Hell is Real: a New Play Reading

Name: Hell is Real: a New Play Reading
Start: 2025-04-22T18:30:00-04:00
Location: Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery

Schedule

Tue, 22 Apr, 2025 at 06:30 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery | Saratoga Springs, NY

Join us on Tuesday, April 22, and again on Wednesday, April 23, at 6:30 pm, for public readings of Hell is Real, a new play by Skidmore Theater Department visiting artists Genevieve Simon and M Sloth Levine. The play is developed with Skidmore students as part of a class taught by the visiting artists. The readings of the play, written by Simon and directed by Levine, will take place in the monumental exhibition a field of bloom and hum.
About Hell is Real
Nate’s trying to keep The Fields Of Hell (voted Northwest Ohio’s No. 1 Haunted House Attraction between 2003-2018) afloat after his dad’s sudden death. Joan, his friend since high school (and the best Mistress of the Swamp this haunt has ever seen) woke up this morning and decided to become the thing that scares her most. Teeny and Franny, a.k.a. The Terror Tots, are attached at the hip…but this hip might need a replacement when Teeny gets promoted. Left behind, Franny is stuck with August, a transman who’s returned to Ohio after his life in New York fell apart. August’s carrying a secret…but it might not be as terrible (or strange) as the secret Franny is keeping in the basement. Meanwhile, a visitor discovers euphoria in the body horror of the haunt, and something’s gurgling beneath the surface. We might be sitting on a portal to hell, and it might become a swampland paradise…if those Midwest Moms don’t K*ll us first.
About the Artists
As a playwright, Genevieve Simon (he/they) centers queer people in magical worlds at the intersection of family, identity, and bodies of water. He is a 2025 NYSCA Commission Winner, a 2023-24 New Georges Audrey Resident, a member of the 2024 Page 73 Writers Group, and was a Semi-Finalist for the Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship in 2023 and 2024. His climate-doom-comedy BLOOM BLOOM POW was a Finalist for the 2022 EMOS Ecodrama Playwrights Festival. Simon’s work has been supported by The Bushwick Starr, The Brick, Fresh Ground Pepper, New Georges, Shadowland Stages, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Parsnip Ship, The Tank, Arts on Site, NYSCA, The Puffin Foundation, Holton-Arms School, and The Cincinnati Fringe Festival. They are a New Georges Affiliated Artist, and their writing has been published in Howlround Theatre Commons. Genevieve’s plays are being produced and developed in 2025 at Oberlin College, Willamette University, Skidmore College, and The Drama Studio. Genevieve has been a lecturer and facilitated workshops for K-12 and college students at Two River Theater, Emory University, Notre Dame University, Skidmore College, SUNY Buffalo State, SUNY New Paltz, Nebraska Shakespeare Festival, Actors’ Shakespeare Project, and University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He is based in Brooklyn. Read more at their website.
M Sloth Levine (they/them/theirs) is a director, playwright, and designer in New York City. With dual passions in horror and musical theater, they’ve had an eclectic career. Their Nosferatu, The Vampyr was produced in 2018 at New Repertory Theater. As a writer, their plays have been developed at thousands of coffee shops around the country, Roundabout Theater Company, Company One, Theatre [Untitled], Sparkhaven Theatre, Central Square Theatre, Tufts University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Wisconsin Madison. At Hotel MacGuffin was the 2021 Parity Development Award winner. The Interrobangers premiered in Boston in 2024 with Company One Theatre and The Theatre Offensive. Sloth has served as the Script Supervisor on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bad Cinderella. They’ve been a member of Company One’s VoltLab and PlayLab writer’s groups and in 2020 their live web-series Tales from Camp Strangewood was produced with a grant from the Mayor’s Office of Boston. They earned a BA in Theatre: Directing & Playwriting from Emerson College. Read more at their website.