Godbird
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SYNOPSIS
Deb’s up early and can’t sleep. During off-leash hours in a neighborhood park, she meets Hugo and his pitbull. Also lurking in the shrub: a Birdman, with a bird-like view of things. A play about being seen.
PLAYWRIGHT’S BIO
Nurit Chinn is a playwright from London currently based in Brooklyn. Her plays have been developed at the Alliance Theatre, BAM, the Center for New Jewish Culture, the Royal Court Theatre and others. She is a 2024/25 New Jewish Culture Fellow, a 2025 Alliance/Kendeda finalist and the Playwright-in-Residence at Centro Primo Levi, where she is also under commission. Nurit is the Co-Director of Exponential Festival 2026. MFA: Brooklyn College, Playwriting.
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 started writing plays as an undergrad – I was performing in an experimental theatre troupe and writing poetry (sorry). I had a feeling playwriting would be my favorite thing, but I was scared of it. I wrote a terrible play about a bunch of vengeful girls who were really bored all the time. It was the most fun I’d ever had writing something.
How did you come to write your OOB play? Was there a particular inspiration behind its creation? How has it developed?
Yes! I wrote a longer version of this play for my playwriting MFA showcase, Brooklyn College’s Weasel Festival. Sibyl Kempson, the program co-head, asked us to respond to William Blake’s A Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I was writing the play during a particularly hellish August, where I spent days sweltering under the sun (I’m an Ashkenazi Jew). I was inspired by Blake’s commitment to contradiction, and a particular passage about the senses of a bird: “How do you know but every bird / that cuts the airy way / Is an immense world of delight, / closed by your senses five?”
What are five words that describe who you are as a playwright?
Visceral, perverse, psychological, uncertain, embarrassed.
What/who are some of the major influences on your writing?
Accidental poetics, weird power dynamics, emotional proxies, heady Jewish stuff, questions of belonging and alienation. I love the work of my mentors – Sibyl Kempson, Elana Greenfield, Haruna Lee, Dennis Allen II, Deb Margolin.
What’s one fact someone would never guess about you?
I can lick my elbow.
What are some of your favorite plays?
Map of Virtue by Erin Courtney; Suicide Forest by Haruna Lee; John by Annie Baker; Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. by Alice Birch; Blasted by Sarah Kane; Hamlet.
Any new projects you’re working on or shameless plugs?
Currently revising my play BOAZ, a loose adaptation of a short story by Nicole Krauss, for readings in May and July supported by the Center for New Jewish Culture. Also must plug Exponential Festival, which I’m co-directing. Come through in January 2026!
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