selected plays
DIDO OF IDAHO. When a love affair goes brutally awry, a hard-drinking musicologist seeks asylum with her estranged evangelical mother.
“Powerful, pointed and poignant. Hypnotic to watch. A blistering and hysterical look at trauma, memory, and regret.”
—Broadway World
“Beth Henley infused with a few drops of Martin McDonagh’s deranged fierceness. Rosebrock has spun a comedy that freely intermingles laughter, frustration, tears and shock.”
—The Los Angeles Times
Purchase or license at Theatrical Rights Worldwide.
BLUE RIDGE. A North Carolina high-school teacher with a rage problem attends to everyone's recovery but her own.
“A devastating examination of how even smart, strong women can be deformed by a society that raises them to please—and how men who don’t fit in can be victims, too. Through various modes, from biting dark humor to emotional outbursts and quiet confessions, Rosebrock beautifully fleshes out all the characters, who come from diverse ethnic, economic and spiritual backgrounds.”
—Time Out New York
“Nimbly balances on a knife edge between weird, excitingly uncomfortable comedy and deep, hideous pain. BLUE RIDGE deals courageously in hard, sad human truths, the kind of metastasized stuff that might take a lifetime to heal.”
—New York Magazine
“Rosebrock’s play says something worth listening to. Her subject is healing, the queasy, fragile calm that follows the storm of addiction and abuse; she’s interested in the ways in which damaged people try—or don’t—to fix themselves by untangling the harm that they’ve done from the harm that has been done to them. Who is really at fault for our failures?”
—The New Yorker
Purchase or license at Theatrical Rights Worldwide.
World premiere at Atlantic Theater, archived at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts/Lincoln Center.
SINGLES IN AGRICULTURE. An army widow angles for romance with a taciturn fundamentalist at a Texas dating convention for farmers.
“Smart and sensitive, SINGLES IN AGRICULTURE is a triumph. A big-hearted play with a darkly comic core. You probably can’t remember the last erotic play you saw about contemporary farmers, so you know this show is fresh. 80 minutes of continuous action, [it’s] a sexy, startling, and ultimately uplifting piece of theater.”
—New York Theatre Review
“Wonderfully wrought. Just when you might think you have Abby Rosebrock’s SINGLES IN AGRICULTURE easily pegged, are you ever in for an amazing and welcome surprise—a number of them, actually. Life is filled with ups and downs, of course, and SINGLES IN AGRICULTURE demonstrates it with a grace and conviction that’s as admirable as it is rare.”
—Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Purchase or license at Theatrical Rights Worldwide.
LOWCOUNTRY. A disgraced high-school coach in the midst of a custody battle and a down-and-out actress with a hidden agenda embark on a risky first date in the rural south.
Forthcoming world premiere at Atlantic Theater.
WILMA. South Carolina, 1999. A distressed mother and her 12-year-old daughter are trapped with one another and their radioactive secrets during a flood.
Commissioned by Manhattan Theatre Club.
RUBY THE FREAK IN THE WOODS. A tech whiz is eaten alive by her industry, retreats to the woods and falls in love with a bear.
Commissioned by Ensemble Studio Theatre/Sloan Foundation, with development support from Clubbed Thumb.
NADIA ROYA. An unlikely domestic terrorist in federal custody seeks legal counsel from an old flame.
Commissioned by Bristol Riverside Theatre.
DIFFERENT ANIMALS. A Lutheran woman agrees to a threesome with her husband and his unbalanced coworker.
New York premiere at Cherry Lane Theatre.
one-acts
FIREWOOD. A do-gooding non-profiteer tries to buy firewood from an ex-convict she once taught in a workshop.
Commissioned and produced by Montana Rep and Echo Theater Los Angeles.
KENNY’S TAVERN. A teacher and her principal hash out the terms of their affair on the eve of a presidential election.
Commissioned and produced by Throughline Artists at 59e59.
FRAGOLINA. A 1940s Hollywood socialite realizes she’s hosting a fundraiser for a ballroom full of fascists.
Featured in The Green Plays by Gowanus Art + Production.
NO ONE IS HOME. Preparing for a TV appearance, FLDS sister wives open up about their sex lives to Oprah’s production assistants.
Developed and produced at Ensemble Studio Theatre, published in Best 10-Minute Plays of 2016 (Smith & Kraus).
[AND MORE]