Jonathan Alexandratos

Undergraduate Discipline

Theatre

Graduate Program

MFA Theatre Program

Alexandratos (they/them) is a non-binary storyteller based in New York City, whose work typically lives at the intersection of pop culture, queerness, and catharsis. Being an Ingram New works Playwright at Nashville Repertory Theatre from 2015- 2016, Alexandratos explored their paternal ancestral past by bringing bootleg superhero action figures alive onstage to tell the immigration story of their maternal grandmother in an immersive theatre experiment called We See What Happen. When that season ended, their animal allegory about friendship and Star Wars action figures, titled Duck, opened in Strasbourg, France, which allowed them to work with an international team on their deeply personal story. In the following year, We See What Happen won the Greenhouse Award from Strange Sun Theater, and they received a New Works Grant from the Queens Council on the Arts to tell their mother's immigration story. In doing so, Alexandratos explored what it means to be Burrnesha, an Albanian gender in which someone assigned female at birth transitions to take on a socially masculine comportment and status. Out of that, they devoted an entire play, Turning Krasniqi, to the experience—one deeply close to Alexandratos's life as a non-binary person who is partly of Albanian descent. This play won the 2020 Parity Commission from Parity Productions and is now in development. Beyond the stage, Alexandratos writes academic essays about toys. They created the first edited collection devoted entirely to scholarly work around action figures, Articulating the Action Figure: Essays on the Toys and Their Messages, out now from McFarland. They are currently working on a book about the cultural impact of fast-food kid’s meal toys. All of this serves Alexandratos's belief that the small, neglected, or marginalized aspects of life are actually among the most important threads in its tapestry—and they use all tools at their disposal to highlight that. SLC, 2022–

Undergraduate Courses 2024-2025

Theatre

Act One, Scene One: Beginning to Find Yourself in the World of Diverse, Modern Playwriting

Open, Component—Year

THEA 5616

If you’re new to playwrighting and looking for a safe, warm classroom to experiment with your burgeoning love of the craft, this is the place for you. We’ll make our own plays—but we’ll do it informed by the diversity that is on our stages right here, right now. Playwrights like David Henry Hwang, Sarah Ruhl, Dominique Morisseau, Nilaja Sun, C. Julian Jimenez, and many others will be the voices that we elevate as we find our own. A combination of analysis and (primarily) creative workshop, Act One, Scene One is a great place to start your first (or second, or third, or fourth) play.

Faculty

Queering Stages With Trans and Non-Binary Pages: Advanced Playwrighting With a Focus on Trans and Non-Binary Work

Advanced, Component—Year

THEA 5783

Prerequisite: one yearlong playwriting class

If you’re a playwright searching for a safe place to create and/or engage trans and non-binary work, perhaps inventing your own along the way, then this is a class for you. We’ll look to myriad texts—from Alok’s Instagram posts, to C. Julian Jimenez’s plays, to She-Ra, to Joseph Campbell (critically), to K. Woodzick’s Non-Binary Monologues Project, to Disclosure, to Vivek Shraya, to much, much more—in order to synthesize what already informs some trans and non-binary work with our own creative desires. As long as you feel invested in trans and non-binary work and a classroom of respect, you’re welcome here. Before I came out as non-binary, survey classes about trans and non-binary work showed me the breadth of the umbrella. I hope to do the same here.

Faculty

Graduate Courses 2024-2025

MFA Theatre

Act One, Scene One: Beginning to Find Yourself in the World of Diverse, Modern Playwriting

Component—Year

5616

If you’re new to playwrighting and looking for a safe, warm classroom to experiment with your burgeoning love of the craft, this is the place for you. We’ll make our own plays—but we’ll do it informed by the diversity that is on our stages right here, right now. Playwrights like David Henry Hwang, Sarah Ruhl, Dominique Morisseau, Nilaja Sun, C. Julian Jimenez, and many others will be the voices that we elevate as we find our own. A combination of analysis and (primarily) creative workshop, Act One, Scene One is a great place to start your first (or second, or third, or fourth) play.

Faculty

Queering Stages With Trans and Non-Binary Pages: Advanced Playwrighting With a Focus on Trans and Non-Binary Work

Component—Year

5783

Prerequisite: one yearlong playwriting class

If you’re a playwright searching for a safe place to create and/or engage trans and non-binary work, perhaps inventing your own along the way, then this is a class for you. We’ll look to myriad texts—from Alok’s Instagram posts, to C. Julian Jimenez’s plays, to She-Ra, to Joseph Campbell (critically), to K. Woodzick’s Non-Binary Monologues Project, to Disclosure, to Vivek Shraya, to much, much more—in order to synthesize what already informs some trans and non-binary work with our own creative desires. As long as you feel invested in trans and non-binary work and a classroom of respect, you’re welcome here. Before I came out as non-binary, survey classes about trans and non-binary work showed me the breadth of the umbrella. I hope to do the same here.

Faculty

Previous Courses

Theatre

Act One, Scene One: Beginning to Find Yourself in the World of Diverse, Modern Playwriting

Open, Component—Year

If you’re new to playwrighting and looking for a safe, warm classroom to experiment with your burgeoning love of the craft, this is the place for you. We’ll make our own plays, but we’ll do it informed by the diversity that is on our stages right here, right now. Playwrights like David Henry Hwang, Sarah Ruhl, Dominique Morisseau, Nilaja Sun, C. Julian Jimenez, and many others will be the voices that we elevate as we find our own. A combination of analysis and (primarily) creative workshop, Act One, Scene One is a great place to start your first (or second, or third, or fourth) play.

Faculty

Queering Stages With Trans and Non-Binary Pages: Advanced Playwrighting with a Focus on Trans and Non-Binary Work

Advanced, Component—Year

If you’re a playwright searching for a safe place to create and/or engage trans and non-binary work, perhaps inventing your own along the way, then this is a class for you. We’ll look to myriad texts—from Alok’s Instagram posts, to C. Julian Jimenez’s plays, to She-Ra, to Joseph Campbell (critically), to K. Woodzick’s Non-Binary Monologues Project, to Disclosure, to Vivek Shraya...to much, much more—in order to synthesize what already informs some trans and non-binary work with our own creative desires. As long as you feel invested in trans and non-binary work and a classroom of respect, you’re welcome here. Before I came out as non-binary, survey classes about trans and non-binary work showed me the breadth of the umbrella. I hope to do the same here.

Faculty