El Cíclope

A Full-Length Play with Parables, 4 Women, 2 Men

2018 Finalist for Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwriting Conference

2018 Finalist for the Moss Hart & Kitty Carlisle Hart New Play Initiative (Top 8 out of 1,200)

The gist: Award-Winning author Cori Cliff returns to her hometown of Janesville, WI during an international book tour promoting her latest work- a novella titled El Cíclope. The story is a memoir masked as fiction depicting her life as once Homecoming Queen Courtney Cliff and her relationships between two men: her high school boyfriend Sean Davis, and her outcast Spanish tutor Mateo Long-Gutierrez (a first-generation Mexican-American foster child). As the plot blossoms (and wilts), Courtney must face some of the world’s harshest and most beautiful truths, forcing the young girl to flee her home town and ultimately transform into her now unrecognizable self. The play is inspired by Latin-American folklore.

Features Spanish Translations by Octavio Rodriguez

Reading at Samuel French Bookshop- June 2017, Directed by Rhonda Kohl

Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center:

“It is the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s pleasure to recommend Alex Burkart and their play El Cíclope as a finalist for our 2018 National Playwrights Conference. The play rose through a competitive, anonymous, multileveled selection process that took nearly nine months to execute. As one of 53 finalists out of more than 1,420 submissions, the strength of its writing has allowed this work to prosper in such a competitive selection process. Our readers deeply responded to this coming-of-age narrative in both its epistolary method of storytelling and call for readers to reflect on their own mentors as well. ”

To read the entire script please e-mail me at [email protected]. Please note that all my plays are protected under copyright laws. For production rights inquiries please e-mail my agent Peregrine Whittlesey at [email protected].