They’re Talkin’ About Me!

Playbill Announces Madame Couché’s Hot Tarts End the French Revolution at Serials Cycle 7

“Returning works are Madame Couché's Hot Tarts End the French Revolution for its ninth episode, written by Chloé Hayat; Catching Fire for its third episode, written by Allison Merkel; and MTV's Spookz! for its second episode, written by Josiah Thomas Turner. Full casting for this cycle will be announced at a later date.

Madame Couché's Hot Tarts End the French Revolution follows the title character, bawd of the second most profitable brothel in Paris, as she tries to regain customers during the French Revolution. But when Madame Couché co-founds a dildo operation, the streets of Paris turn bloody as the courtesans fight to become the most coveted prostitutes in Paris.”

DC Metro Reviews Cycle 5 of Serials and Madame Couché’s “Sidesplitting” Christmas Episode

“[T]he popular late-night episodic play competition SERIALS is back this season with The Fled – an artists-led Collective dedicated to providing a radically equitable, anti-racist, anti-oppressive platform for theater artists, with a revolutionary mission of celebrating, serving, and leading the community with joy. Mission accomplished… The latest series, which has been reclaimed and reimagined to prioritize BIPOC and Queer voices, premiered with the first installments on June 9-11, and recurs as a raucous bi-monthly night of short works featuring The Fled’s resident actors and some of NYC’s hottest rising playwrights and directors. The performers are divided into five teams that premiere five ten-minute installments of different plays, each with its own writer and director, with only six hours of rehearsal time. At the end of the show, the audience votes for its three favorites to return with a sequel the following week, while the other two are gone for good – but the teams come back to present an entirely new play… Now in Cycle 5, the shorts, presented in a style and format akin to sketch comedy, took a variety of over-the-top hilarious looks at occult rituals, demonic possession, murder, and hell (in both life and the afterlife), with an open-ended potential for an ongoing narrative… [Madame Couché was a] sidesplitting post-mortem mash-up, with songs, of Les Misérables, Moulin Rouge, and A Christmas Carol (Madame Couché’s Hot Tarts by Chloé Hayat, directed by Seemel, and starring Cohen, Spindler, Macy Lanceta, Sarah Alice Shull, Nicholas Turturro, and Nick Walther). Each and every [Serial] is ridiculously witty, directed with an eye on the creepy parodic laughs, and embraced by an across-the-board terrific cast of fully committed actors who nail the hysterical plots and deliver the demeanors, language, and accents of the farcical characters with spot-on timing, emotive voices and facial expressions, and expert physical comedy, in clever make-shift costumes that generate even more laughs…”

Chloé Hayat Has Her Hands in a lot of Pies

I got to talk with Kevin Russell Poole at Breaking & Entering Theater Collective this week! I’ve been conducting interviews of our Line-Up Artists and this week we thought we’d flip the script! I had such a fantastic time talking to Kev, and I’m excited to share this interview!!

“After a brief holiday-induced intermission, we’re back with another interview! To kick off the new year, I sat down via Zoom with Chloé to learn a bit more about the woman behind the Rap-Sheet interviews! Chloé has one of the strongest, most specific artistic tastes, that she answered every question almost before I could finish asking it. You’ll be hard-pressed to find an artist that is as excited to rave about other people’s work!

Kevin: When did you realize that you wanted to be a writer?

Chloé: (Laughs) That's a good question! I remember very distinctly when I was ten, I was obsessed with the American revolution, and there were all those Dear America books that were journals written by young women in historical time periods, so I had my parents buy me a little leather-bound journal and I wrote a first-person diary of a girl in the American revolution. And then when I was twelve, I went to a middle school for writers and artists, and I took my journal and turned it into a screenplay, and was like, “oh this is the format that I've been looking for” and I have not stopped playwriting since then. 

Kevin: What is the first play you ever wrote? 

Chloé: The first actual play I ever wrote was at Young Playwrights Inc. I love them, they saved my life, they’re an incredible organization. Anyway, I wrote a play about a teenage girl named Alonie, and that's important because it’s supposed to reference the fact that she's alone, so it’s spelled “Alone” with an “ie” at the end, and her– I swear to god– her boyfriend dies in a motorcycle accident, so she kills herself, as you would, obviously, if your boyfriend died in a motorcycle accident. And her ghost has to haunt her evangelical Christian father’s house, until they learn to communicate with each other. I have never met an evangelical Christian still to this day! 

Kevin: (Laughs)

Chloé: I don't have this problem with my parents. I’ve never ever been at odds with my parents. I don't know where this story came from. And so the only way that she can figure out to communicate with her father is when he listens to (long pause) Green Day and Nirvana. And so the title of this play is All Apologies (laughs) based on the Nirvana song.

Kevin: Oh Chloé.

Chloé: And if anyone wants to see a monologue that I read aloud from this, we over at After School Special [Theatre] did a challenge where we had to read our very first monologues out loud, and I hadn't read it in like ten years. It is so hard to get through, Kev.

Kevin: I've never wanted to see a play more than to see your fifteen-year-old self’s play.

Read more on Breaking & Entering’s website!

Space on Ryder Farm’s New Alumni Portal!

Space on Ryder Farm has developed an excellent resource for alumni of the Farm’s various residencies. Take a look at my fellow 2018 Green House Residents and I! (And thank you so much to Dylan Pickus for putting this resource together!)

2018 Ryder Farm Residents Announced

“My time on Ryder Farm has absolutely changed my outlook on my self and my career. I went in feeling like a student and left feeling like a professional with steps ahead that are clear, doable and exciting. I have never felt so capable and prepared to face the challenges of being an emerging playwright in NYC.” -Chloé Hayat, Greenhouse Resident '18

Chloé was honored to be a member of Ryder Farm’s 2018 Greenhouse Residency mentored by Playwright Adam Bock, and Dramaturg Ignacia Delgado along with fellow residents Nissy Aya, Edison Diaz, Yiloung Liu, Lorenzo Roberts, Kolya Shrayfer, Allison Zajac-Batell.

DC Metro reviews Serials @ The Flea

Of Chloé'- “Opening the latest cycle of cutting-edge comedy this week are four voting-eligible works: the inaugural episodes of My Father Is a Serial Killer by Chloé Hayat… the zany themes, chock full of pop-culture references, comprise… (Hayat’s) bloody parody of the horror genre in middle America… It’s all a lot of fun on a limited amount of money, with clever props, costumes, lighting, and sound design that put every well-earned dollar to remarkably good use.”

About Serials- “If you love creative new alternative theater that may be low in budget but is high in wit and talent, and want to be a part of the decision-making process that determines which stories will continue in upcoming weeks (“5 PLAYS GO IN. 3 PLAYS COME OUT. YOUR VOTE DECIDES”), then don’t miss your chance to see SERIALS @ The Flea… You’ll be glad that you did!”