Hello! I’m a New York-based writer making work that’s dark, comedic, and always a little tender. My characters are usually experiencing a personal transformation mediated by technology – Dads experiencing enlightenment in YouTube Kabbalah seminars, Interns falling in love with robot replicas of their ex-girlfriends, and Teens gaining political consciousness by writing Barack Obama fan fiction.

I'm interested in work that delights in the live-ness of theater, with actors doubling, re-creating memories onstage, and enacting plays-within-the-play. I write from a place of deep feeling and vulnerability, combining my most strongly felt emotions with my latest obsessions (historical tidbits, Wikipedia deep-dives, specific stagecraft or tech).

My plays include OBLAST (Residency, the cell theatre), Osher & the Infinite Curtain (Jewish Plays Project), OTP (Finalist, O’Neill NPC), [cowboy face] (Winner, Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for Comic Playwriting; Finalist, Leah Ryan Fund for Emerging Women Writers), and Craters (Production, Smith College; Reading, Corkscrew Theater Festival). Co-written musicals include Depresh Mode (Evolution Festival) and GUANOMANIA! (EST/Sloan commission).

I have developed work with The Tank, The Workshop Theater, Dixon Place, The Road Theatre Company, American Lore Theater, and the Hopkins Center for the Arts. I am a New Georges Affiliated Artist and a graduate of Boston University’s Playwriting MFA program.

Get in touch! shire.elise@gmail.com