A senior Writing and Publishing major will have her original comedy presented Saturday in a staged reading through Pittsburgh’s City Theatre.
West Homestead native Erin Brody’s play “The Battle of the Exes” will be presented at 4 p.m. Saturday via Zoom. The staged reading will be free and open to the public.
Brody’s play is part of the Young Playwright’s Festival Honorable Mention Readings. “The Battle of the Exes” is a comedy about two jilted lovers — one an angry wedding crasher, the other a brokenhearted beta male — and their unlikely pairing to get revenge at their exes’ wedding.
The play started life in a playwriting workshop at Lincoln Park last year. “This play was received well in the class I had to write to for,” Brody recalls. “A lot of people encouraged me to revise it — which I did, several times.”
The dialogue between the two feuding protagonists is a high point, and Brody says that is a particular area of focus.
“As an actor, I’ve always admired other people’s scripts, and how clever they were,” she says. “so it’s cool to be on the other side of that.”
Brody has been a writing and publishing major since she entered Lincoln Park as a freshman in 2017. She is currently the editor-in-chief of SIREN Media Group, which oversees the school newspaper, The SIREN. She is also the prose editor of Pulp, Lincoln Park’s award-winning literary and art journal.
However, she also has several credits onstage and behind the scenes at Lincoln Park.
She has appeared in two previous One-Act Festivals at the school, and had roles in two additional one-act plays for last year’s festival, which was canceled because of the pandemic. She also served as assistant stage manager of Frozen Jr., and worked on technical crews for The Addams Family and Snow White: The Ballet. She is in her third year as a member of the International Thespian Society.
Brody, who also volunteers as a youth mentor at The Center in Midland, plans to attend Saint Vincent College this fall. There, she will major in English, in the Publishing track, and will also pursue her teaching certification.
Meanwhile, playwriting is something she plans to continue. She will continue to submit work to contests and for possible production opportunities, and hopes to have the chance to have her work produced on campus.
“I don’t know if it’ll take me anywhere big,” Brody says of playwriting. “But even if I just have it for myself, I’ll be happy.”
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To see Erin Brody’ s play, “The Battle of the Exes,” join the Zoom meeting link below at 4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 13. No registration is required.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81723435249
Meeting ID: 817 2343 5249
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