World Premiere of “Eat Me” by Talene Monahon Rounds Out 2025/26 Season

Play Anchors the 28th Pacific Playwrights Festival

South Coast Repertory (Artistic Director David Ivers and Managing Director Suzanne Appel) announced the world premiere of Eat Me by Talene Monahon will join the 2025/26 season schedule. Directed by Caitlin Sullivan, the play fills the previously to-be-announced slot on SCR’s schedule, April 12-May 3, 2026 on the Julianne Argyros Stage.

Eat Me is a wildly imaginative play by one of The New York Times’ Rising Theatre Stars of 2023. Chris loves fine cuisine. He spends hours in a corner of the internet, where like-minded foodies share their extraordinary culinary experiences. Stevie doesn’t eat fish with souls, Beatrice and Jen just baked a flax loaf and Cindy might have salad, later. As she explores the foodie obsession, Monahon brings audiences into a world where everyone is longing for something that makes them feel full—and when the meal is over, maybe they’ll be transformed.

“Talene Monahan’s Eat Me is the perfect complement to the entirety of our season’s offerings,” Ivers said. “A deft and skilled writer, Talene’s play manages to address a rare eating disorder, personifies a Reddit thread and begs us to face our increasing obsessions with consumption—both literal and digital. I am inspired that Talene, a rising star in the American theatre and one heck of a great person, will be with us launching the world premiere of Eat Me during SCR’s 2026 Pacific Playwrights Festival.”

Eat Me was presented as a staged reading at the 2025 Pacific Playwrights Festival. Its unique premise, hilarious interludes featuring a character called “The Gourmand,” and exploration into how we look at obsession and desires engaged audiences at SCR’s three-day showcase featuring readings and productions of new plays from some of the most talented playwrights in the country. The play will be further developed through The Lab@SCR prior to its world premiere.

“Eat Me promises audiences an adventure,” said Andy Knight, the Director of The Lab@SCR. “It’s a play that explores some of the most insatiable human conditions—obsession, anticipation, and desire—and the lengths we’ll go to feed them. Talene Monahon creates a bizarre and slippery world to tell her story; a world that inevitably leads both its characters and the audience down a rabbit hole where reality and fantasy collide. Audiences can expect the unexpected in Eat Me, a funny, curious, and ultimately tender play.”

SCR will announce the cast and creative team at a later time.

A Brooklyn-based playwright and actor known for bringing a nuanced and engaging lens to little-known historical events, Monahon pursued theatre after winning the English Speaking Union’s National Shakespeare Competition while in high school. Winning the competition, which was judged by famed actor Gene Wilder, sent Monahon to Oxford for a summer studying Shakespeare. Her work has been produced Off-Broadway at Bedlam Theater, New Ohio and MCC, regionally at Trinity Repertory, Shakespeare Theater of D.C. and Peterborough Players, and internationally at Jermyn Street Theater in London.

Monahon’s The Good John Proctor, was named one of The New Yorker’s “Top 10 Best Plays of 2023,” and her How to Load a Musket was tabbed as one of “The 10 Best Theater Productions of 2020” by TheaterMania.

As an actor, Monahon has performed in new plays at Roundabout Theater, Atlantic Theater Company, MCC, Playwright’s Horizons, Huntington Theater Company, La Jolla Playhouse and Clubbed Thumb, among others. She holds a B.A. as a Senior Fellow from Dartmouth College.

The New York City-based Sullivan collaborated with Monahon on the world premiere of The Good John Proctor at Off-Broadway’s Bedlam Theatre Company. Her other directing credits include The Antiquities (Playwright’s Horizons and Goodman Theater), the Obie Award-winning The Keep Going Songs (LCT3), Find Me Here (Clubbed Thumb), Nova (The Lyceum Edinburgh and Pemberly, WORK HARD HAVE FUN MAKE HISTORY (Clubbed Thumb) and Sanctuary City (New York Theatre Workshop), among others.

Sullivan was a founding member and artistic director of Seattle’s critically acclaimed Satori Group, an alum of the Drama League Directors Project, and a former Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow. She is a graduate of Williams College.

Tickets for Eat Me go on sale Jan. 5, 2026, but may be purchased now as part of an SCR subscription. Tickets may be purchased online at www.scr.org or by phone at (714) 708-5555. More information is available at www.scr.org.