The screenplay adaptation of Ali MacLean’s award-winning play She’s Not There has advanced in the TSL Screenplay competition. The script has made it to the quarter-finals, placing it in the top 1,000 out of 13,000 entries.
Funny, poignant, experimental, and shocking, She’s Not There explores how mental illness can hijack a relationship. The personification of depression is portrayed as a literal monster. This story deceptively defies category in that it starts out as a straightforward meet-cute but then devolves into a horror show. The screenplay provocatively challenges the audience to look at a topic that is often swept under the rug.
She’s Not There is about Rob and Anna. When Rob meets Anna, he thinks she is the one. When Anna meets Rob, she thinks she can finally be happy. But there is a third party in the relationship that may destroy their union. Every night a shadowy Form seeps from the walls of Anna’s apartment and tries to kill her. She’s Not There anthropomorphizes depression and explores how it can devastate a person and the lives of those around them.
She’s Not There is the winner of the 2018 John Gassner prize and the 2019 She NYC Arts Festival Best Play. It was also a finalist for 2019 Kitchen Dog Theatre Festival, the Pegasus PlayLabs, The New American Voices Contest, the Ross Foundation Playwrights Program, the 2019 Scribe Marsha A. Croyle Award, the BroadwayWorld Best Director Award, and a semi-finalist for the Gary Marshall Theatre New Works Festival, and for the Screencraft Best Stage Play Competition.
Ali MacLean 