorites on The Strand and Murray's Cheese Shop, have been featured in the site's "review of the day"spot. You can browse my 100+ reviews, scan my 20+ compliments from readers, and surf my 50+ lists...
Canio's Books, where I am a lifetime shopper, and a onetime employee. This small independent bookstore in Sag Harbor, NY specializes in new & used poetry, photography, memoir, literary fiction, and has some awesome rare editions.
Blue Bottle Coffee, the reason I get out of bed in the morning, when and if I ever do.
Having Jessica Holt, the Artistic Director of the epic BOA X Festival, choose and direct my half-hour script "A Three Little Dumplings Adventure" as her piece, her personal project within the festival that she helms, was so good it almost hurt. Like, literally. About a week before the close of the show, I started having anxiety dreams due to my (not unfounded) fears that I would never have a production where my work was done this well ever again. It was, friends joked with me, "a perfect storm," wild and precise, upsetting and fun; several told me they'd never seen anything quite like it.
Here's a quick snapshot of what a weekend can look like:
* The beginning of auditions at Cutting Ball, where I'll be watching a total of over 220 monologues from San Francisco actors hoping to be part of our productions, workshops, and readings, which include, among other things: a bay area premiere from Will Eno, a rollicking comedy by Plautus, a documentary about one of the most rapidly changing areas in San Francisco, a parable of talking bugs (by the Capek brothers in 1920s Czechoslovakia), and a trip-hop musical.
This week, I'm heading into what will be the final steps for me on a project where I'm dramaturg. It's a new play called "Failure 2 Communicate," opening October 29th, by my friends at Performers Under Stress. My job of helping the playwright Val Fachman to edit and shape the final drafts of her script has made for an intense month of work, and a technically acrobatic process-- zooming in to look at the mechanics of a single line, then zooming out to see how the changes in one scene ripple across the narrative of the whole show. We cut about a third of the original script-- it's been sort of like doing a living autopsy-- "If we take away the left leg, will the story survive?"
I hit up the SFTF at Yerba Buena this weekend, and that festival is kind of a tough row to hoe. I was happy with how my piece went (SF Theater Pub put on my short "The Best Things in Life Are Money," along with a ten minute play by Ashley Cowan, as a way to promote the upcoming Pint Sized Plays). I now get to cross "have a play performed in a room on the second floor of a shopping mall, near the deserted video arcade" off my bucket list, so that's an obvious win for me... BUT...
Had so much fun seeing this explosion of new work from the Bay Area writing community. Congrats to No Nude Men Productions Artistic Director Stuart Bousel for dreaming up and putting together this colossal (over 100 artists!) festival, and thanks to Evelyn Jean Pine for putting me in her piece "Hephaestus." Being onstage on the festival's closing night, looking out at its final packed house, was like taking an express train to triumph city. Look out for Olympians 2011!!!
"It's Good To Know..."
At Woman's Will Playfest, June 3 & 4, 2011, at the Phoenix Theater, SF CA. 15 minutes. {A drama with jokes.}
"Megan Cohen's James Joyce's Ulysses"
At San Francisco Theater Pub, June 20 2011. Cafe Royale, 800 Post st, SF CA. Free admission, 8pm.
{a breathless half-hour adaptation of the 265,000-word modernist epic that is quite widely accepted to be the most important English-language novel of the last hundred years}
"How To Love"
At Performers Under Stress.
Oct-Nov 2011, exact dates TBA. 90 minutes.
{A lively romp inspired by Plato's "Symposium." Kidnapping, philosophy, a food fight, sonnets, and more, in a genuine attempt to really answer the titular question.}
"Joe 'Orion' Ryan"
At the San Francisco Olympians Festival, Oct 7, 2011.
Staged Reading, Oct 7 2012
90 minutes, 2 female, 3 male
{a san francisco cop hunts his criminal prey in the city streets. inspired by "Dirty Harry," greek myth, and the stars above.}
"Untitled Megan Cohen Project"
Commissioned by Threshold.
Slated for production in Summer 2012.
90 minutes.
{a three-act fantasia built around my one-act play "A Three Little Dumplings Adventure," and custom-tailored for the cast who performed "Adventure" in the 2011 Bay One Acts festival.}
Oh golly, I'm on Facebook, like you couldn't guess.
