Oklahoma Samovar
Oklahoma Samovar
by Alice Eve Cohen
In 1887, two Latvian teenagers, Jake and Hattie, flee the Russian Army and become the only Jews in the Oklahoma Land Rush. 100 years later, their ninety-year-old daughter Sylvia reinvents their story of five generations in a Jewish pioneer family, traveling East to West and then West to East, staking their claims in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Coney Island, putting down roots and digging graves, embodying their own Jewish variations on the mythologized and turbulent American Dream - an utterly human and absolutely unique American story, based on real events.
Playwright Alice Eve Cohen
“This play is such a treasure! Themes of Jewish identity are in the bones of Alice Eve Cohen’s work. This work features a buoyant spirit, unreliable narrators and a ton of fun theatricality to rope audiences in.”
Development:
2020, Ensemble Studio Theatre
2020, Nuyorican Poets Cafe
JPP Development:
2021 Jewish Playwriting Contest
Alice Eve Cohen is a playwright, memoirist, and solo theatre artist, whose work has been performed for over 200,000 people on four continents. IN THE CERVIX OF OTHERS won the 2019 Jane Chambers Playwriting Award and is a featured program selection of the 2022 Women Playwrights International Conference Montréal. Her solo play, WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW, adapted from her memoir – winner of the Elle Grand Prix for Nonfiction and Oprah magazine’s 25 Best Books of Summer – has been produced by the Kitchen Theatre, Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company, Jewish Repertory Theatre of Western New York, and the All for One Festival at the Cherry Lane Theatre.
Her other plays include OKLAHOMA SAMOVAR, MRS. SATAN & THE NASTY WOMAN, THIN WALLS, AN UNEXPECTED LIFE, HANNAH AND THE HOLLOW CHALLAH, THE PARROT, THE OWL WAS A BAKER’S DAUGHTER, DAYS OF AWE, THE PLAY THAT KNOWS WHAT YOU WANT, GOLIATH ON 74TH STREET VS. THE WOMAN WHO LOVED VEGETABLES, BOOK OF TRUTH / BOOK OF LIES, and WITHOUT HEROES. She is currently working on a play called HOTEL LIMBO, about a neighborhood in crisis around homelessness during the pandemic.
Her works have been produced and/or developed by the Kitchen Theatre, New Georges, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company, Jewish Repertory Theatre of Western NY, American Opera Project, Here Arts Center, 78th St Theatre Lab, Dance Theatre Workshop, Ko Festival, The Women’s Project, KiMo Theatre, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Discovery Theatre, University of Michigan, Fordham University, Galway Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Trinidad’s Astor Theatre, and Jerusalem’s Theatre Bama.
She has written television for Nickelodeon and CBS, and her books and plays are published by Penguin Books, Algonquin Books, and NoPassport Press. Five monologues from her plays THIN WALLS and WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW will be published by Applause Books in 2021. A two-time O’Neill finalist, she has received fellowships and grants from NY State Council on the Arts, the NEA, Voice and Vision Theatre, and Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She is a proud member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, NY Theatre Workshop Usual Suspects, EST Playwrights Unit, and Honor Roll!
Cohen has an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and a BA in Anthropology and Theatre from Princeton University. She is an MFA playwriting mentor for Augsburg University MFA Creative Writing Program, and she teaches undergraduate creative writing and playwriting at The New School, where she received the 2020 Distinguished Teaching Award. Alice lives with her family in New York City. For more info, visit www.AliceEveCohen.com Agent: Elaine Devlin Edevlinlit@aol.com
