Plays

That it all makes perfect
70 minutes — 5 actors [2F, 1M, 2 any gender], 4-5 musicians [any gender]

The Lady Onstage
50 minutes — 1 actor [1F]

A Bid to Save the World
80 minutes — Variable cast size (8-11)

Tvá Kamila
80 minutes — 4 actors [2M, 2F]

Down a Little Dirt Road
75 minutes — 4 actors [2M, 2F]

This is Not a Torture or an Engine
75 minutes — 7 actors [3F, 4M]

Libretti

Precita Park | Music: John Glover
20 minutes — two sopranos, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, chamber orchestra

Two Friends | Music: Matt Boehler
16 minutes — children’s chorus, SATB choir, chamber orchestra

It is enough | Music: Matt Boehler
4 minutes — soprano, cello

Other words

100 stories for 100 days, and a few more

About My Work

I am a writer, mostly a playwright. I have written in a variety of forms, from play scripts, to opera libretti, to dream-like stories for a rock musician looking for a new kind of stage banter. My work has long been rooted in a search for theatrical forms where words and sound play equal roles in storytelling. My writing is musical in nature, and I often involve composers as co-creators.

I think of my work as a series of experiments, with many of those experiments inspired by the structures of music: What happens if I turn this string quartet into a story? What happens if I add a soundscape of voices? What happens if actors’ words turn into plucked notes, and plucked notes turn into words?

At the outset of a new project, I typically have two things in mind: the structural experiment I want to play with, and a philosophical question I’m eager to explore. Questions like: What would happen if memories were physical objects that we could lose? What would it be like to live in a world without death? What if we chose our parents before being born?

My work is the result of putting those two types of questions together, and seeing what happens. However abstract that might sound, in performance the pieces come to life for the audience as classic, heartfelt, and concrete stories that follow a kind of Aristotelian arc in how they unfold.

About Me

Erin Bregman’s theatrical work has been produced by Just Theater, Rorschach Theater, 6NewPlays, Playground, Actor’s Theater of Santa Cruz, and Bay One Acts. Her work has been developed across the country, including readings and workshops with The Brick, Inkwell, Profile Theater, American Conservatory Theater, The Lark, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Impact Theater, and PlayGround. She has been a multi-year finalist for the Princess Grace Awards and the Global Age Project, and has been a resident artist at Zoo Labs, the Playwrights Foundation, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, and PlayGround.