Gina Stevensen
Plays & Other Writing
Caterpillar Soup
One-act (full length in development)
1 performer
Gina learns what pride means during a backyard queer jello wrestling competition, then visits their parents for some hard conversations. An autobiographical solo performance about brave communication, finding your way to your body, and imaginal discs.
Developed in part during a residency with the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts.
Presented during the 2025 Snap First Person Arts Festival.
Snap First Person Arts Festival (The Flynn)
Breakfalls
Full length
5 performers
Victor Toman, Chrissy Rose (Vermont Stage, photo Lindsay Raymondjack)
At a struggling karate dojo in a small U.S. city, five adults meet each week to learn not only how to punch and kick but how to navigate the world. In charge is the stoic and powerful Martha, who struggles to keep the dojo, and her pupils, afloat. Romance blooms between Summer, a prickly but sensitive brown belt, and Charlie, a timid new student searching for her strength. Ideologies clash at the arrival of the blundering and accidentally toxic Joe, who pulls Sean – a dude reckoning with his capacity for violence – into a perpetual masculinity contest. As each character grapples with the hopes and fears that bring them to the mat, BREAKFALLS asks: how do we stay safe in an unsafe world?
World Premiere: Vermont Stage (spring 2024)
Nominated: Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
Creation Grant: Vermont Arts Council/National Endowment for the Arts
Book of Esther
Full length
6 performers
Within the confines of an Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, a new generation of women is pushing the boundaries. Esther grew up in a loving and religious household, but she is seventeen now and can feel a larger world outside her own. Will her questioning take her too far to come home?
Winner: Kernodle New Play Award
Finalist: Theatre503 International Playwriting Award
Finalist: Jewish Playwriting Contest
Semifinalist: Princess Grace Award
The Colony
Full length
4 performers
In 1924 Virginia, a dirt-poor young woman named Carrie Buck is brought to a mysterious medical facility. No one will tell her why she’s here, or where her two-month-old daughter is. The Doctor in charge is a charming progressive, a student of the new science of heredity and genes. In Carrie, he finds the missing link his entire movement has been searching for, placing her at the center of a chain of events that will lead all the way to the Supreme Court. Based on a true story, The Colony asks: how does our society, past and present, regulate the bodies of women deemed "undesirable"?
Winner: Columbia@Roundabout New Play Reading Series
Selected: 21st Century Voices New Play Festival (American Stage)
Selected: New Works Initiative (Good Luck Macbeth)
Semifinalist: Austin Film Festival Playwriting Competition (& Pitch Competition Finalist)
Gabrielle Young, Vanessa R. Butler (Signature Theater)
Summerland
Set in the aftermath of World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, Summerland is based on the true story of Rose Mackenberg, a private investigator who worked with escape artist Harry Houdini in his quest to expose, debunk, and eventually criminalize Spiritualism, a religious movement centered around the belief in the ability to contact the dead. But when millions are grieving, including Rose and Houdini, is truth more important than faith?
Finalist: Big Apple Film Festival
Semifinalist: NYC Screenplay Contest
Semifinalist: Reno-Tahoe Screenplay Contest
TV pilot
Historical drama, queer, occult
Tell Me What I Want
Full length
5 performers
When Gloria, a middle school health teacher, gets fired after teaching her students about masturbation, she doesn’t know what to do. Until she realizes that the adults around her are nearly as clueless as the kids: there’s Erin, the head of the PTA, newly recruited into the mysterious hulking throes of menopause; Maxine, a math teacher whose partner can’t keep up with her Hummer limo sex drive; and Sharon, a mom with a yoga obsession whose Down-There Parts are lately as dry as her favorite white wine. Understandably, they have questions. And honestly...don’t you?
Semifinalist: Princess Grace Award
Semifinalist: Bay Area Playwrights Festival
Reading: Urban Stages
Reading: The Tank
The Sand Castle
Full length
8 performers
A trophy wife, an ambitious real estate broker, an overseas domestic worker, a college student with Disney theme park aspirations, a wealthy young revolutionary. THE SAND CASTLE utilizes the framework of Chekhov’s THE CHERRY ORCHARD to explore the 2008 housing and financial crisis, interrogating the deficits of the American Dream.
Semifinalist: O'Neill National Playwrights Conference
Semifinalist: The Civilians' R&D Group
Workshop: Playhouse Creatures