14 Jul F30 Countdown – Miranda Rose Hall

We have twenty-one days until theatre Christmas the OOB Festival begins. Until then, let’s meet another one of our finalists, Miranda Rose Hall!

Miranda Rose Hall is a playwright from Baltimore, MD. Her plays have been produced at Yale School of Drama, Yale Cabaret, Yale Summer Cabaret, DC Fringe Festival and Longacre Lea for the DC Women’s Voices Theater Festival. Miranda was the 2013-2014 Hot Desk Playwright in Residence at Baltimore’s Center Stage, where she developed several new plays and helped launch the program Wright Right Now. She is currently Resident Playwright and ensemble member with LUBDUB. Theatre Company, a New York-based physical theater company. She graduated from Georgetown University and is an MFA candidate at the Yale School of Drama.

When did you start writing plays? If you had a moment where you realized you wanted to write, what was it?

I started writing plays when I was 19 years old. I was primarily a poet back then, and I had made some friends who were all in a playwriting class together. They would flop together on couches, eat snacks, and read each others’ pages aloud. That seemed 100% more exciting than writing sad poems in my dorm room. So I wrote a scene I could read aloud with my friends. Then I kept going. 

How did you come to write your OOB play? Was there a particular inspiration behind its creation? How has it developed?

It came from a prompt my teacher gave me to write a short play about the birds and the bees. It needed to include an object the character cherishes, and something else. I can’t remember what else. But out came this play.  

What are 5 words that describe who you are as a playwright?

Time to eat some dinner. 

What/who are some of the major influences on your writing?

Sarah Ruhl, Amy Herzog, Jackie Sibblies-Drury, Dan Lefranc. 

What’s one fact someone would never guess about you?

I used to coach the five-year-olds on my summer swim team.  

What are some of your favorite plays?

Melancholy Play, Belleville, An Octoroon, the Brother/Sister plays. 

Any new projects you’re working on or shameless plugs?

I have no shameless plugs to share at this time.

Her play What Happened at the Dolphin Show will be performed on August 11th at 8:30pm. It’s about Heidi, a distraught pubescent lesbian, who wrestles with her greatest fear: looking at women at the Friday night dolphin show.