i published a short play collection!
also get tickets to TWO OF HEARTS in the queens short play festival
happy early valentine’s day! it has been an unconscionable amount of time since i wrote anything here, but i spent the first two weeks of the year sick as a dog, and then i got laid off, and now i’m finally coming up for air. anyway, the big, exciting news from Camp Sarah Jae is the one in the headline! you can now buy my first-ever published play collection from 1319 Press!
i’m in the inaugural cohort of playwrights publishing with 1319, and i am in incredible company. check out the Authors page for a couple dozen dramatist names to watch, and check out the Books page to buy stuff from all of us! the founder, the brilliant Sarah Groustra1, got us a sweet deal that means we’ll actually profit a little bit from this, so you can rest assured that every order will directly support emerging artists. i cannot recommend placing an order more highly — you really can’t go wrong with anything you buy.
also, for my collection, i got to commission cover art from my dear friend and collaborator Josh Brown. he totally got the pop art portrait style i was hoping for, and i just love looking at it. hire them to design (artwork, experiences, sound) or write (operas, plays, music, poetry) for you! i would say you should also hire him to be your friend but that’s an insane thing to say.
click here or below to purchase the book!
here’s what you’re getting:
RIVER PHOENIX FUGUE
A frenetic short in three voices attempting to uncover what exactly made the late, great River Phoenix (1970-1993) so compelling onscreen. Also, a play about weird girls and the troubled boys they need to make sense of themselves.
SPEAKING STRICTLY FOR ME
A one-act songfic with music about heartbreak, history, and two people resembling Bob Dylan and Joan Baez who don’t know how to talk about what they did to each other.
THE OLD JEW WHO BEGAT SCROOGE,
ON HIS DEATHBED
As Jewish banker Ephraim Stein prepares to meet his maker, he’s visited by three ghosts - past, present, and future - Shylock, Scrooge, and Mrs. Maisel - who’ve come to warn him about how he’ll be remembered to history, immortalized by Dickens.
also!
we just opened two of hearts at the Queens Short Play Festival at the Secret Theatre in woodside!!!
poster designed by my beloved Jack McManus, also those are our hands, awwwwwwwwwww
Jack directed the show, which features Emily Conlon, Sarah Alice Shull, and Andy Spector as two poker-playing lesbians and the married dude who won’t stop hitting on them in a casino in 1980s Atlantic City. Marc Jablonski (sound designer) made some really wonderful casino sound for us, and Alex Church-Gonzales (costume designer) situated us plainly in 1982 in the most delightful of ways. it’s short and sweet and funny, AND it has some of my favorite banter i’ve ever written, which is saying something, because i am nothing if not sarah jae bat amy sherman-palladino. we have three more shows! don’t miss it!
also woodside isn’t that far and you can get really good dinner nearby before or afterwards depending on when you come.
SHOWTIMES — PROGRAM B
Wednesday, February 12, 8:30 p.m.
Friday, February 21, 8:30 p.m.
Thursday, February 27, 6 p.m.
Sunday, March 2, 3 p.m.
that’s all i’ve got for the moment, folks! i’ve picked up a bit of freelance copywriting stuff, but, and i feel like i am always saying this, i am still unemployed, so if you see or hear of some work you think i’d be good for, please send it my way. you can support me by subscribing, for free or for money, or by buying my book! venmo is @Sarah-Leiber! love y’all be back soon.
a couple of years ago i went to see a friend (the also-brilliant Alison Cummins)’s play at an intimate artists night and Sarah read a piece she’d written about a woman who gave birth to rabbits that i still think about to this day
YES!!