Agent of Change
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Addie
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SYNOPSIS
The customer is always right. Except when they’re not, which is most of the time. It starts out being about breakfast sausage, but pretty soon it’s about changing the world.
PLAYWRIGHT’S BIO
Addie is a geographically polyamorous, multidisciplinary writer and theatre maker currently living in Detroit, MI. She holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and was an original company member of Ragged Wing Ensemble in Oakland, CA, with whom she wrote and produced new works between 2010-2020. Addie’s plays have been seen in NYC at the Tank, the Exponential Festival, and Theatrelab. She has been in residence at the New Harmony Project (2024) and the index freiraum artist residency in Zurich, Switzerland (2022). Awards include the Rona Jaffe Playwriting Fellowship, the Anna Sosenko Assist Trust, and a 2024 developmental commission from the Hearth Theater. Recurring themes in Addie’s work include chosen family, belonging, activist culture and the mechanisms of social change. Addie is a student of the small, the slow and the inefficient. She aims to make work that embodies a resistance to values of speed and scale, creating irretrievable, intimate, and deeply local experiences. www.addieulrey.com
A BIT ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
When did you start writing plays? If you had a moment where you realized you wanted to write, what was it?
I wrote my first little play while studying at the National Theater Institute, under the tutelage of Donna Di Novelli. It was the first time I pulled an all-nighter. Pulling an all-nighter is unusually glamorous at NTI because then you can watch the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean. When I moved to the Bay Area, I became a company member with Ragged Wing Ensemble and eventually started writing for the company. Ragged Wing was a fantastic challenge because I was always writing to the shifting needs of the ensemble and the company’s season. I wrote lyrics, wrote youth shows, wrote site-specific shows, wrote adaptations, wrote for puppets, co-wrote, directed my own work, and developed deep working relationships over the course of years. I eventually decided to pursue an MFA in playwriting and moved to Brooklyn for grad school in 2020.
How did you come to write your OOB play? Was there a particular inspiration behind its creation? How has it developed?
I wrote my OOB play while I was in the SF/Bay Area Playground writer’s group. I’ve worked many restaurant jobs, but this play’s characters belong quite directly to a brunch spot in Berkeley where I worked for years. It was featured twice in Playground showcases and has since been performed twice more in educational settings.
What are five words that describe who you are as a playwright?
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- experimental
- collaborative
- surrealist
- political
- responsive
What/who are some of the major influences on your writing?
- questions about purpose, wage work and how we use our time
- my friends who work in activism, organizing and direct-service professions
- the inherent dissonance of making low-tech art in a high-tech time
- Dmitry Krymov
- The Missoula Oblongata
- Anna Shneiderman and Amy Sass
- my Brooklyn College cohort
What’s one fact someone would never guess about you?
I recently started running speed dating events… that are maybe sort of secretly immersive theater experiences?
What are some of your favorite plays?
Oof, that’s hard. A few long-time loves include Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns, a post-electric play, Aleshea Harris’ Is God Is, Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, Young Jean Lee’s Untitled Feminist Play, and Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon. In terms of ensemble-based work, I love the work of the Rude Mechs (based in Austin) and the Hinterlands here in Detroit.
Any new projects you’re working on or shameless plugs?
My newest play, The Only Season, was commissioned and developed with the Hearth Theater last year. I’m continuing development on it this spring with the Workshop Theater. I am also working on the second in a play-by-mail series, the first of which (How to Fill It) I self-produced and distributed last year. Keep an eye out for the second one this fall!
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