ALICE EVE COHEN Author, Playwright, Solo Theatre Artist

Jane Chambers Award reading

In my responsibilities as a workshop leader and adjudicator for various festivals and awards, I read almost 100 plays in the last four months. And I have been delighted to find many fine and exciting new plays out there! But none astonished and thrilled me more than IN THE CERVIX OF OTHERS. I suspect that Alice's play will haunt me for quite some time. Somehow she combines Greek myth, the Three Stooges, mothers and daughters, Dr. Blasey Ford, Anita Hill, and generations of pharmaceutical malfeasance into a powerful and galvanizing cri de coeur. And yet the play never reads like a polemic or an Op-Ed. Rather, it feels both deeply personal and universal, at once anguished and hilarious. There is heartbreak, loss, gross unfairness; it is also funny, wildly playful, and driven by such an intense theatrical passion that when I finished reading it I started making a list of who I could send it to. IN THE CERVIX OF OTHERS shook me and left me wanting to do better – to hurl myself with renewed vigor into the maelstrom of our body politic. I am in awe.

—Suzanne Bradbeer, playwright

I am thrilled to notify you that your play In the Cervix of Others is the 2019 Jane Chambers Award winner. We received well over three hundred submissions this year, and your topical, witty, and compelling play rose to the top. The final round of judges were struck by the play's topicality as well as the multifaceted powerful thematic resonances within the play concerning the silencing/oppression of women' voices, mother-daughter relationships, and the misogyny that taints women' healthcare, as well as the playful and dynamic structure of the play in which you skillfully and with hilarious wit juxtapose the Thomas /Kavenaugh hearings with the myth of Philomela and the journey of your protagonist, Jessica.

—Jennifer-Scott Mobley, Co-Coordinator, Jane Chambers Feminist Playwriting Contest

In the Cervix of Others

A full-length play. Winner of the 2019 Jane Chambers Playwriting Award. Selected to be featured as a part of the official program of the 2022 WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE MONTREAL

SYNOPSIS: Jessica is at her gynecological exam in 2018, during the Kavanaugh/Ford hearing, and simultaneously in 1991, during the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearing. Woven into this time-traveling dark comedy is a mother-daughter tale of recrimination and forgiveness, an older woman reconciling with her younger self, a true story of pharmaceutical corruption, and the journey of a woman urgently trying to find her voice. Jessica's cervix is being filmed for a training video. While Dr. Cooperman narrates her cervix's perilous prenatal history, Jessica floats off the examining table and performs a stand-up routine on the ceiling. Her out-of-body storytelling launches her on an odyssey, during which she befriends the mythological Philomela from Ovid's Metamorphoses, whose ancient story has powerful contemporary resonance. Against the backdrop of the Kavanaugh and Thomas hearings, which play out on screens throughout the action of the play, Jessica finds a window into her past and reunites with her late mother; their relationship a stormy mix of ambivalence and love, filled with recriminations for events of the past over which they had no control. With emotional force and hilarious wit, the play explores the many ways women are silenced, the misogyny that taints women's healthcare, and the transcendent power of mother-daughter love. IN THE CERVIX OF OTHERS is a riveting journey, funny, painful and absurd.

(cast of 6 or 8: 3F, 3M; or 3 F, 2 M, 3 any gender)

Jane Chambers Playwriting Award

THE JANE CHAMBERS AWARD recognizes new plays and performance texts created by women writers which present a feminist perspective and that provide significant opportunities for female performers.

"We received well over three hundred submissions this year, and your topical, witty, and compelling play rose to the top… you skillfully and with hilarious wit juxtapose the Thomas /Kavenaugh hearings with the myth of Philomela and the journey of your protagonist."—Jane Chambers Playwriting Contest

Interview with Alice Eve Cohen, Winner of the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award for "In the Cervix of Others"

For production rights please contact: Elaine Devlin Literary; Edevlinlit@aol.com 212-842-9030

Jane Chambers Award reading talkback

Selected Works: Memoir; Plays, Solo Theater, Teaching; Articles and Interviews

Plays

OKLAHOMA SAMOVAR, HOTEL LIMBO, IN THE CERVIX OF OTHERS, THE YEAR MY MOTHER CAME BACK, THIN WALLS, and other plays

OKLAHOMA SAMOVAR, winner of 2021 National Jewish Plays Project: In 1887, 2 Latvian teenagers flee Russia and become the only Jews in the Oklahoma Land Run. A century later, their daughter reinvents their story, aided by ghosts, blintzes and strong Russian tea.

THIN WALLS: One building. A city in upheaval. A solo play about twelve lives colliding. "Gripping" New York Times “A little show, but with such a big, embracing heart.”

–The Guardian, London

IN THE CERVIX OF OTHERS, a full-length play.

Winner of the 2019 Jane Chambers Playwriting Award

Solo Theatre

WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW - a solo play

“Hilarious, heartbreaking, hopeful and devastating all at once.”—Minnesota Post, The Picks. BROADWAY WORLD AWARD nominee for BEST PLAY and BEST ACTRESS IN A PLAY. “So vivid, so immediate, so complex, so full of compassion, so brutally honest… This is what theater can be.”—Tompkins Weekly

PLAYS for FAMILY AUDIENCES

“Spellbinding…Our audiences were enraptured.”DTW, Family Matters
“It was probably the funniest show I have ever seen!”—Daniel, age 7

TEACHING

TEACHING: workshops, residencies, private consulting.

“She is a remarkable teacher. She helped me to find my artistic voice, and her course had a major impact on my life and my career.”
—James Scruggs, playwright, performance artist.

Memoir

WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW - a memoir

“Everything we love in a book -- profound, honest, hilarious, humane, surprising."
Anne Lamott, Salon BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR"
"Her darkly hilarious memoir, What I Thought I Knew (Viking), is an unexpected bundle of joy.” Oprah Magazine

THE YEAR MY MOTHER CAME BACK - a memoir

“A wry, magical memoir about the transcendent power of mother-daughter love.” —Elle
"The Year My Mother Came Back is a perfect book." Abigail Thomas, bestselling author of A Three Dog Life

Articles, Author posts, Interviews

Essays, posts, blogs, interviews

QUICK LINKS

New Play Exchange: Scripts by Alice Eve Cohen

OKLAHOMA SAMOVAR, 15 min video excerpt

OKLAHOMA SAMOVAR: Winner, 10th Annual National Jewish Playwriting Contest

WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW, video excerpt

4-minute performance excerpts

THIN WALLS, video excerpt

10-minute performance excerpt

HANNAH AND THE HOLLOW CHALLAH (video, 50 min)

A comic play for family audiences, performed by 2 actors playing dozens of roles (and rolls)

THE YEAR MY MOTHER CAME BACK performance, 80 minutes.

Cohen's play, based on her magic realist memoir. 2 characters, 80 minutes. Performed by Bema Productions, Victoria British Columbia

"Revolution Begins in the Bedroom" (Aria 5 min video)

"Revolution Begins in the Bedroom" Libretto, Alice Eve Cohen; Music, Tony Solitro. Produced by American Opera Projects.

WOMEN WHO DARE

A collection of 3 plays, by Alice Eve Cohen, Judy Tate, and Saviana Stanescu, that tackle racism, classism and misogyny in the Suffrage movement and today.

WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW, a memoir Viking/Penguin Books

WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW, available in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle

Three Short Women, Three Tall (True) Tales

Memoirists Program: Alice Eve Cohen, Nancy Bachrach & Julie Metz

Indie Bound

Contact me

Authors Guild