Meg Miroshnik's plays include The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, The Droll {A Stage-Play about the END of Theatre}, The Tall Girls, Old Actress, and an adaptation of the libretto for Shostakovich’s Moscow, Cheryomushki. Her work has been developed or produced by the La Jolla Playhouse, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Center Theatre Group, Pacific Playwrights Festival at South Coast Rep, the McCarter Theatre Center, Alliance Theatre, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab, Lark New Play Development Center, Chicago Opera Theater, the Moscow Playwright and Director Center, Washington Ensemble Theatre, Yale Cabaret, Circle X, The Wilma Theater, Perishable Theatre, WordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory, One Coast Collaboration, and published in Best American Short Plays, 2008-2009. The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls was a finalist for the 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn prize and winner of the 2011-2012 Alliance/Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Award. Recent productions: The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls at Yale Rep (directed by Rachel Chavkin, 2014), The Tall Girls at Alliance Theatre (directed by Susan V. Booth, 2014), and The Droll at Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep (directed by Mia Rovegno, 2014). She has commissions for new plays from South Coast Rep, Steppenwolf, and Yale Rep. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama where she studied with Paula Vogel. Meg hails from Minneapolis and currently lives in Los Angeles, where she is a member of the Playwrights Union and The Kilroys.
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The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls
BABA YAGA
Baba Yaga did not want to be disturbed,
so she found a hut far away from the tourist center.
Anything you have ever seen in a picture—
Red Square? Or the Kremlin?—
is located far away from the realm of Baba Yaga
in the land of the Truly Dead.
Baba Yaga did not want to be surprised,
so she set that hut atop tall chicken legs
that run in wild circles if a stranger ever approaches.
The hut also lets out blood-curdling screams,
so that no one may ever sneak up on Baba Yaga,
especially little girls (those sneaky little bitches).
Baba Yaga did not want to be bothered,
so she surrounded the hut with a fence made of bones.
Each bone post is topped by a skull with eye sockets that glow like coals in the dark.
Oh, did Baba Yaga mention? There is one empty bone post.
In case a pretty little skull should happen her way.
To do her bidding and keep her company, Baba Yaga has enchanted three flying hands.
But do not ask about them.
In fact, do not ask about anything.
For every time Baba Yaga is asked a question…
She ages one year!
This is one of the reasons she despises little girls.
They always ask questions:
Why do you look so old, Baba Yaga?
Why do you have such bony legs, Baba Yaga?
Why are you so mean, do you hate me,
Why do you hate me, Baba Yaga?
And just like that, little girl, in five seconds, Baba Yaga has aged five years.
The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls (mirfairy)Premiered in2012- Print Books
- Powell's
- Barnes & Noble
- Alibris
- Abe Books
- Samuel French
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The Tall Girls
HAUNT JOHNNY
What's your name?
HAUNT JOHNNY inspects her hand,
holding it out, stroking her fingers, pulling her
thumb and pinky apart.
JEAN closes her eyes.
JEAN
Uh.HAUNT JOHNNY
Or you don’t like to say.JEAN
Jean.HAUNT JOHNNY
Jean, you have hard hands.JEAN opens her eyes.
JEAN
They didn’t used to be.He looks closer.
HAUNT JOHNNY
Hands get harder with the times.He measures his own outspread hand against hers.
JEAN
What’s your name?
HAUNT JOHNNY
Johnny.But they call me Haunt Johnny ever since I was small over there.
JEAN
Haunt Johnny?He nods.
Because you are like to be a ghost.
I will blink.
And you will never have been here.
The Tall Girls (mirtallg)Premiered in2014- Print Books
- Samuel French
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The Droll
Dusk in a muddy, rat-infested country Inn-yard.
NIM DULLYN knocks on a door. His wrist bleeds.
No response.
He knocks louder.
NIM
Oy!
Ope the Door.
More knocking.
NIM
Oy!
I got ear of him.
From Within:
MARGARET
Who’s there?
NIM
A Friend.
The Door is opened a sliver.
MARGARET
What is a Friend?
NIM
Nim Dullyn who looks for the Player Killingworth.
The Door is shut up.
MARGARET
O, fuck off.
Our REVELS now are ended.
No Players no more.
NIM
But night last!
I heard Killingworth play Caliban in the Droll.
VOICE
Ho, that’s a good laugh.
NIM
It WAS.
I laughed.
I laughed til I cried.
And my Year Long Curse of Silence of Grieff
was killed.
The Door is opened.
MARGARET KILLINGWORTH looks NIM over.
He hides his bleeding wrist.
MARGARET
You ain’t laughed in a year?
The Droll (mirdroll)Premiered in2014
“The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls . . . is to be admired and appreciated for its energy, eclectic imaginative drive, and powerful message to and for young women. This is anything but a tame, graceful one hour and forty minute journey. Instead, it jolts one's sensibilities.” —Talkin’ Broadway
“Like the fairytales it incorporates, [The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls is] ambiguous but haunting, a surreal romp that leaves you more than a bit shaken.” — Santa Barbara Independent
“A tour-de-force by the playwright . . . Tall Girls has a more realistic edge, with a bittersweet (emphasis on the bitter) second act that upsets all the outward tropes of the ‘stand up and cheer’ genre.” —Arts Atlanta
Selected Works
- Print Books
- Powell's
- Barnes & Noble
- Alibris
- Abe Books
- E-Books
- Kobo
- Print Books
- Powell's
- Barnes & Noble
- Alibris
- Abe Books
- Samuel French
- Print Books
- Samuel French