SYNOPSIS

Goldilocks and Baby Bear match on a dating site years after the break in and find they connect not only through their shared trauma but on a deeper level.

PLAYWRIGHT’S BIO

MEGAN LOHNE Plays include JUST RIGHT (Soop to Nuts *winner*, Finalist, Queens Short Play Festival) SHARING SILENCE (EAT Fest 2022), THIS ODD GEOMETRY OF TIME (2021 Edinburgh Fringe) TOO SOLID FLESH (Semi-Finalist American Shakespeare Center), WORDS LIKE FRESH SKIN (Residency, Governors Island, 2019 production at Adelphi University), NINE DAYS (Royal Court Young Writers Programme), GOOD COMPANION (Oberon 24/7), REINVENTING THE WHEEL (Brooklyn Generator, Theatre Alberta, Salem Theatre, The Best Short Plays, 2013), LIGHT PATTERNS OF STRANGERS (Nylon Fusion, Live Girls) WILLOUGHBY (Heideman Finalist, American Globe 15-Minute Play Festival) among others. She has been commissioned to write screenplays, most recently for Crowne Media. She is an adjunct faculty member at Adelphi University and co-owner of Lohne/Graham Management, a Talent Management company representing actors on Broadway, TV & Film. She has a B.F.A.,Acting, Acting, Adelphi University, M.F.A.,Playwriting, New School For Drama. www.megan-lohne.com

A BIT ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

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

I’ve been writing plays since I was in high school but I never truly realized they were plays. I recall creating a long reflective conversation between three friends at The Museum of Natural History dramatically entranced by footage of the sea floor and didn’t realize quite what I was scribbling in my notebook. It wasn’t until my freshman year of college while in the BFA Acting program at Adelphi University that my teacher and mentor Maggie Lally urged me to write a play that ended up being chosen that same year for the American College Theatre Festival Region II titled Standing in Rain and once I saw that piece on its feet, felt the lurch in my throat of humans watching, the rush of connection in a space, I knew creating three-dimensional lives on a stage was something I would be doing for a very long time. In recent years, I’ve moved into my challenging form era by experimenting with narrative-based immersive work and tech-forward narrative.

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

I’ve been teaching college students playwriting and in one class I decided to give them one of my favorite exercises from grad school, adapt a fairy tale, be creative, be modern, be specific, and blow open the ideas that are already there. I remember walking away from that class thinking, man, this is fun-what would I do if I had to do this exercise again, now, at this point in my life, a little bit older, a little bit wiser, a little bit more broken. Just Right was born.

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

Silly. Grounded. Earnest. Subversive. Innovative.

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

I often get inspired by exhibits, conversations, long walks while listening to Thomas Newman soundtracks, nature, uneven pavement, defined lines in skin, my cat, memories, the way we handle time, teaching, unique use of language, and the strange moments of poetry that exist in the small moments of each day. Some major influences for me have been Sylvia Plath, Alexander McQueen, Mark Rothko, Kazuo Ishiguro, Diane Arbus, Dorothy Parker, Steve Martin, Neil Gaiman, The Counting Crows, Mark Doty, and Edna St. Vincent Millay who I went and wrote an immersive play about.

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

That I got deeply into competitive skeeball for a while and even went to Nationals in Baltimore.

6. What are some of your favorite plays?

My gateway play was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? However, my favorite play is Wilder’s Skin of Our Teeth. My guilty pleasure play is Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Small Mouth Sounds by Bess Wohl changed the way I thought a play could live silently, Sea Wall made a huge space feel small, intimate, and heartbreaking. Dana H and Fat Ham most recently have stayed with me closely due to their craft and innovation. Some major influences for me have been Williams, Paul Rudnick, Churchill, Sarah Kane, Suzan Lori-Parks, and the list goes on and on and on.

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

I’m currently the founder and Artistic Director of Pure Verb, a writer’s collective that has been creating new works for the past few years. We are going to be producing a short play festival this coming Fall. Equally, I am currently adapting Proust’s In Search of Lost Time for Adelphi University where I teach. One of my missions as a writer has long been to bring universality and visibility to stories by creating a modern context for classic texts and figures with a feminist lens. I will be working on that piece with my director, Shoshanah Tarkow, with whom I share an immersive theatre company Like Fresh Skin, utilizing emerging technologies to create text-based, immersive theatrical experiences which champion untold feminist stories. Learn more about us here: https://www.likefreshskin.org/about.