5TH WALL THEATRE’S 2024-2025 SEASON
H*TLER’S TASTER
BY MICHELLE KHOLOS BROOKS
Directed by Kaitlin Paige Longoria
October 17 - November 2, 2024
Performances at Theatre Gym (114 W. Broad St. Richmond, VA 23220)
In Partnership with Virginia Rep
Three times a day, every day, a group of young women have the opportunity to die for their country. They are Adolf Hitler’s food tasters. H*tler’s Tasters is a fictional retelling of a largely unknown story of the young German women conscripted to taste Adolf Hitler’s food for poison. This dark comedy explores the way girls navigate sexuality, friendship, patriotism, and poison during the Third Reich. Using an anachronistic retelling of a historical footnote, H*tler’s Tasters considers what girls discuss as they wait to see if they will survive another meal.
About the Playwright
Michelle Kholos Brooks
Michelle Kholos Brooks is an award-winning playwright with productions staged internationally. Awards and distinctions include the Susan Glaspell Award for H*tler’s Tasters and the Riva Shiner Comedy Award for Kalamazoo. H*tler’s Tasters was named Best of Fringe by Stage Magazine at Edinburgh Festival Fringe after an entirely sold-out run and was selected for the annual Kilroy’s List. Hostage was a finalist for the Woodward/Newman Drama Award. (Ret) General David Petraeus said of Brooks’ play, War Words, “Few movies or plays have ever captured for me as powerfully as War Words…the experiences of American veterans.” War Words will have its world premiere in New York in the fall of 2023. Publications include Dramatists Play Service, Room Magazine, and The Daily Beast. Brooks is the Playwright-In-Residence at New York Rep. She is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, The Playwright’s Center, and Pacific Resident Theatre.
SANCTUARY CITY
by Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok
March 6 - 22, 2025
Performances at Richmond Triangle Players (1300 Altamont Ave, Richmond, VA 23230)
In post-9/11 Newark, NJ, two teenagers who were brought to America as children become one another’s sanctuaries from harsh circumstances. When G becomes naturalized, she and B hatch a plan to marry so that he may legally remain in the country and pursue the future he imagines for his life. But as time hurtles on and complications mount, the young friends find that this act challenges and fractures the closest relationship either has ever had.
About the Playwright
Martyna Majok
Martyna Majok was born in Bytom, Poland and raised in Jersey and Chicago. She was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, Cost of Living. Other plays include Sanctuary City, Queens, and Ironbound, which have been produced across American and international stages. Awards include The Academy of Arts and Letters’ Benjamin Hadley Danks Award for Exceptional Playwriting, The Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding New Play, The Greenfield Prize, as the first female recipient in drama, The Champions of Change Award from the NYC Mayor’s Office, The Francesca Primus Prize, two Jane Chambers Playwriting Awards, The Lanford Wilson Prize, The Lilly Award’s Stacey Mindich Prize, Helen Merrill Emerging Playwright Award, Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding Original New Play from The Helen Hayes Awards, Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, ANPF Women’s Invitational Prize, David Calicchio Prize, Global Age Project Prize, NYTW 2050 Fellowship, NNPN Smith Prize for Political Playwriting, and Merage Foundation Fellowship for The American Dream.
Martyna studied at Yale School of Drama, Juilliard, University of Chicago, and Jersey public schools. She was a 2012-2013 NNPN playwright-in-residence, the 2015-2016 PoNY Fellow at the Lark Play Development Center, and a 2018-2019 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University.
Martyna is currently writing a musical adaptation of The Great Gatsby, with music by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett, and developing TV and film for HBO, Plan B, and Pastel.