Ali’s screenplay version of her award-winning play about mental health and monsters, She’s Not There, has advanced to the next round in the Script Lab competition.
MacLean is a mental health advocate and also suffers from depression and general anxiety disorder. She wrote the film, which turns the rom com genre on its ear when a new relationship is threatened by a third party. Every night a sinister Form seeps from Anna’s walls and tries to kill her, though her boyfriend Rob cannot see it. The Form is the personification of depression and won’t let her go, making it the worst threesome ever.
The play won the John Gassner Playwriting Award, She MYC Arts Best Play and distinctions at the Kitchen Dog Theatre Festival, the Scribe Marsha A. Croyle Award , Pegauss Playlabs, the Gary Marshall Theatre New Works Festival, Women’s Work Canadian Festival, Victoria Ross Foundation, and the Screencraft Best Stage Play Competition. The workshop production at The Zephyr garnered MacLean a Broadway World Awards Best Writer and Best Director nomination. Selections from the play are published by Applause Books and Smith & Kraus.
Recently, Ali had a packed staged industry reading at Theatre West produced by Greenlight Women, which starred Carly Chaikin (Mr. Robot), Brent Morin (Merry Happy Whatever), Logan Marshall Green (Big Sky), Josh Meyers (Angie Tribeca) , Arye Gross (Castle), and Stephen Tobolowsky (The Goldbergs).
The reading featured a talk back with Ali, the two leads Brent and Carly, and a representative from NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Ali MacLean 