Marianna Staroselsky

“Cry Baby Meets Audrey Hepburn” is a post-soviet poetic memoir about fragmented cultural identity, emigration and the search for Pushkin's romantic hero.

Levana isn’t sure at what point she got tired of being married to herself, but at some point the honeymoon period wore off. “How I Married Myself and Other Misadventures,” is a surrealist adventure farce exploring the practice of self-marriage and being a person generally.

Quick. Your identity is in peril. You look in the mirror and you're like, who's that? Marianna Staroselsky (ABD) has come up with a solution: "Identity Quickies," a series of one act plays/bootcamp for your soul in existential crisis.

“1-800-WHY-DOES-LIFE-SUCK” tells the story of two imperfect strangers connected by the ultimate existential crisis hotline we all wish we could dial when life just SUCKS. Marianna Staroselsky wrote, directed, and produced this one act play as part of Manhattan Repertory Theatre's Summer One Act competition.

Performance + ethnographic lecture at ICQI, the International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry. A look at identity and performance in modern life through Marianna Staroselsky's dissertation research on performance of the self through various theatrical practices such as improvisation, neo-futurism, and clown play.

Seven 10-15 minute one act plays written by Marianna Staroselsky and performed by BYOT Productions in 2013-2015, non-equity, free 24 hour theatre festivals in homes and other spaces in the Chicago theatre community.

"Bittersweet Card Trick" - a surrealist musical one-act play written by Marianna Staroselsky in 24 hours and performed in May 2015 by BYOT productions at Side Project Theatre in Chicago.

"1-800-Why-Does-Life-Suck" a short comedic dark comedy chosen from hundreds of submissions to be produced as part of Quirky Productions' One Act Festival in downtown NYC at 440 Studios on March 7th & 8th, 2015.

As a playwright in Writer's Room, the new play development workshop at The New Colony, I've been working on a brand new full-length play through a series of workshops involving readings and improvisation.

Marianna started writing "Cry Baby Meets Audrey Hepburn" as part of the Stockyards' Play for Keeps Series and it was performed as a staged reading at the Public House Theatre in Chicago on November 24, 2014.

"I'll love you as long as I'm real." The full-length play-in-development, "Psychic Spelunking," is a about a clown named Pissy and Sappy with multiple personalities who decides to spelunk into his brain or the American Midwest.

"Who's prison is it?" - A one act written in 24 hours and chosen for the best of BYOT series at Gorilla Tango Theatre.