It’s all the play. The text, sure, and the actors, and how they are lit and how they stand and move and sing. But that's just part of it. Sometimes there is a story. Sometimes the story of the play is the story in the script, and sometimes it's the story of the people who came together to make the play. Sometimes I am looking for the play in one place and it's actually elsewhere. Sometimes the looking is the play. Sometimes the play is just a group of people together on zoom, reading song lyrics aloud and sharing objects and talking about love in the chat box. Sometimes the play happens in a theater but usually when it's a good play it spreads. When it's a good play it makes a mess. The play is always a conversation. It's a conversation about cruelty, or a conversation about God. I have a friend who says you need embarrassment to make a play. Another friend says you need at least six years after the play is over to know if what you made was a play. ​When we make plays we have to be careful we’re not making commodities because we’re actually making rhythm. The process is definitely always the play. Maybe the play is a podcast. Maybe the play is a writing workshop. The rabbis says the Torah is acquired in 48 stages, I suspect that the play consists of at least as many stages. The play I am making now started rehearsals in October 2009. It hasn't ended yet, maybe it hasn't opened, when is it happening again?. The theater I am making is rehearsed and acquired in 5,923 stages. 



Live projects
The Trees. Playwrights Horizons & Page 73 (2023)
A Song of Songs. Jeremy O. Harris, The Bushwick Starr, El Puente, Clubbed Thumb (2022)
Working Group for a New Spirit, The Bushwick Starr (2020-21)
Brief Chronicle, Books 6-8, i am a slow tide (2019)
Ding Dong It's the Ocean. Rady&Bloom, JACK, HERE (2018)
Weird Classrooms, University Settlement (2018) 
Of Government, Clubbed Thumb (2017)
Going Out and Coming Back, EST/Youngblood (2016)
The Witches, Spoke the Hub (2015)
Lost Tribe, Target Margin (2014)


Publications
Sasha Masha (YA novel), FSG (2021)
Brief Chronicle, Books 6-8 (play), 3 Hole Press (2017)
Of Government (play), in Unusual Stories, Unusually Told, Methuen Drama (2021)


Interviews and Essays
Passing a Fire Between Wicks: Agnes Borinsky Interviewed by Meg Whiteford (2023)
Interview with Lizzie Stern (2023)
Playwrights Perspective on The Trees (2023)
​The Seeing Place (2020)
Something about an invitation (2018)
​Against Subtext (2015)
Selected reviews for the Anarchist Review of Books (2022-23)



Etc.
Impossible Writing (workshop series)
The Marriage of Earth and Sky (audio play)
2 Queers 4 Questions, with Ezra Furman (podcast)
Harsh Reality: the story of Miriam Rivera (podcast)

Agnes Borinsky (she/they) is a writer, performer, and theater-maker based in Los Angeles. She is interested in the unintended transformations that become possible when the things we’ve planned fail. Her projects include many plays (The Trees, A Song of Songs, Of Government, Ding Dong It’s the Ocean), experiments in participation (Working Group for a New Spirit, Weird Classrooms), and fiction (Sasha Masha). She has made work in collaboration with theater institutions – Playwrights Horizons, The Bushwick Starr, Clubbed Thumb – and outside of them, in basements, backyards, circus tents, community centers, and online.