High atop a railroad trestle that spans a bone dry creek, two teenagers plan to race across the bridge against an oncoming locomotive. At first their scheme adds excitement to life in a small factory town during the Great Depression, then sensual experience awakens dangerous passions in an era of stifled ambitions. With theatrical flourish and lyrical finesse, Naomi Wallace delves into a world where people struggle to change lives that bear down upon them. ... Naomi Wallace, the thirty-eight-year-old Kentucky playwright at work here, received a MacArthur 'genius grant' last week, and TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK, her lovely, strikingly poetic Depression-era play ... certainly illustrates what makes her deserving ... the play sometimes seems like a blend of Ingmar Bergman and Horton Foote, with Thornton Wilder on the side ... TRESTLE is set in 1936 in a in a town so dull that the only thing young people can pit themselves against, the only thing greater than them, is the 7:10 train with its 153-ton engine and deafening roar. So we find Dalton and Pace, who becomes his girlfriend despite his repeated insistence that she is not pretty, making plans to test themselves by trying to outrun the train on a trestle a hundred feet above a dry creek bed. Another boy from their town tried it recently and died ... By the end, the play, like that train, has built up a full head of steam and we feel its power. -Anita Gates, The New York Times ... TRESTLE is an often poignant, nonlinear-narrative coming-of-age story that's set in 1936 in a 'town outside a city, somewhere in the United States ... TRESTLE is at once charming and haunting ... you'll view it with wonder along the way. -Sam Whitehead, Time Out ... The honor for the most original and memorable work of this year's 22nd Humana Festival goes to another Kentuckian, Naomi Wallace, for her brilliant THE TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK ... After the two-act play ended with an erotic, gender-twisted climax, there was a moment in the darkness when I thought: 'This must be how it felt when people saw A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE for the very first time.' Like Tennessee Williams's daring play, Wallace's work introduces a new level of sexual honesty with a fresh mature voice. TRESTLE wraps its five characters in a metaphorical drama within a romantic and tragic mystery. It's a complicated, interwoven play that moves back and forth in time between past and present, with layers of meaning that overlap and build upon each other. Despite its depth of symbolism and clear political message, the play is neither stuffy nor strident. A bright ripple of humor funs through Wallace's play about two sexually charged young people who consider a game of chicken with an oncoming train. Wallace's keen psychological insights evoke compassion for her characters. Tears are shed and not only over the pathos of the play ... The actors stir the emotions with the tender way they expose the fragility and indomitable beauty of the human spirit, as revealed through Wallace's words ... If Wallace's plays were a visual art, ONE FLEA SPARE would be a baroque oil painting, while THE TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK would be a 1930s American photograph with contrasting lights and shadows and its direct, unsentimental and uncensored gaze into the lives of the working class. -Judith Egerton, Courier-Journal, Louisville

It's not just the blood-spattered slaughterhouse setting that makes the Royal Shakespeare Company's SLAUGHTER CITY an unusually meaty (you'll forgive the expression) new play. Aligning issues of class and race and labor dynamics to a surrealist aesthetic as elusive as her politics are straightforward, American writer Naomi Wallace shows a willingness to embrace topics once treated by the likes of Clifford Odets and Sophie Treadwell.
These days, such terrain is left to the movies--Paul Schrader's Blue Collar, among others--but the pulse of Wallace's writing is of and for the theater. Hers may not be the most audience-friendly of voices, but even her opacity commands attention.
Matt Wolf, Variety

Naomi Wallace's SLAUGHTER CITY, which gets its premiere in The Pit, is a strange and compelling play that unties two elements in the American tradition--the radical and the mystic. If it reminds me of anyone it is the Walt Whitman who wrote of 'the audacity of freedom' and the need for America to free itself from the anti-democratic European past.
On the radical level, the play is a passionate protest against exploitation...
...the play has passion, poetry and a wild strangeness. Wallace also writes highly effective individual scenes...
Most cheering of all is Wallace's adventurous attempt to redefine political drama in terms of a feminist surrealism.
Michael Billington, The Guardian

Two imprisoned young women, one African American and the other white, form a perilous bond. As they serve time they forge a plan for survival. They practice hard. If they don't get it right they'll lose everything: the outside world is even more dangerous to their friendship than the jail itself. Exploring the fierce dreams of youth and the brutal reality of adulthood in 1950's segregated America. Unmissable ... an exquisitely understated examination of female friendship and unspoken love. It's a truly American tragedy about two women who want so little and get nothing except from each other, yet it is leavened with humour. Wallace's devastating, moving play is entirely without extravagance and artifice and is completely grounded in the harshness of the real world. -Lyn Gardner, The Guardian Naomi Wallace's short, painful prison drama uses the backdrop of racially segregated '50s America to weave a tale of the hope that can blossom behind bars, and the despair that can destroy a life outside them. -Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out In just 75 minutes on a tiny, almost bare stage, playwright Naomi Wallace conjures a compelling picture of friendship against the odds in the segregated America of the Fifties. -Fiona Mountford, London Evening Standard AND I AND SILENCE is a play that takes on big themes in a very small way and has the ability to be both powerful and touching, leading to an unforgettable dénouement. -Philip Fisher, The British Theatre Guide A former MacArthur genius fellow and Obie winner, Wallace is one of the most subtle and politically engaged American playwrights of her generation. Once again, the question arises: Why isn't this superb writer more widely produced? ... Thanks to Wallace's delicate touch and generous imagination, AND I AND SILENCE unfolds into a story of love whose unexpected emotional power sideswipes the audience. -Karen Fricker, Variety

I sat in a theater at the Humana Festival last year, after the closing monologue of ONE FLEA SPARE, unable to move. I had known Naomi Wallace's work well, having directed an earlier play, and I knew she had tremendous talent and promise to do great things. Nothing had prepared me - not my admiration for her plays and for her beautiful, harsh, moving, brilliantly political poetry - for the experience of watching this play, which is in my opinion one of the finest works of dramatic literature written here or in England in the last two decades. Utterly without sentiment but possessed of a very great human heart, ONE FLEA SPARE touches upon many things, class and gender and the pressures of a plague upon internal and external human constructs; and, as I read it, most devastatingly it addresses a tragedy of almost inexpressible dimensions: the consequences of the horrors of biology and Capital on the young. As the play draws to its shattering close I was filled with thoughts of the children of Sarajevo and Rwanda and the slums of America. 'Almost' inexpressible except in the hands of a true poet, and Naomi Wallace so magnificently proves herself to be. Her ability to articulate the inarticulable, grief and loss and suffering beyond endurance, is a source of hope; as is the resilience and passion of the marvelous characters she's assembled. Everyone who loves the theater should read this play. It has made me INTENSELY envious and very full of joy. -Tony Kushner Naomi Wallace sharply tightens her focus in this latest, thrillingly original work, set for the most part in a virtually bare London room during the Great Plague. -Jeremy Kingston, The Times (London) Poetic ... Naomi Wallace's ONE FLEA SPARE is another example of fine, ambitious writing ... The London plague is evoked in statistics and the overwhelming reality of quirky, Marivaux-like social role reversals in a single room. -Michael Coveney, The Observer (London) Naomi Wallace makes an opaque but artful and haunting New York debut with her ONE FLEA SPARE ... ONE FLEA SPARE is built to provoke, not to distract, and it doesn't surrender its meanings easily. But the play's powerful sexual subtext and its beautiful poetic surface reveal an original theatrical imagination. Whether Wallace will find a big audience remains to be seen. She has a big talent, though. Wherever her plays are mounted, they're worth finding. -John Lahr, The New Yorker

American theater needs more plays like Naomi Wallace's The Liquid Plain--by which I mean works that are historical, epic and poetic, that valorize the lives of the poor and oppressed.--Time Out New York

On the docks of late eighteenth-century Rhode Island, two runaway slaves find love and a near-drowned man. With a motley band of sailors, they plan a desperate and daring run to freedom. As the mysteries of their identities come to light, painful truths about the past and present collide and flow into the next generation. Acclaimed playwright Naomi Wallace's newest work brings to life a group of people whose stories have been erased from history. Told with lyricism and power, The Liquid Plain was awarded the 2012 Horton Foote Prize for Promising New American Play. This sweeping historical saga has enjoyed acclaimed runs at Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Signature Theatre in New York.

Naomi Wallace is a playwright from Kentucky. Her plays, which have been produced in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, and the Middle East, include In the Heart of America, Slaughter City, One Flea Spare, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Things of Dry Hours, The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East, And I and Silence, The Hard Weather Boating Party , and The Liquid Plain. Awards include the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (twice), Joseph Kesselring Prize, Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, Obie Award, Horton Foote Award for Most Promising New American Play, MacArthur Fellowship, and the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize for Drama.

On the docks of late 18th-century Rhode Island, two runaway slaves, Adjua and Dembi, plan a desperate and daring run to freedom. When a chance encounter triggers an unexpected collision of worlds, painful truths are uncovered, and the brutality of past crimes spills into the next generation. American theater needs more plays like Naomi Wallace's THE LIQUID PLAIN - by which I mean works that are historical, epic and poetic. -Time Out New York Elegant ... Wallace is as much a poet as she is a playwright. -The New Yorker A powerful, cathartic reminder that true freedom always starts in the soul and proceeds outward, transforming - and exalting - everything in its path. -Talkin' Broadway Naomi Wallace is the master when it comes to 'translating' History into Theater: she does not dramatize 'facts' but lays bare emotional truths. -Robin D G Kelley, historian and social critic

In Depression-era Alabama, black Sunday school teacher and Communist Party member Tice Hogan lives on the edge of trouble. When a white factory worker on the run demands sanctuary, Tice and his daughter may be pushed over that edge. THINGS OF DRY HOURS is a beautiful, brave and devastating play, a profound imaginative delving into radical resistance and hope rising at an impossible moment, in crushingly inhospitable circumstances. No one writes about politics, history and all that's hidden underneath better than Naomi Wallace. Ferocious, tender, whimsical, tough, brutally direct, poetically elusive, her voice is utterly unique and essential. I'm grateful, as always, for her unsparing, painful, sexy stirring up of our human selves. -Tony Kushner Naomi Wallace's gorgeously written and philosophically rich celebration of a black Communist agitator in the Depression-era South ... Wallace weaves together these proud, lonely souls with language rich in metaphor and, at times, as hard and piercing as a handful of nails. -Time Out New York Naomi Wallace's fierce new play tackles the plight of black communists in America ... Naomi Wallace is a dangerous woman ... not only in her writing ... but also in her personal stand against what she sees as injustice and the peeling away of democratic rights. -The Guardian (U K)

In their spare time three vigilantes, childhood friends, enjoy patrolling the U S/Mexican border. But these youths soon learn that even the most guarded borders are permeable. When the lines between fantasy and reality become dangerously blurred, these young men are forced to decide what it means to be an American, and who has the right to belong.

...a violent and often beautifully written story about three young Texan men who have hired themselves out to catch 'wetbacks'...
Carol Burbank, Chicago Reader

THE WAR BOYS, a vital three hander about the informal policing of the Mexican border in Texas by racially screwed-up, sadistic vigilantes.
James Christopher, Time Out

...the much acclaimed WAR BOYS...
Lyn Gardner, The Guardian (review of IN THE HEART OF AMERICA)

Subtitled Three Short Visions of the Middle East, this collection includes three thematically related short plays, A STATE OF INNOCENCE, THE RETREATING WORLD, and BETWEEN THIS BREATH AND YOU, collectively entitled THE FEVER CHART. Vision One, A STATE OF INNOCENCE, is set in Rafah, Palestine, and features a Palestinian woman, an Israeli architect, and an Israeli soldier. Vision Two, THE RETREATING WORLD, concerns an Iraqi bird keeper from Baghdad and his address before the International Pigeon Convention. Vision Three, BETWEEN THIS BREATH AND YOU, takes place after hours in the waiting room of a clinic in West Jerusalem, where a Palestinian father confronts a nurse's aide, a young Israeli woman, about the meaning of the loss of his son and the impact it had on her life. These multifaceted works explore the urgency and complexity of the Middle East's political landscape through the voices and bodies of the people who inhabit it. Real political theater as I understand it: challenging, disorienting, and thought provoking. -Nehad Selaiha, Al-Ahram Weekly Wallace refuses to judge her characters, choosing instead to explore the possibility of humanity in the most inhumane conditions. THE FEVER CHART is the best theatrical production of the year. -Joseph Fahim, Daily News Egypt In Naomi Wallace's THE RETREATING WORLD, the ghosts are so recent that you feel you might lean forward in your seat and touch their fingertips ... THE RETREATING WORLD is the kind of short, stark and simple play that reminds us why we need theatre at a time like this, what the playwright can achieve that the journalist cannot. -Lyn Gardner, The Guardian Extraordinarily powerful, it is a privilege to attend such a theatrically excellent event. -The Independent Absolutely compelling theatre. -The Evening Standard The theatrical event of my week. It brings home the meaning of war, makes it personal, refuses to let it slip into unreality ... a taut, beautifully written elegy and it reaches out to us now like a prophecy. -The Observer

Liana and Marcus have a marriage others envy. Doré has grown accustomed to an isolated existence in her modest flat. After a surprise reunion on Marcus's 40th birthday, their worlds are shattered by an unexpected turn of events. NIGHT IS A ROOM is a searing exploration of love's power to both ruin and remake our lives.

In NIGHT IS A ROOM, Naomi Wallace's strange, surprising, often funny finish to her three-play residency at Signature Theater...
...about halfway through the play, Ms Wallace tosses a small bomb into her narrative, the audience, too, will be stumbling to find its footing. To say what causes the jolt would be to ruin one of the more audacious jaw-droppers in recent memory, so I won't, but it was fascinating to hear a crowd move from confused to startled to uncomfortable, yet game and curious. As the lights went up at intermission, I heard someone murmur, What do you do after that?'...
Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times

Naomi Wallace's plays speak the underside of life. Her characters suffer and survive against the enormous weight of the times with a dignity that inspires. Her work challenges the audience and reader to reexamine the conflicts and meaning of our everyday lives through her singular, poetic imagery and language.

Includes: One Flea Spare
In the Heart of America
Slaughter City
The War Boys
The Trestle at Pope's Creek

Naomi Wallace commits the unpardonable sin of being partisan, and, the darkness and harshness of her work notwithstanding, outrageously optimistic. She seems to believe the world can change. She certainly writes as if she intends to set it on fire.--Tony Kushner

Naomi Wallace, the rare writer who combines lyrical theatricality with political ferocity, turns her sight to the Middle East, with a new triptych for the stage. Vision One, A State of Innocence, is set--as the playwright describes, in something like a small zoo, but more silent, empty, in Rafah, Palestine. Or a space that once dreamed it was a zoo--and features a Palestinian woman, an Israeli architect, and an Israeli soldier. Vision Two, The Retreating World, is of an Iraqi bird keeper from Baghdad and his address before the International Pigeon Convention. Vision Three, Between this Breath and You, takes place after hours in the waiting room of a clinic in West Jerusalem, where a Palestinian father confronts the nurse's aide, a young Israeli woman, about the meaning of the loss of his son and the impact it had on her life. These multifaceted works explore the urgency and complexity of the Middle East's political landscape, through the voices and bodies of the people who inhabit it.

Naomi Wallace is a poet and playwright from Kentucky, who currently resides in England. Her numerous awards include the MacArthur Genius Fellowship. Her plays, including One Flea Spare, In the Heart of America, and Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, are produced throughout the United States and around the world.

Taking its title from William Carlos Williams's poem 'Complaint, ' Night Is a Room is one of the more audacious jaw-droppers in recent memory. Strange, surprising, often funny... Carnality is at its core. --New York Times

Lauded for her topical, searing explorations of the pressing issues that affect humanity, Naomi Wallace's new play Night Is a Room tackles the timeless subject of love and relationships. This story of a seemingly ideal married couple is torn apart when the husband's previously unknown birth mother makes a surprise visit for his fortieth birthday. Night Is a Room examines the intimate challenges love can create, romantic or otherwise.

In this witty adventure for young audiences by MacArthur genius award winner Naomi Wallace, a young girl called Noil finds herself in a strange new place, and must accomplish three and a half magical tasks before she can return home. Noil is clever and resourceful, and with some assistance from a singing narrator and a talking roach, she emerges from the hole in her sweater in time for breakfast.

Appalachian-born Craver and Palestinian-American Remzi bond in a way characteristic of soldiers, but their relationship seamlessly blends into intimacy and homoeroticism, without ever becoming explicitly sexual, in Naomi Wallace's exploration of the body as means for love and a tool of war.

IN THE HEART OF AMERICA is a pretty startling piece of writing. It has the driving political anger and entwining of the personal and political that marked some of the best British writing of the early seventies, the vigor and mystical overtones of raw Sam Shepard, and the grace and sensuality of a poet... The landscape here is the barren, burned-out emptiness of history's war zones, and the talk is relentlessly of death and destruction. But there is also love.
Lyn Gardner, The Guardian (London)

As a poisoned city disintegrates around them, three men, almost strangers, meet in a Louisville hotel room to plan an ugly crime against Rubbertown's most powerful industry. The most politically engaged playwright of her generation. -Variety

In this lyrical, searing one-act, an American soldier has an unexpected encounter with two Afghan sisters who are ready to embark on a new life. Their fates-and his-become entangled as the lines between their divergent realities become dangerously blurred. NO SUCH COLD THING unsettles the ground beneath our feet much as [Wallace's] characters have found it vanishing beneath their own. The characters are pitched, dreamlike, somewhere between life and death as Wallace expertly pinpoints the reality of war in the magical-surreal of dramatic imagination. Robert Avila, San Francisco Bay Guardian In their existential disorientation, Wallace's Middle East plays escape the logic, the prison and the sentimental clichés of a realistic and more sociable theatre, because their impatient narratives take shape only to disintegrate, their dramatic value heightened by the instability of the drama itself. Randy Gener, American Theatre