Lisa Grunberger
Poet, Playwright, Professor.
Lisa Grunberger
Poet, Playwright, Professor.
Short Theatre Pieces and Monologues
(Scripts available for performance)
Full play (developed from the original one-act version) commissioned by Dirty Laundry, an Israeli play production company, for performances in 2020 – 2021.
One-act play directed by Hamutal Posklinsky, premiered at Manhattan Repertory Theatre, November 2018.
Performance video available for private viewing.
National Association of American Jewish Theatre Conference. Washington, D.C. December 2014.
Squeaky Bicycle Productions
“Real Guts and Virtual Glory”
February 12, 2021
Directed by: Illana Stein
Starring: Cynthia Mace, Catherine Rogata
Selected as a winner of 'Me & My Masks' Monologue Competition and Fest, organized and hosted by filmmaker, playwright, composer, producer RolandTec.
Performed (by the author) at Some1Speaking, October 5, 2020
The Next Right Note: a COVID Chronicle by Ally-Cat Stern
A 12-year old girl, whose mom is African-American and whose Jewish dad is dying from COVID-19, apostrophizes: thinking and questioning aloud about her family, her mom and grandmother, her dad, about what is happening and why, about her bewilderment and fear and grief. To conclude, she reads aloud a letter from her dad.
The Rabbi’s Confession
An orthodox rabbi, arrested for spying on naked women through a peephole in his synagogue’s mikveh, explains to a female detective why he did it. It is not for the reason
she thinks.
1966: Birth Tale
This monologue is one of three forms for this story; the other two are poem and short story. An adopted daughter imagines her parents the day she came into the world and into their life, which becomes a realization of the life her parents gave her. Performed at the Westbeth Women’s Theatre Collective, West Village, NYC, 2006. Directed by Karen Ludwig.
The Prayer Collector
A Spalding Grey meets Lily Tomlin type monologue in which a woman collects prayers placed in the cracks of the Western Wall in Jerusalem and brings to life each of the people whose prayers they are.
“I'm the prayer collector. Well, the unofficial one. I read them all. Late at night, I stick my hand into the cracks between the ancient stones and I collect all the prayers. In this bucket here.
I see my job as a form of sanitation and God's relief work. God must get a headache with so many requests. It's good that people should express themselves and have some place to bring their sorrows. But sometimes I feel it's just too much. And I'm only the middle man.”
Performed at Makor/92nd St. YMCA, June 2003. Directed by Barbara Rubin.
Barren Mother Time and The Waiting Room
Originally thought of as two scenes in an early version of the play Almost Pregnant, but that turned into an independent piece in which the Prayer Collector oracularly returns––in a surrealistically conceived infertility clinic waiting room, and in which a group of women, there to give blood early in the morning, confide to each other.