6:00 PM // Rehearsal Hall A – Third Floor
By Nurit Chinn, Brooklyn College
Directed by Avital Shira
Alliance Theatre presents I LOVE STRANGERS, one of four free, staged readings during the 2025 Alliance/Kendeda Week.
In three simultaneous stories extending from New York to the West Bank, six Jews reckon with their at-times magical, at-times destructive desire to be close to one another. I LOVE STRANGERS, inspired by Adrienne Rich’s poem “Yom Kippur 1984,” asks what it means to be a Jew in solitude and in community.
BIOS
Nurit Chinn is a playwright from London, currently based in Brooklyn. Her plays include: I Love Strangers (BC New Play Lab reading at Lincoln Center; Finalist, 2025 Alliance/Kendeda Competition; Semifinalist, Eugene O’Neill NPC 2024), Godbird (BAM Fisher, Weasel Festival 2024), Best of Three (Etcetera Theatre, Camden Fringe Festival) and Boaz, an adaptation of Nicole Krauss’s short story, “I Am Asleep But My Heart is Awake.”
Nurit is a 2024/5 New Jewish Culture Fellow and an alum of the Royal Court Theatre’s Writers’ Group. Her shorter works have been staged at VAULT Festival and Dixon Place. In 2025, she will be the Playwright-in-Residence at Centro Primo Levi in New York. Nurit teaches playwriting at Brooklyn College. BA: Yale University; MFA: Brooklyn College.
Avital Shira (she/her) is an Atlanta-based director who is passionate about the intersection of community, story, and social impact. She currently teaches in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech, where she is also leading the development of a new degree at the intersection of arts, innovation, and creative technologies, as part of her work as a strategist in the Office of the Associate Vice Provost for the Arts. Avital has an M.F.A. in Directing and certificate in arts administration from Boston University and a B.A. in Theater Studies and English from Yale University. She is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, an associate member of the SDC, and a member of the Out of Hand Theater advisory board. Avital loves developing new work, and recent development workshops include work by playwrights Sarah Mantell and E.M. Lewis.
