Still Life

(A Staged Reading)
by Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich
directed by Christopher James Webb
featuring: Lee Mikeska Gardner, Greg Maraio, and Samantha Richert

Lydia’s daughter hasn’t returned home since a series of subway bombings in her unnamed city. Now she’s joined at the hip with her annoying son-in-law, Donald, as they wait for news. To make matters worse, a mysterious millennial photographer won’t stop following her. When photographs of Lydia become part of a groundbreaking exhibit on what society has lost to terrorism, all Lydia can think about is the punishing anticipation of the ringing phone.

Plays  by Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich include Romeo Chang, The Next Big Thing, Sister Sister, The Woman With Orange Hands, The Body Clean, Still Life, Boy Girl Boy Girl, Double Vision, Absolute Flight: A Reality Show With Wings, Big City, Hitting the Wall, Three a.m., Rox-N Miss Thang, June In White, Cleavage, and 4EVER. Her work has been produced or developed in New York at Playwrights Horizons, Second Stage, Rattlestick, Roundabout, Women’s Project, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New Georges, Six Figures, AracaWorks, The New York International Fringe Festival (extended off-Broadway in the Fringe NYC Encore Series), and The Sumer Play Festival; Regionally, at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Trinity Rep, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Hangar Theatre, Victory Gardens Theatre, Boston Playwrights Theatre, LA’s Elephant Theatre, Long Beach Playhouse, and Chicago’s Collaboraction Theatre. Published by Smith and Kraus, she won a Hangar Theatre Playwriting Residence, Capital Stage’s Playwrights Revolution, Bloomington Playwrights Project, the University of Cincinnati’s Festival of New Works. Additionally, she was a finalist or semi-finalist for the Woodward/Newman Drama Award, a Heideman Award, Princess Grace Fellowship, the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild Julie Harris Playwright Award, Phoenix Theatre’s New Play Festival, Reverie Productions’ Next Generation Playwriting Award, EST’s Marathon, and at the O’Neill, Sundance, Labyrinth Theatre Summer Intensive, HotCity, and Bay-Area Playwrights Festival.  She taught playwriting at Miami of Ohio, University of Massachusetts, and Brandeis University, where she was artist-in-residence. She is an affiliated artist at New Georges, an Associate Playwright at Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, and a member of Athena Theatre Company’s Playwrights’ group..