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
THEA 5616
If you are new to playwrighting and looking for a safe space to experiment with your burgeoning love of the craft, this is the place for you. In this course, we will make our own plays but will be informed by the diversity that is on our stages right here, right now. Playwrights such as David Henry Hwang, Sarah Ruhl, Dominique Morisseau, Nilaja Sun, C. Julian Jiménez, and many others will be the voices that we elevate as we find our own. A combination of analysis and (primarily) creative workshop, this course will be 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
Toy Theatre: Putting the “Play” in Plays
Open, Component—Year
THEA 5787
Squishmallows. LEGO. Barbie. Dungeons & Dragons. Toys and games often ignite instant recognition and excitement; however, we rarely talk about how toys manifest onstage. From puppetry, to dolls, to direct use of toys, theatre has been putting play onstage for centuries. In this course, we will study plays that incorporate toys in meaningful ways, analyze theories and histories of toys, and write our own “toy theatre” that synthesizes what we read. This course will balance creative playwrighting, script reading, and textual analysis—plus a healthy dose of play!—to form an experience that will leave students with an overview of the important role that toys play in theatres past, present, and future, as well as a taste of the broad cultural impact that our playthings have. We will share and respond to creative work, read and discuss plays, and think through cultural intersections with toys. The instructor has a lengthy record of dramatizing toys, most recently writing Sewing Bears: A Play with Pockets, produced by Parity Productions in Chelsea, about the 1907 moral panic over teddy bears. As a believer that toys belong in the classroom, the instructor will encourage students to engage with their toys both creatively and academically.