As a multi-disciplinary playwright, I like to change the relationships between action, interiority, character, dream, movement, and music. My plays always feature female protagonists. They have been produced by New Georges, West Bank Cafe, BACA Downtown, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and Living Room Theatre.
Above image: Amor & Psyche, Written and directed by Randolyn Zinn
AMOR & PSYCHE
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY rANDOLYN zINN
Nominated for the 2024 Sally & Robert Sugarman Award
for the World Premiere of a New Play
Living Room Theatre, 2024
Remarkably, Psyche is the only mortal woman in the Western mythic canon to take the hero’s path, appearing in Apuleius’s classic work Metamorphosis in the late second century A. D.. I made minor changes to the tale’s major events and characters, then found equivalencies for references second century audiences would have understood that we might not. Because Psyche’s quest transcends time, I've played with the English language to mash-up classical with contemporary usage. As the story emphasizes female independence, I’ve also highlighted personal transformation in all partners as necessities to achieve true and balanced partnerships in love – a difficult task to accomplish for sure, but so worth the journey.
Video by Emma Baiada and Angus McCullough; Music by Nicolas Snyder
With: Xingrong Chen, Matt Dallal, Valeri Mudek, Elizah Hill, Susanna MacLeod, Nicole Starrett, Afton Page Welch, Allen McCullough
“You won’t see anything like it anywhere else! … Randolyn Zinn has created a modern world for the Greek gods to play in.”
“Do you want a one of a kind theater experience that you will talk about for generations to come? Amor and Psyche will surely fill the bill as one of the more delightful entries in your play going history... The evening flashes by and this epic journey ends in love. I was never less than entertained. I am more impressed by the ambition in the undertaking. It’s like nothing I’ve seen the company do before, and I applaud Zinn and McCullough’s inspired, romantic fancy.”
ORIGINAL
PLAYS
Her Name Means Memory
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY rANDOLYN zINN
Living Room Theatre, 2023
Nominated for the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award
Nominated for the 2023 Sally and Robert Sugarman Award for the World Premiere of a New Play, Berkshire Theater Critics Association
I’ve always been interested in myth and the enduring legacy of Greek tragedy as it employs a unified theatrical vision that aligns with my own hybrid aesthetic. I began writing Her Name Means Memory in the fall of 2022, compelled by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, recent femicides in Iran, the sexual enslavement of Yezidi women, and the worldwide immigrant crisis. Then in January 2023, I explored the script during a two-week developmental workshop at Bennington College. Produced in North Bennington, Vermont in the summer of 2023, the audience felt how the play addressed the grief and anxiety the world has been experiencing, like a ceremony of catharsis to serve our present moment with beauty, gravitas and delicacy.
“Go see this play, and reconnect to everything that is right and good about the theater.”
“Mesmerizing and emotionally satisfying.”
Lucy’s Wedding
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY rANDOLYN zINN
Living Room Theatre, 2019
Nominated for 2019 Outstanding Original Play by the Berkshire Theatre Critics Association
Three generations of Midwestern women from one family, ranging in age from 23 to 80, including three sisters, their mother and grandmother — plus the groom and his brother — are trying to break away from the family matrix without sacrificing fealty while searching for their authentic selves within or without religion, struggling with loss, trying to lose the wrong partners for the right reasons and agonizing over whether to make art or children.
“Zinn has crafted an excellent comedy... about people who don’t really merge until they suddenly do.”
“In Homeric terms, Zinn has given birth to a story that would make Penelope — one of the original stalwart women in world literature — very, very proud.”
Frank, Frank
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY rANDOLYN zINN
New Georges
Part memoir, part peep show, part Butoh with a big band kick, Frank, Frank is grounded in movement to deconstruct the archetypes of femininity that informed the American middle class suburban culture of the 1950s that subsequently exploded into the gender awareness of the ensuing decades.
In the American Midwest of the early 1950’s, a young girl is struggling to capture her father’s attention. Frank is a traveling salesman, living a little heavy on the bottle. The fantasy is wearing thin, the suitcase is getting heavy and the trip up the front walk is becoming an unbearable confrontation with his responsibilities.
Frankie, his daughter, finds herself adrift in a tumultuous America, coming of age just as an entire culture is acknowledging that it’s outgrown the old value system. While she’s always imagined herself a player in Dad’s world, the older she gets, the clearer her vision of Dad becomes until she’s standing on one side of a doorway and he’s on the other.
Portrait of Frida
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY rANDOLYN zINN
Williamstown Theatre Festival
My approach in making Portrait of Frida centers on how Kahlo used her body to epitomize her struggles in her paintings. A skeleton figure of Death dances alongside the character of Frida, her constant companion. I used English and Spanish text, music, and a dream section that explores her sorrow at not being able to have a child, the piece ends with Frida’s paintings projected onto my own body.
“The able actress-writer Randolyn Zinn is magnificent in Portrait of Frida. She makes us understand that we are in the presence of a woman of genius.”
Original Plays
Amor & Psyche / Living Room Theatre
Her Name Means Memory / Living Room Theatre
Nominated for the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award
Nominated for the 2023 Sally and Robert Sugarman Award for the World Premiere of a New Play, Berkshire Theater Critics Association
Lucy’s Wedding / Living Room Theatre
Nominated Outstanding New Play, Berkshire Theatre Critics Association
The Anniversary Party / Reading with Austin Pendleton
iThought / Berkshires/Capital Region 24Hr Theatre Project
Lucy’s Wedding / Manhattan Theatre Club
Frank, Frank / New Georges
The Fourth Woman (Adam Guettel, music) / BACA Downtown
Dream and Variations (Adam Guettel, music) / BACA Downtown
Get It Right / Williamstown Theatre Festival
Portrait of Frida / Williamstown Theatre Festival