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 writer from London and Tel Aviv, currently based in Brooklyn. Her plays include THIS BIG CELL (Finalist, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Come to the Table Residency), I LOVE STRANGERS (Finalist, Alliance/Kendeda 2024-2025; Semifinalist, O'Neill Theatre Center National Playwrights Conference 2024) and BEST OF THREE (Camden Fringe Festival). Her work has been staged at Lincoln Center, the Camden Fringe Festival, VAULT Festival, Dixon Place, and Yale University. She was a member of the Royal Court Theatre’s 2020 Writers’ Group, and a journalist and activist in Israel-Palestine, winning the 2020 NIF/Shatil Social Justice Fellowship, and writing and editing for the newspaper Haaretz. Nurit completed her BA in English at Yale University, where she won the Seymour L. Lustman Memorial Prize. Now, she teaches playwriting and composition at Brooklyn College, where she is soon to finish her MFA.
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.
