Our Plays and Productions

Inspired by the playwright’s ancestors, the only Jews in the 1889 Oklahoma Land Run, the play wrestles with themes of immigration, assimilation, generational trauma, and the transcendent power of mother-daughter love. In Oklahoma Samovar, five generations put down roots and dig graves, embodying their own Jewish variations on the turbulent and mythologized American Dream. 

Sold-out World Premiere at La MaMa, December 5-21, 2025

Awards: Winner, 10th Annual National Jewish Playwriting Contest, NYSCA Individual Artist Theatre Commissioning Award,  Midwest Jewish Playwriting Contest, Ashland New Play Festival finalist, ThinkTank Playwrights Festival finalist, O’Neill semifinalist, Premiere Stages New Play Festival semifinalist

Development: Festival of New Jewish Plays, NYC, Jewish Theatre of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, Ensemble Studio Theatre Playwrights Unit, NYC, 78th Street Theatre Lab, NYC, Cubiculo, NYC.

Pictured: Sarah Chalfie, Joyce Cohen, Nadia Diamond, Alex J. Gould, Seren Kaiser, Sahar Lev-Shomer

"Oklahoma Samovar explores the little-known history of Jews in the Midwest in a deeply human way...allowing them moments of moral failing while portraying them with empathy."

– The Forward

“Cohen’s dramaturgy is filled with humor, wit, and her interest in complexity and diversity within the Jewish immigrant community.” – Theatre Reviews Kurahashi

“A tale of immigration and the American dream, with magic realism and puppetry folded in.” – The New York Times

“I loved this work deeply; it reminded everyone around me, a sudden community of people sitting in the dark engrossed in Cohen’s tale, of the power of theater to restore our connection to our living history.” 

– Deb Margolin (playwright)

“The genius of Cohen's play...[She] crosses boundaries between lives in the past and people who are living and breathing today.” – Jewish Boston Magazine

“Poignant and insightful…Oklahoma Samovar tells a heartfelt story that so many people will identify with and relate to.” – Winnie Holzman (Wicked book writer, screenwriter)

“In its ambition and scope spanning five generations, it is a welcome addition to epic plays like Leopoldstadt, Prayers for a French Republic, and The Lehman Trilogy…She skillfully mixes humor and pathos, looking at the challenges of immigration, assimilation and generational trauma, but also love.” 

– Joan Lipkin (playwright and producer)

Photos by Marina Levitskaya-Khaldey

"Whoever first produces Alice Eve Cohen’s remarkable play Hotel Limbo will be doing both themselves and their community a favor. I’ve read many plays that examine homelessness, but never one that looked at it from all angles, and did so with humor as well as compassion, and rooted its story in actual recent events. This play kept me thinking long after I turned the script’s final page." - Mead Hunter, (former )Portland Center Stage Director of Literary Programs

Photos: staged reading, NY Theatre Workshop, directed by Juliette Carrillo: Nathan Hinton, Antonio Edwards Suarez, Becky London, Molly Carden, Cheryl Davis

Development: Houses on the Moon, Garden reading 2025; New York Theatre Workshop Mondays @ 3 reading series 2023; UC Irvine workshop 2023; Axis Theatre reading, 2023; The Orchard Project artist fellow, 2022; Finalist: McKnight National Residency and Commission, The Civilians R&D Group. Semifinalist: Premiere Stages New Play Festival 2023

Winner, Jane Chambers Playwriting Award

Official selection, Women Playwrights International Conference 2026 in Iloilo City, Philippines

Pictured: Aubrey Lace Taylor, Robert Emmet Lunney, Wendy McKenna, Molly Carden, Dexter McKinney. Workshop at The Tank, directed by Marya Mazor

"An extraordinary theatrical tour de force that combines, myth, politics, personal experience and female rage in a funny, powerful and moving way. I love this play, and I marvel at the way it embraces enormous complexity and how she so effortlessly combines the personal and the political."  – Kira Obelensky, playwright

“You skillfully and with hilarious wit juxtapose the Thomas / Kavanaugh hearings with the myth of Philomela and the journey of your protagonist.” – Jane Chambers Playwriting Award judging committee

Winner, Jane Chambers Playwriting Award 2019; Semifinalist, O’Neill 2020. Featured selection 2022 Women Playwrights International Conference Montréal. Finalist, Ashland New Plays Festival 2022. Semifinalist, Berkeley Rep Ground Floor Lab 2022. Workshop and staged reading, The Tank NYC 2024. Staged Reading Axial Theatre, Pleasantville, NY

PIctured: David Adkins and Eva Kaminsky, at Berkshire Theatre Center, directed by Illana Stein

Photo credit: Caelan Cavenaugh

Winner, On One Foot! New Play Contest

Berkshire Theatre Group 2024, directed by Illana Stein. Presented at Duluth Playhouse Women in Theatre New Play Festival 2025; Excerpt published in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2022 (Smith & Kraus)

Photos: Michael Orth and Maria Pizzarello, 78th St Theatre Lab, directed by Elizabeth Margid.  Photo credit: Evan Cohen 

Purple Crayon Players, Northwest University, directed by Ana Lawit

Winner, PLAYground Festival of Fresh Works

"It was probably the funniest show I have ever seen!" – Daniel Moors, age 7 

Purple Crayon Players, 2024; Semifinalist, Jewish Playwriting Award 2025. Performances at Northwestern University; 78th St Theatre Lab, NYC; the Kitchen Theatre, Ithaca, 2008 (2008 version, cast of 2 actors with puppets. 2024 version, cast of 5 actors)

A full-length play adapted from Cohen's memoir. 

Photos: Filmed stated reading, Jewish Repertory Theatre of Western NY, directed by Josie DiVincenzo, with Jennifer Stafford and Tina Rausa. Performance at Bema Productions in Victoria Canada, Directed by Zelda Dean ,with Christine Upright and Erin Sterling. 

Produced by Bema Productions, Victoria BC, 2023; Staged reading, Interplay Jewish Theatre, Cleveland 2023; Filmed staged reading, Jewish Repertory Theatre of Western NY, 2021. Excerpt in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2024 (Smith & Kraus)

Performed by Neo-Political Cowgirls, East Hampton, NY, 2023; Primary Stages ESPA, NYC

Photos: performance at the Kitchen Theatre, directed by Rachel Lampert. with Kristin Sad and Cara Bachman.

Directed by Rachel Lampert at the Kitchen Theatre, Ithaca, 2017; Staged readings, University of Michigan, 2019; Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival 2020; The Actors Center, 2022. 

Photos: The Kitchen Theatre production, performed by Alice Eve Cohen, directed by Rachel Lampert, designed by Tyler M. Perry.

"So vivid, so immediate, so complex, so full of compassion, so brutally honest... This is what theater can be." – Tompkins Weekly, Ithaca, NY

"Profound…a darkly comedic reframing of iconic feminist questions around choice, parenting, and women's health… Challenging, beautiful, and defiantly funny." – Jane Chambers Playwriting Award judging committee. 

"Alice Eve Cohen is an exquisite story teller with an amazing story to tell. I urge everyone who was ever born to come and see this story of a family and a birth and all the possible and impossible decisions that accompany it. - Artistic Director, Kitchen Theatre Company

PRODUCTION HISTORY: The Kitchen Theatre Company, Ithaca NY 2013, directed by Rachel Lampert; All for One Festival, Cherry Lane Theatre, 2012, directed by Elizabeth Margid; 14th St Y, NYC 2025, Vivid Stage, Summit, NJ 2024. Interplay Jewish Theatre, Cleveland, 2022; Jewish Repertory Theatre of Western NY, 2020; Six Points Theatre, St Paul, 2018; Ko Festival, Amherst, MA, 2014

AWARDS: O’Neill finalist; 5 Broadway World Award nominations. Jane Chambers Award Honorable Mention; Artie Award (Buffalo, NY). Excerpts published in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2025 (Smith & Kraus), The Best Men’s Stage Monologues 2022 and The Best Women’s Monologues 2020 (Applause Books) 

“A little show, but with such a big, embracing heart." - The Guardian, London

"A mesmeric solo performance... she has brilliantly transformed the story of her life in the Upper West Side building into a play, in which she plays a dozen characters in over 41 scenes." – The Scotsman, Edinburgh

"In this remarkable one-woman tour de force... chance encounters in half-lit hallways and in the lobby add layer after layer to a chiaroscuro of intersecting connections that emerge from the shadows, flicker briefly, then just as quickly melt away to be replaced by another." – Metro, Edinburgh

Photo: performance at the Kitchen Theatre, directed by Rachel Lampert, designed by Tyler M. Perry

Directed by Elizabeth Margid and by Rachel Lampert; Produced by: Kitchen Theatre (Ithaca), 2015; New Georges, 1996; Here Arts Center 1995; Edinburgh Fringe 2004; 78th Street Theatre Lab, LA Women’s Theatre Festival; U Michigan; Tampa Bay Performing Arts Ctr; New York Theatre Workshop: full-cast version (Just Add Water Festival), Adirondack Theatre Festival. Excerpts in She Persisted anthology (Applause Books.) 

Photo: performance by Paula Pizzi at Cubiculo Theatre, directed by Alma Becker

Directed by Emily Morse at Dance Theatre Workshop in NYC; Here Arts Center, Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival; Directed by Alma Becker at Cubiculo Theatre. Directed by Liz Diamond at St. Peter’s Church, NYC.

THE PARROT, 1993, written and performed by Alice Eve Cohen, directed by Mark Nelson; Galway Festival, Ireland; Kitchen Theatre; 78th St Theatre Lab; NYS tour.    

Photographer: Ricki Rosen

Written and performed by Alice Eve Cohen, directed by Juliette Carrillo at New York Theatre Workshop, The Women's Project, and Barnard College.

Photo: Alice Eve Cohen at New York Theatre Workshop – O Solo Mio Festival, directed by Juliette Carrillo 

Photo: performance by Alice Eve Cohen at Cubiculo Theatre.    Photo credit: Ricki Rosen

Cubiculo Theatre, NYC

5 short plays by Alice Eve Cohen, directed by Alma Becker: THE PLAY THAT KNOWS WHAT YOU WANT, JESSICA’S CERVIX, THE GYMNAST, ELEGY, and GOLIATH ON 74TH STREET VS THE WOMAN WHO LOVED VEGETABLES, Cubiculo Theatre, NY

Production History: Directed by Alma Becker; Bank Street Theatre, NYC, Westbeth Theatre Center, NYC, Jerusalem’s Theatre Bama, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, FL

Photo credit: Carol Rossegg

Photos: performed by Ishmael Houston-Jones, Peter Cunneen, Ann Hammel, and Alice Eve Cohen, directed by Kathy Mendeloff, at Theatre for the New City.   Photo credit: Andy Cohen

"A uniquely universal work. Transcends barriers of sex and culture to touch a bit of the essence in human awakening." – Syracuse Herald Journal

"Total emotional involvement of the audience as the story evolves." City Arts Newspaper, Albuquerque

"A virtual textbook of theatrical inventiveness and economy." – East Village Eye, NYC

"A model performance in theatrical imagination: simple and fantastic." – Klasskampen, Oslo, Norway

"Richly communicative." – The New York Post.

"Magical... Astonishing... Unusually powerful." – Other Stages, NYC

Directed by Katherine Mendeloff & Alice Eve Cohen. Performed at Theatre for the New City; Franklin Furnace; KiMo Theatre; Albuquerque' Experimental Theater Festival, Oslo, Norway; University of Maryland Baltimore County

Photos: Mia Dillon and Reed Birney, directed by David Saint, at Westbeth Theatre Center

Directed by David Saint; Westbeth Theatre Center, starring Reed Birney and Mia Dillon.  

Photo credit: Ricki Rosen

"Her ability to relate to and entertain audiences of all ages and levels of sophistication was remarkable." Director of Parks Programs, Artpark

Commissioned by and premiered at Artpark, Lewiston, NY. Goddard Riverside Community Center, NYC. National touring. 

Photos: Performance by Greta Turkin, Cordis Heard, and Michael Hirsch, directed by Karen Ludwig

Photo credit: Ricki Rosen

Directed by Karen Ludwig, Theatre for the New City, NYC; The Public Theatre: invited performance for Joe Papp and guests at The Public Theatre. Ms. Foundation Award to tour NY State theatres, schools, and prisons, 1984

"It was the best play I  ever seen in my whole life. I bet it was even harder to do than our math papers. In fact, it was so funny, I hit my head on the floor."  John, 3rd grade.

Kitchen Theatre; Discovery Theatre, Smithsonian Institution; Clark Theatre at Lincoln Center. National and international touring.

Photo credit: Janet Charles

Written and performed by Alice Eve Cohen at Theatre for the New City, NYC

Photo credit: Ricki Rosen

Premiere at Fashion Moda: written, directed, and choreographed by Anne Hammel; national touring performances.

Premiere at PS1, NYC; created by Anne Hammel

Created by Anne Hammel, Marymount Manhattan College

By Ann Hammel: Prince Street Loft, NYC, choreography by Anne Hammel, composer Alice Eve Cohen

Written and performed by Ann Hammel and Alice Eve Cohen, directed by Steven Reisner at 3rd Avenue Performance Loft, NYC

Photo credit: Ricki Rosen

Created and performed by Ann Hammel and Alice Eve Cohen; Naropa Institute, Boulder Colorado. The 3rd Avenue Loft, The Performing Garage

Pictured: "Part 4: The Giant and Puppet Show" performed by Anne Hammel and Alice Eve Cohen

Photo credit: Ricki Rosen

Created and performed by Ann Hammel and Alice Eve Cohen; Naropa Institute, Boulder Colorado. The 3rd Avenue Loft, The Performing Garage