Original Plays — Randolyn Zinn

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.

Lucy’s Wedding was nominated Outstanding Original Play by the Berkshire Theatre Critics Association in 2019.

“Zinn has crafted an excellent comedy... about people who don’t really merge until they suddenly do.”

— Peter Bergman, The Berkshire Edge

“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.”

— Telly Halkias, Bennington Banner

Directing my play allowed for revisions I hadn’t considered while writing it. The rehearsal process inspired new ideas and a fruitful collaboration with the actors. We discovered in the juxtaposition between the characters’ dreams and waking life how to negotiate the hilarity of their misunderstandings with the pathos of their circumstances.

LUCY: “It’s weird living in a future I thought would be completely different.”

Doreen: “I deserve this baby!”

Merle: “You’re insane!”

BEST PLAY 2019 Nomination Berkshire 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.

Hilarity. Dreams. Reckonings.

GAGA: “It’s your birthday tonight, ain’t it, Jesus? They throwin’ a party up there in heaven? I could pop out of your cake and throw my arms around your neck like a flapper…”

DOREEN: “Who doesn’t let a little kid win at checkers? Now I can’t imagine myself winning at anything.”

MOM: “Honey, that’s not true.”

DOREEN: “It’s totally true. I’m losing at the game of life.”

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.

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.

Portrait of Frida

Williamstown Theatre Festival

A meditation on Frida Kahlo’s life.

“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.” — Mario Fratti, America-Oggi

What Comes Next At BACA Downtown

SHE: “You read the shoes?”

HE: “The left is your past and the right is your future.”

SHE: “Read the future. ”

HE: “All right. ‘Every dance is a pantomime of metamorphoses that seeks to change the dancer.’”

SHE: “That’s it? That’s my future?”

HE: “That’s the best possible outcome. What more could you want?”

SHE: “I don’t know…the big payoff? The fat cigar, the sixty-four thousand dollar question answered correctly…?”

HE: “Some future reward…”

SHE: “Exactly. Especially after putting up with you…”

A rehearsal of GET IT RIGHT for The Williamstown Theatre Festival.

(excerpt)
What kind of life do you lead?
What kind of dance do you do?
Every night ask yourself in your prayers
how to play your cards right.