The Frozen Section (a comedy on aisle 9)by Lisa D'Amour
World Premiere
Performances
Mar 28, 2025 -
Apr 19, 2025
The Play
In a liminal, existential grocery store, a disorganized collection of bewildered shoppers and workers find comfort in the carefully organized aisles, in the feeling of cold air on one’s face when opening a door in the frozen section.
But the supermarket feels almost empty. Because: Instacart? These collected souls seem so removed from one another, so far from the messy origin of things. Salad mix sweating in a clam shell? How did we get here? In the back alley a cashier converses with a coyote; in Dairy, civilization dances with the wild.
To be adrift solo is one thing, to be so among found community is quite another. And that’s not nothing. Sometimes it can seem like everything.
World Premiere.
The Playwright
LISA D'AMOUR
is a playwright and interdisciplinary artist. She received her M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a core member of the Playwrights' Center and a recent alumna of New Dramatists.
Lisa is an Obie award-winning playwright and one half of PearlDamour, an interdisciplinary performance company she runs with Katie Pearl. Her work has been produced by Theaters such as Steppenwolf Theatre, Children's Theater Company, Clubbed Thumb, the Walker Arts Center, and the Kitchen. D'Amour received her MFA in playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin and currently splits her time between Brooklyn and New Orleans.. M.F.A., Playwriting, University of Texas at Austin, 1996; B.A. in Theater and English, Millsaps College, Jackson, MS, 1991. 2005/6 TCG Playwright's Residency for work with Infernal Bridegroom Productions; 2004/5 Rockfeller MaP grant for LandMaRK; 2003 Village Voice OBIe award for Nita and Zita, written and directed by Lisa D'Amour; Playlabs participant (Playwrights' Center), Summer 2003 and 1999; McKnight advancement Grant from the Playwrights' Center, 2002-03, 1998-99; A.S.K. New Play Retreat participant, March, 2002; MacDowell Colony Fellow, Peterborough, NH, September, 1999; Member, New Dramatists, New York, NY, 1999; Career Opportunity Grant, Video Documentation Grant, Minnesota State Arts Board, 1999; Jerome/Intermedia Performance art Commission, Minneapolis, MN 1998-99; Jerome Fellowship for emerging Playwrights, the Playwrights' Center, 1997-98; James Michener Playwriting Fellow, the University of Texas at Austin, '94-95, '95-96, '96-97
Her plays have been commissioned and produced by theaters across the country, including The Women's Project, Playwrights' Horizons, Children's Theater Company (Minneapolis), Steppenwolf Theater Company (Chicago) and the Royal National Theater (London). She is the recipient of the 2008 Alpert Award for the Arts in theater and the 2011 Steinberg Playwright Award. Lisa has also received fellowships from the Jerome and McKnight Foundations, an independent artist commission from NYSCA (for Stanley 2006, created with her brother Todd D'Amour) and an NEA / TCG Playwrights' Residency (to create Hide Town with Infernal Bridegroom Productions).
In 2008, Lisa wrote and directed a performance for visual artist SWOON's Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea, a flotilla of six boats created from salvaged materials that navigated the Hudson River in August 2009, performing in riverfront parks from Troy, NY to New York City.
D'Amour sits on The Catastrophic Theatre's advisory board. She lives with her husband, Brendan Connelly, in New Orleans and Brooklyn.
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