A New Play by Local Playwright Rachel Luann Strayer!
The Lancaster Dramatists’ Platform presents a reading of Laertes Dies Too, a new play by local playwright Rachel Luann Strayer, on Saturday afternoon, March 21st, at 2:00 p.m. at the Franklin & Marshall College Philadelphia Alumni Writers House, 633 College Avenue in Lancaster. The event is co-sponsored by the Writers House and Creative Works of Lancaster.
Adam wakes up in a bathtub, unsure where he is or how he got there, though he strongly suspects he is dead. Enter Laertes and his sister, Ophelia, (yes, from Hamlet) to guide him on his journey through what may (or may not) be the afterlife. Interrupted by his demanding mother and someone who may (or may not) be the lost love of his life, Adam tries to peel back the layers of this tiny, special hell he’s landed in. It’s possible that Laertes (or perhaps Ophelia?) holds the key to what is “in his memory locked.” The question is whether or not he is prepared to face it.
Laertes Dies Too is a companion piece to Strayer’s 2013 play, Drowning Ophelia. It seeks to explore the origins of abuse within families and the trauma it leaves behind.
Strayer’s play will be directed by Iyla Stebbins and presented readers theater style. The cast includes Noah Askew, Greyson Yousif, Kat Anne Thorpe, Georgie Staley, and Madi Burt.
Rachel Luann Strayer is a published and internationally produced playwright, director and theatre artist. Her first full-length play, Drowning Ophelia, has been performed across the US and internationally in Canada, Bulgaria, Serbia, and, most recently, at the prestigious Sibiu International Theater Festival in Romania. Her full-length plays include Songbird (Premiere Stages Finalist, Henley Rose Finalist), The Last Daughter (Jane Chambers Award for Feminist Playwriting Finalist), A Decameron for the Apocalypse, After Jane, and The Poe Asylum. Her most recent play, Laertes Dies Too, was a semi-finalist for both the 2025 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and the 2024 Premiere Stages Play Festival at Kean University, before receiving its first staged reading at The Container Globe in Detroit. Rachel’s short plays and monologues have been produced in the United States, Canada, and Norway, through companies like The Bechdel Group, BATS Theatre, The Femme Fatale Play Festival, and Creative Works of Lancaster. Her monologues Bloody Mary and The Bell Witch were performed as a part of Gretna Theatre’s Whispers in the Dark last fall. Rachel has an MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University. She and her husband, Jonathan, reside in Lancaster, PA. www.RLStrayerWrites.com
The March 21 reading is free and open to the public, with donations accepted to help cover expenses. For more information about the event, the Platform, or to donate online, please visit www.lancasterdramatists.org or email lancasterdramatists@gmail.com.
