Two Elon University alumni are making their off-Broadway debut with plays inspired by their own lived experiences.
From the halls of a convent in Peru to the reunions in a prison visiting room, these works dive into faith, queerness, familial trauma and complex love.
Mallorie Sievert ’24 graduated from Elon with a bachelor of fine arts degree in music theatre. Sievert said she never imagined her undergraduate honors thesis, “The City-Women” would one day be read aloud on a New York City stage.
“It’s about two young nuns who discover their feelings for each other and have to decide whether to conform to the life that was chosen for them or discover who God truly wants them to be,” Sievert said. “So, it’s about faith and queerness and love and sisterhood.”
The 90-minute play had a staged reading at Urban Stages, an off-broadway venue in New York City. Seivert was even able to get the majority of the original cast from her time at Elon.
The play was also part of Sievert’s personal journey.
“I was also starting to accept my own queerness for the first time,” Sievert said. “I feel like my queerness brings me closer to God because I understand love in a different way.”
Sievert submitted “The City-Women” to the Carnegie Mellon University Literary Press and was announced as a finalist. The CMU Literary Press publishes literary works including poetry, drama and literary fiction. The play was selected through an anonymous-review process by a team of theater and dramaturgy experts.
Wendy Arons, director of the Center for the Arts in Society at CMU and the drama editor for the CMU Literary Press, was one of the lead experts and readers on the selection panel.
“I was surprised by how much this play captured my imagination and how much it captured me emotionally,” says Arons. “It’s this beautiful love story between two women who are living in a convent, but also a play that really asks questions about your relationship to faith and your relationship to religion.”
Arons praised Sievert’s storytelling, especially since she is a recent graduate.
“Mallorie just really beautifully renders the nuances of this,” Arons said. “It’s a play with a lot of grey, it’s not super black and white, and there are unexpected outcomes in it.”
Sievert is currently a swing on the national tour of Shucked, but plans on continuing to write.
“I never expected that my little passion project that I started working on would kind of turn into this and blossom into what could be, and I hope will be, a full career in playwriting,” Sievert says.
Madelyn Slattery ’24 graduated from Elon with a degree in drama theatre studies and English, bringing her off-broadway debut with “Mom Play.”
“It made me a lot closer with my mom, trying to ask her about her relationship with her mother, because that’s what it’s based on,” Slattery said.
Working hands-on in the casting and development process, Slattery said the off-broadway play allows for creative freedom that is not always found on Broadway.
“It’s about a mother and daughter who are reconnecting after some time apart. The daughter comes in with a lot of questions that she wants answered,” Slattery said. “It happens to also be in a prison, so it kind of just ups the stakes.”
The play was presented at the Circle Theater Festival, a festival known for its raw, unpolished talent and stories, according to their website. Slattery said “Mom Play” has resonated with audiences.
“Seeing strangers that I do not know react to the play because they see themselves in my characters,” Slattery said. “Laughing and then 30 seconds later, crying, which is what I intended. Seeing that actually have an impact and the story resonate with people that aren’t directly involved in my family. That’s just, it’s something I can’t wrap my head around.”
Her final scheduled performance of “Mom Play” ran on Oct. 19 at the AMT Theater, but Slattery said she is hopeful for an extended run.
“I’ve had interview questions where they’ve been like, well, ‘What’s your dream?’ ‘What’s your biggest goal?’ And I’m like, ‘Honestly, I’m living it right now,’” Slattery says. “I have my work off-broadway, and I have people studying lines that I’ve written and directors studying the script that I’ve put together. So, it feels like a dream right now.”