Backstitch Residency 2025
Amy Staats
Artist Bio
Amy Staats is an actor, writer, and producer, a 2025-26 WP Playwriting Fellow, and a 2018 Tow Playwright in Residence through the Atlantic Theater Company. Her Russian spy/gymnastics dramedy DEFECTED is in development with MO Studios and Olive Productions. Amy enjoys writing characters that actors are thirsty to play with a momentum that drives forward like whitewater rafting. The world premiere of her play EDDIE AND DAVE had an extended run off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theater and co-starred Amy as ‘Eddie Van Halen.” Her one-act play, THROWS OF LOVE, has received multiple productions and is the winner of the Samuel French Short Play Festival. Other plays include BAT KITTY (The Momentum Festival), I HOPE SHE’LL BE OKAY (New Works Now), and HANDS (developed at ATC and SPACE at Ryder Farm). As an actor, Amy most recently performed the lead in the Broadway production of THE THANKSGIVING PLAY (u/s three performances).
Artist Statement
“This rudely classic single-set play begins in a haunted house living room and is slowly brought back to life throughout the play. Once well-kept and sunny, this living room has been unloved and unkept since Nora left, and three children raised themselves with an aging housekeeper and a depressed father. As drawers are opened, childhood things come pouring out. Nora returns, and, unfair as it seems to her children, the light returns with her. Thematically, I am interested in how people function after being abandoned and what happens when the habits they acquire to save themselves as children become detrimental in adulthood. I will explore the primal urge in all of us to give and receive love and how both acts rare equally necessary. If either gets blocked, our love, like a stream, can trickle off this way and that, but if the stones are lifted, the water, once again, streams through. This play will be roaring and radical not because of her form, but because of the specificity within her form. The style of the humor is grounded and hyper-realistic. Funny scenes should be played like a drama, dramatic scenes should be played with a light touch and humor.”
ABOUT THE WORK
​​In a moment of weakness, Emma impulsively intercepts a surprise telegram from her long-lost mother to her dying father and replies; she reveals all the siblings are home and asks her mother to “please come.” The siblings are triggered back to their childhood selves and struggle to remain in control of their feelings as they brace for their long-lost mother’s possible arrival. Nora shows up when they least expect it, hungry, tattered, proud, and looking for solace. All three psyches—built from the memory of a young Nora abandoning them—are threatened by this flesh-and-blood person standing before them. But the hunger for maternal connection is intense, and even the most stoic hate dissolves at the sight of the wizened woman, eroding the foundation of their lives, creating chaos, and forcing them to start over.
2025 BACKSTICTH ARTISTS
