Ovid Colorado. 3 days by the side of the road. A metamorphosis.

Ray skips town on a mysterious mission, only to come back home and find that his Eloise has been sitting by the side of the road for three days‚ as long as he's been gone. But what better place for a 16-year-old girl to figure out who she is and where she stands in the scheme of things than under the big sky that stretches across a great rolling plain, her painted face exposed to the forces of weathering from sun and wind and sudden violent rain? A lyrical, bittersweet tale of a coming of age.

production

 • Integrity, Portland, Oregon, 2008
 • Roadworks Productions, Chopin Theater, Chicago, 2003
• New Georges, Ohio Theater, NYC, 2000 (premiere production)
directed by Alexandra Aron; sets by Marsha Ginsberg; video by Sue-Ellen
Stroum; with Black-Eyed Susan, Maria Thayer & Chris Payne Gilbert

 

academic/young artist program production

• Aquinas College, Michigan, 2007
• Sewanee, University of the South, 2000
• The Hangar Theatre Lab, 2000

development

• readings, Teatro Vascello, Rome and Ferrara, 2000 (translated into Italian)
   produced by Teatro dei Contrari, Rome, 1999
• reading, HBO Stage to Screen, NYC, 1998
• reading, theaterworkers New Community, NYC, 1990

publication

complete play
Playscripts, 2005

excerpts
• 2008 Actor's Choice, Monologues for Men, Playscripts
• 2008 Actor's Choice, Monologues for Teens, Playscripts
• 60 Seconds to Shine, Volumbe 2: 221 One-Minute Monologues for Men, Smith & Kraus, 2006
• 60 Seconds to Shine: 221 One-Minute Monologues for Women, Smith & Kraus 2006
• Best Women's Stage Monologues 2005, Smith & Kraus
• Best Stage Scenes 2005, Smith & Kraus

press
 

Charming actors make 'Eloise & Ray' a delight  Chicago Sun Times
"A feminist Sam Shepard with a gift for complicated narrative—a writer who can conjure something between a dreamy road movie and a theatrical coming-of-age tale, and who can piece these elements together in the style of a jagged ballad for guitar, complete with variations and refrains."

"...a sense of America that is not only intensely heightened, but verges on the mythic in the manner of classic movies such as "The Last Picture Show" and "Days of Heaven."

"...a painterly, beautifully executed use of film, movement and poetic dialogue...keeps you watching and listening, and ready for surprises... You will follow her characters to the bus station and beyond. What more can you ask?"
 

A 'Ray' of Hope in the Universe  Chicago Sun Times
"‘With Eloise and Ray, I really tried to tap into the rhythm of the words and to understand how the story moves back and forth in time,’ Rubinstein said. ‘Its rhythms change, depending on where you are in the story, and by physicalizing and in the opposites of things, so I was particularly fascinated by the tenderness vs. the savageness of the scenes in this play.’"
 

And Then There Were Teens  Village Voice
"A finely detailed, layered portrait...a bittersweet, lyrical account of a love-starved survivor in a vast, lonely place."

"Fleischmann's language is down-home poetic without waxing precious. By repetition and accretion, she weaves the picture of Eloise's courtship, her past, her present. Scenes overlap; simultaneous monologues battle to a crescendo, creating a sense of Eloise's tumultuous internal life...Everything comes together in the authentically realized denouement, which reverberates with the layered sorrows of Eloise."