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YOU DESERVE TO BE HERE by Alex Lubischer

September 18, 2023 @ 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm

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Meet the “Tragedy Cohort”: Memo’s a veteran. Oona lost her sister. And Chase? Well, he must have tragedy somewhere. Only one can win their grad school’s top prize: the Otto Frank Award for Bravery in Drama. But as Oona, the newbie, advances through the school year, she can’t shake the feeling that something is off. Her writing is better, so why is she worse? And did that mural of Anne Frank just move? A horror comedy about artistic tragedy.

Join us on September 18th for a staged reading of You Deserve to Be Here.

Doors open at 7pm. Performance begins at 7:30pm. The Understudy Cafe will be open for refreshments.

CAST

Brandon Rivera as MEMO

Stephanie Shum as OONA

Mike Tepeli as CHASE

Cassidy Slaughter-Mason as GUSSIE

Michael Turrentine as DANIEL

Alex Lubischer is a queer Midwestern playwright and screenwriter from rural Nebraska.

His plays include You Deserve to Be Here (Goodman Playwrights Unit commission; Roundabout Theatre Laura Pels commission; Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2022 Longlist), Do Wasps Have Desires? (Milwaukee Repertory Theater), Bobbie Clearly (Roundabout Theatre Company, Steep Theatre, Jeff Award Winner: Outstanding New Play), Pivot (Yale School of Drama), Weird Kids (Haven Chicago), The Quonsets (Yale Cabaret, co-written with Majkin Holmquist), and Survey No. 5 (House of International Theatre, Copenhagen).

Lubischer was the 2017/18 Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at Roundabout Theatre Company. He has developed new work at Playwrights Horizons, Atlantic Theater Company, Page 73, The Orchard Project, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Victory Gardens Theater, First Floor Theater, and Actors Theatre of Louisville. He has been a semifinalist for the P73 Playwriting Fellowship and a three-time finalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference.

Current writing projects include Big Dave, an hour-long TV pilot co-conceived with Danilo Gambini, and Libero! — a half-hour comedy pilot about a gay men’s volleyball league.

He teaches playwriting at DePaul University in Chicago. MFA: Yale

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