bursting
saturated
tender
Playwright - Director - Designer - Producer - Songwriter
Video: Starring Vi To; Filmed by Jordan Chafe; Directed and Edited by Ella Talerico; for promotional use for Fruit. by Ella Talerico at the New York Theater Festival, 2023.
Ella Talerico is a lover of all things creative, collective, and alive; a passionate playwright, director, songwriter, poet, filmmaker, producer, actor, and designer. Her love of many art forms defines her craft, with each form influencing the other. She is currently based in DC as Studio Theater’s Artistic Producing Fellow for the 2025-2026 year.
She is the recipient of the Marilyn Swartz Seven Prize in Playwriting (alien(E)) and the Molly Thatcher Kazan Prize in Theater (for Directing). She has a BA from Vassar College in Drama, and has also studied puppetry at Sandglass Theater and playwriting at the O’Neill and NYU.
Recent Writing Credits Include: Fruit. (NYTF, Vassar College), Salt. (Steersman Short Play Fest, Gallery 40 Beyond the Curves, Vassar College), Sandbags (Commissioned, Williams College), Biophilia (Williams College), A Toaster, Some Breadcrumbs, and a Mediocre Answer (Commissioned by Ensworth High School), Alien(e) (Vassar College), Wormball (Vassar College), Birds with Orange Bellies (Production 2023), It’s Something for Sure! (Vassar College, Ensworth High School), Something Nothing Diverging / Strawberry Whiskey Running (Production 2021).
Recent Directing Credits Include: Hello My Name Is (Vassar College Experimental Theater), Sudanese Play (Steerman Workshop Reading Series), The Ghost Sonata (Vassar College Experimental Theater), Fury (Vassar College Experimental Theater), Fruit. (NYTF), Wormball (Vassar College), Birds with Orange Bellies (Production 2023), It’s Something for Sure! (Vassar College, Ensworth High School), Something Nothing Diverging / Strawberry Whiskey Running (Production 2021).
I crave to discover all the ways in which individuals and communities create beauty inside ugliness, create stability inside insanity, create hope inside despair. I’m interested in how, why, and where humanity finds the fortitude to search for light and clarity in a world full of pain and confusion. I have an undying curiosity in the beautiful intersection between laughing and crying, and an obsession with the irreconcilable opposites that pervade our existence: the unknown v.s. the known, the uncontrollable v.s. the controlled, and the dead v.s. the living. I believe in theater that believes in humanity, igniting fires of hope, sparking individual and communal revolution. This belief spurs me to create over and over again. I believe the first step to change is having faith that we are capable of change. That we are miraculous in the ways we cope with and overcome our pain. My work is saturated with color and theatricality; it’s fantastical, strange, and explosive. It’s weird. It laughs at itself. It sits in the beautiful place where the cosmos meet the dirt and muck of everyday life. It’s where Waiting for Godot meets Hamlet Machine meets Fleabag meets The Fantasticks.