selected plays
LOWCOUNTRY. Visiting her hometown in the rural South, a down-and-out actress with a secret seduces a disgraced high-school coach in the midst of legal battle.
Winner of an Atlantic Theater Launch Commission, with a 2025 world premiere directed by Jo Bonney.
“A masterpiece of millennial rage. Rosebrock speaks up for the American precariat.” —Zachary Stewart, TheatreMania
“An irreverent, horny comedy. I’m impressed all over again by Rosebrock’s flair for writing women who are smart, funny, self-critical, and pissed off. Leaves us breathless.” —David Cote, The Observer
“Directed with her customary skillfulness by Jo Bonney, Lowcountry is novel in departing from the toxic-male-drama playbook.” —Charles Isherwood, The Wall Street Journal
“There’s a bit of Frankie and Johnny to it, twisted and deformed by more frayed circumstances. I admired Rosebrock’s daring for thrusting her characters into extrema.” —Jackson McHenry, Vulture
“Rosebrock’s writing, at once piquant and deeply compassionate, encourages empathy even as it titillates. You may even exit the theatre with a new sense of regard or hope for someone you know, and that’s as worthy a gift as any work of fiction could provide.” —Elysa Gardner, The New York Sun
“With little use for off-the-rack sentiments, Lowcountry refuses to jerk itself toward a neat resolution. As Alison, the ax-grinding former English teacher in Blue Ridge, might have pointed out, we fallible creatures are always mis-recognizing one another. Lowcountry lives in the quiet chaos of misprision—in what’s half-remembered or misapprehended. True recognition is rare, but when it happens, the effect is transfiguring.” —Rhoda Feng, 4Columns
BLUE RIDGE. A North Carolina high-school teacher with a rage problem attends to everyone's recovery but her own.
World premiere at Atlantic Theater, directed by Taibi Magar and starring Marin Ireland, archived at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts/Lincoln Center. Purchase or license at Theatrical Rights Worldwide.
“A devastating examination of how even smart, strong women can be deformed by a society that raises them to please—and how men who don’t fit in can be victims, too. Through various modes, from biting dark humor to emotional outbursts and quiet confessions, Rosebrock beautifully fleshes out all the characters, who come from diverse ethnic, economic and spiritual backgrounds.” —Raven Snook, Time Out New York
“Nimbly balances on a knife edge between weird, excitingly uncomfortable comedy and deep, hideous pain. BLUE RIDGE deals courageously in hard, sad human truths, the kind of metastasized stuff that might take a lifetime to heal.” —Sara Holdren, New York Magazine
“Rosebrock’s play says something worth listening to. Her subject is healing, the queasy, fragile calm that follows the storm of addiction and abuse; she’s interested in the ways in which damaged people try—or don’t—to fix themselves by untangling the harm that they’ve done from the harm that has been done to them. Who is really at fault for our failures?” —Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker
“Funny and scintillating. One of the real pleasures of Rosebrock’s writing is that, while Alison has more Appalachian twang than a half-dozen hillbillies, she’s one of the smartest characters on the New York stage at this moment. Her cultural references are deep and vast.” —Robert Hofler, The Wrap
“A beguiling new dramedy with an excellent cast. It all feels chillingly true to life.” —Zachary Stewart, TheatreMania
“A drama studded with comedy; both tough and clear-sighted, warm and very funny. Blue Ridge is a snapshot of lives in transition.” —Tim Teeman, The Daily Beast
DIDO OF IDAHO. When a love affair goes brutally awry, a hard-drinking musicologist seeks asylum with her estranged evangelical mother.
Winner of the 2024 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards for Best Writing, Direction, and Featured Performance. Purchase or license at Theatrical Rights Worldwide.
“Powerful, pointed and poignant. Hypnotic to watch. A blistering and hysterical look at trauma, memory, and regret.” —Harker Jones, Broadway World
“Vibrant, outré humor. Unwinds not at all as you might expect. Beth Henley infused with a few drops of Martin McDonagh’s deranged fierceness. Rosebrock has spun a comedy that freely intermingles laughter, frustration, tears and shock.” —Charles McNulty, The Los Angeles Times
“Careens from high-minded laughs to cutthroat rage to soft-edged dreamscape, with Rosebrock embracing feminism even as she skewers it. She takes the work of Virgil, spikes it with shards of Edward Albee, doses it with a shot of Tennessee Williams, then shifts that whole male canon of Western thinking into a female perspective. The result is a crash course in self-respect and surviving betrayal, be it romantic, familial, or self-inflicted.” —Stan Friedman, Off Off Online
SINGLES IN AGRICULTURE. An army widow angles for romance with a taciturn fundamentalist at a Texas dating convention for farmers.
Winner of a Drama League residency and the Suzi Bass award for best world premiere in Atlanta; developed with support from the Southern Writers Conference. Purchase or license at Theatrical Rights Worldwide.
“Smart and sensitive, SINGLES IN AGRICULTURE is a triumph. A big-hearted play with a darkly comic core. You probably can’t remember the last erotic play you saw about contemporary farmers, so you know this show is fresh. 80 minutes of continuous action, [it’s] a sexy, startling, and ultimately uplifting piece of theater.” —Sarah Matusek, New York Theatre Review
“Wonderfully wrought. Just when you might think you have Abby Rosebrock’s SINGLES IN AGRICULTURE easily pegged, are you ever in for an amazing and welcome surprise—a number of them, actually. Life is filled with ups and downs, of course, and SINGLES IN AGRICULTURE demonstrates it with a grace and conviction that’s as admirable as it is rare.” —Bert Osborne, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
DIFFERENT ANIMALS. A Lutheran woman agrees to a threesome with her husband and his unbalanced coworker.
World premiere at the Cherry Lane Theatre.
“Two hours of gut-busting humor and poignant drama. Rosebrock gives us an insight into Southern culture while staying away from clichés. She began her career through the Upright Citizens Brigade, writing her own material, and has an actor’s sensibility, trading one-liners for spot-on situational comedy and rapid fire dialogue that keeps the audience laughing.” —Britton Buttrill, New York Theatre Review
RUBY THE FREAK IN THE WOODS. A tech whiz is eaten alive by her industry, retreats to the woods and falls in love with a bear.
Commissioned by Ensemble Studio Theatre/Sloan Foundation, with development support from Clubbed Thumb.
NADIA ROYA. An unlikely domestic terrorist in federal custody seeks legal counsel from an old flame.
Commissioned by Bristol Riverside Theatre.
one-acts
FIREWOOD. A do-gooding non-profiteer tries to buy firewood from an ex-convict she once taught in a workshop.
Commissioned and produced by Montana Rep and Echo Theater Los Angeles.
KENNY’S TAVERN. A teacher and her principal hash out the terms of their affair on the eve of a presidential election.
Commissioned and produced by Throughline Artists at 59e59.
FRAGOLINA. A 1940s Hollywood socialite realizes she’s hosting a fundraiser for a ballroom full of fascists.
Featured in The Green Plays by Gowanus Art + Production.
NO ONE IS HOME. Preparing for a TV appearance, FLDS sister wives open up about their sex lives to Oprah’s production assistants.
Developed and produced at Ensemble Studio Theatre, published in Best 10-Minute Plays of 2016 (Smith & Kraus).
[AND MORE]