Agnes Borinsky

Agnes Borinsky is a Jewish American playwright and author. She is the author of the young adult novel Sasha Masha, which is a coming-of-age story about a queer Jewish American girl. It led to her nomination for a Lambda Award in 2021. In 2022 she wrote and performed in A Song of Songs, which retold through a queer lens the biblical book Song of Songs. In 2023 her play The Trees premiered at Playwrights Horizons' theatre; the work imagines the lives of siblings whose bodies root into the earth in a Connecticut park. This work was compared to Waiting for Godot, Sagittarius Ponderosa and How to Live in a House on Fire.

Borinsky comes from Baltimore and her mother is from Boston.[1] She lived for some years in New York before she moved to Los Angeles. In 2012 she joined Donna Oblongata who was directing a play based on Les Miserables. The unconventional play was said to be unlicensed,[2] although the origanal book of Les Misérables is out of copyright.[3] The play was performed for a week on the east coast of America after the fifty-plus cast had rehearsed the work under a circus tent.[2] In 2016 she became an Artist-in-Residence at the University Settlement[4] where Alison Fleminger encouraged her to abandon the restrictions of writing a conventional play. As a result Borinsky led over twenty collaborators to create a participatory show called "Weird Classrooms". Her next project was a working group based in Brooklyn at the Bushwick Starr theatre.[2]

An early experimental theatre piece, Of Government, was commissioned in 2015 and performed in 2017.[5] It was reviewed by the New York Times as having a "globe-crossing plot that is as twisty and slippery as ... an eel", with an opening musical number reminiscent of The Little Mermaid.[6] Borinsky's first novel was published in 2020.[7][8] Sasha Masha is a coming-of-age story about a queer Jewish American girl, but, according to Kirkus Reviews, unlike other books of the genre "doesn’t arrive at a clear resolution possessing all the answers, instead displaying a sense of peace with the ongoing journey ahead".[7][9] The same year Borinsky established The Working Group for a New Spirit, which brought together creative practitioners online during the COVID-19 pandemic to discuss texts.[2][10]

In 2022 Borinsky retold the biblical book Song of Songs through a queer perspective, which debuted at the Bushwick Starr, with the writer also in a central role, and was directed by Machel Ross.[11][12] A participatory work, audience members were invited to place paper offerings on an altar, referred to by the reviewer as a "shrine to the dead".[13] The New York Times described the work as "deeply affecting" and one that led the "audience toward a meditative consideration of their own mourning for those they have lost, to death or otherwise".[13]

In 2023 her play The Trees premiered at Playwrights Horizons' theatre; the work imagines the lives of siblings whose bodies root into the earth in a Connecticut park.[14][15][16] Directed by Tina Satter,[17] the play deals with themes of mutual care, community, queer liberation and civil rights.[18] The New York Theatre Guide criticised Borinsky's plot, but also compared the work to Waiting for Godot.[17] In a similarly mixed review, the New York Times described how in the play "Borinsky invites guesses; the problem is that we might not care enough for any of the people or ideas onstage to bother hazarding them".[19] The work has been compared to Sagittarius Ponderosa by MJ Kaufman and How to Live in a House on Fire by Kari Barclay.[20] The three works examine the impact of (wild)fire through queer perspectives.[20] Indeed, Borinsky's work has been discussed as part of a "trans theatre" movement.[21]

• 2021: Lambda Award nominee for Sasha Masha[22]

Borinsky is Jewish American; she is also transgender.[23][8] She lives in Los Angeles.[24]

• Sasha Masha (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020)[25]

• Of Government (2017)[6]
• A Song of Songs (2022)[11]
• The Trees (2023)[14]

• Interview: "I aspire to be a bimbo" with Agnes Borinsky