Elizabeth Shannon
By School of Performing Arts
Elizabeth Shannon (ELLIS) is an actor, playwright, and director. She is a rising junior at Marymount Manhattan College, working to obtain her BFA Acting and BA Writing for the Stage degrees. She has completed a residency with Young Playwrights Theatre of DC and is a four time winner of The Blank Theatre鈥檚 Young Playwrights Festival. She was an inaugural winner of ENOUGH! Plays to End Gun Violence in 2020, having her play 鈥淟oaded Language鈥� produced in 47 places across the world and counting. She has also been a finalist with Wild Imaginings Waco Epiphanies New Works Festival and Think Tank Theatre's 2022 TYA Playwrights Festivals. Recently she was a winner of the 鈥淢agic in Rough Spaces鈥� competition with Rorschach Theatre in DC. She was a winner of the 2023 Horizon Theatre鈥檚 New South Young Playwrights Festival in Atlanta. One of her ten-minute plays, 鈥淜aylee and Adelyn鈥� was reviewed by theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck on WYPR (August 24, 2023), saying 鈥溾�he play鈥檚 ending just punches you in the gut鈥� a stand-out, well-written play.鈥� She has worked with Baltimore Centerstage, Third Avenue Playhouse, South Coast Repertory, The Trailblazers Collective, Olney Theatre of DC, Rapid Lemon Productions, The Secret Theatre, Kumu Kahua Theatre, CapitalQ Theatre, and many others. You can find her play 鈥淟oaded Language鈥� available for licensing on Playscripts.
She started writing 鈥淢ama Bushwick is Dead鈥� when she was seventeen years old. It鈥檚
original form was around 70 pages long, before being shortened into a one act that
was about 50 pages. Then, when she was 18-19, she developed it for a year with Young
Playwrights Theatre of DC, hoping to transform it into a full length once again that
had more depth, clarity, and ensemble work. Over a year she did so, with the script
now around 100 pages. The process involved lots of cutting and adding scenes and storylines,
which could be confusing, but revealed so much about the characters and allowed for
a complex and nuanced story without dead space. Throughout her residency, she also
worked with a dramaturg to do research about hoarding and grief to ensure she was
treating those subjects with care and respect, and developed the mother herself as
a character, even though she is never seen. She is so excited to share this play with
you!
