We are so proud to celebrate Julia Lederer’s publication with Scirocco. WITH LOVE AND A MAJOR ORGAN is a witty and unique romantic comedy with lots of heart and broad appeal, examining love in the age of technology, and the universal and trying task of reconciling the head and the heart.
A comedy with guts – about pheromones, fate and public transit.
Anabel gives her heart to a man she meets on the subway and he disappears with it. Her limbs begin to fall asleep. George is on the run but keeps getting distracted by romantic comedies. He begins to blame his mother. Mona resorts to seeking therapy from GoogleShrink, forcing herself to speed-date, and taking in a stranger who appears on her doorstep clad in purple plaid.
Selected Press from productions in the US and Canada:
“Theatre that lets go of realism and embraces the joys of language…. wonderfully weird, piercingly poetic and unexpectedly moving .. Isn’t that what theatre should do?” – Hank Sartin, Crain’s Chicago
“A brash, poetic and fiercely original voice that’s equal parts pee-your-pants funny and get-out-that-Kleenex poignant…Keep your eye on Lederer, whose got huge potential. NNNNN/5” – Glenn Sumi, NOW Magazine
“[A] show that stands out above the others… just about perfect… takes us on a roller coaster of joyous and torturous emotions with which we can all identify, but not quite clearly express… rises to a rare level of universal truth, all while making us laugh. A lot.” – Christopher Kidder-Mostrom, NewCity Stage, Chicago
“Lederer has a deliciously twisted way with words…… genuinely original… a dead sprint and the end result is pure elation mixed with a bit of dry heaving.” – Kevin Greene, Chicago Stage Standard
Named “Outstanding New Play” & “Outstanding Production” by NOW Magazine, and awarded “Best of Fringe” and “Patron’s Pick” at the 2012 Toronto Fringe Festival.
Playwrights Guild of Canada Catalogue Listing.
An internationally acclaimed playwright, Julia’s work has been described as, “delightfully original” (The Toronto Star) and “endlessly quotable” (Torontoist). WITH LOVE AND A MAJOR ORGAN premiered at the 2012 Toronto Fringe Festival where is was “Best of the Fringe”, then part of the Next Stage Theatre Festival. Its US premier was in 2015, as part of Strawdog Theatre’s 28th Season in Chicago. Julia’s other plays include: The Best Plan for Living Happily (Toronto’s VideoFag; presented in the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Alaska), Frame (New York’s Seven Collective; Toronto’s Alumnae Theatre), Reality Theatre (recipient of Driftwood Theatre’s Jury Prize), Boxed In, and her first play for young audiences, It’s Nothing. Her short play, Reality Vision, will be published in One Minute Plays: A Practical Guide to Tiny Theatre (Steve Ansell and Rose Burnett Bonczek, Routledge Press, 2017). Julia also writes for film and television. Her script, Witch Office, placed in the top 15% in AMC’s one-hour pilot competition at the 2015 Austin Film Festival. She was the Social Media Creative Consultant for Smokebomb’s multi-award-winning webseries,