NICOLE
STREGER
Actor | Singer | Playwright
At 8 years old, I was devastated the Harry Potter series had ended. Naturally, I wrote the eighth book, "Albus Potter and the Resurrection Stone." I soon adapted it into a play and forced my fellow classmates to surrender their recess for a week to rehearse. I was super popular!
A decade later, rediscovering playwriting and screenwriting at Northwestern University under the guidance of Laura Schellhardt and Julie Marie Myatt has changed the trajectory of my life and redefined my love for storytelling.
My writing influences include Taylor Mac, Diablo Cody, Theresa Rebeck, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Aaron Sorkin, to name a few. Their rhythmic voices have bled together and fed my craft these past four years of study; it's that tonal tug-a-war between absurdism and realism, comedy and drama, camp and sincerity, mess and control, that I strive to resemble in my work.
This fall, I am embarking on the year long Advanced Playwriting Sequence with Laura Schellhardt to complete my next full length play.
CHAINSAW TITS
Okay so what if there's this girl, right? But she has chainsaws for tits?
Chainsaw Tits is a two-act absurdist fairytale, tackling rape culture and generational trauma through a campy, supernatural lens. The story follows Kinley, a girl whose mother—armed with a twisted sense of protection—surgically attached chainsaws to her chest at the first sight of puberty, wiring them directly to her nervous system. Ruh roh! Every emotion triggers the roar of the saws, rendering Kinley a walking murder weapon.
On the run from her isolated home, overbearing mother, and the depths of her own power, the sheltered Kinley stumbles into stardom at Harriet’s Horror House. Here, she strikes an unlikely deal with Jade, an eccentric coworker who offers to help her master her burdensome saws.
But to gain control, she first must lose it.
Pictured above, Grace Petersen as Kinley. Premier cast also included Alexis Diaz-Waterman as Jade, Cannon Cook as Everybody Else. Director: Lila Marooney. Producer: Ryan Lien, Sit & Spin Productions.
Guitarists: Paris Bozutti, Lucas Oktay. Sound Design: Paris Bozutti. Lighting Design: Lili Tarnapool. Scenic Design: Grace Kulas. Costume Design: Alex DeVito. Props Design: Zoe Davis. Photos: Seeger Gray, Stephen Peng.
SUITCASE PLAY
It's 4:30AM. Ricky must catch a flight in 90 minutes.
For freshman college move in. Ricky hasn't started packing.
Sleep deprived and trapped in Ricky's pig pen of a bed room, a family of resentful, horrible communicators and out-of-touch "artists" must come together for the first time in forever to get Ricky out the door for their next chapter.
Suitcase Play, a 90 minute family dramady, grapples with the internalized misogyny festering in mother-daughter relationships and the beautiful atrocities that bloom from being raised by actors. Secrets unravel as this fractured family races against time to say the things they never could say, and do the things they never could do. God they want to love so badly. They’re really trying. Just, ugh. Sarcasm is sooo much easier.
Dripping with gender fuckery, queer discoveries, spontaneous haircuts, titty-tape, delicious guilt, and decadent regret, Suitcase Play shines a light on an actor household overflowing with wigs, songs, accents, breakdowns, and, at times, a sprinkle of sincerity.
I'm convinced a daughter's lifelong purpose is to understand their mother.
This play is me scratching the surface.
Pictured above, Lucy Lewis as Stage Directions/Gremlin. Premier staged reading cast included Veronica Szafoni as Ricky, Nastia Goddard as Jen, Lena Moore
as Rosie, Kieran Rowe as Rob. Director: Frances Mary McKittrick. Producer: Lexi Yoon Kim, Vertigo Productions. Dramaturg: Ani Kabillo. Photos: Ani Kabillo.
