Posted by AugustIsWriting on Sep 02, 2026
I like kids. I do! I love babies, and despite having no plans to have any of my own, I do think about what kids these days are growing up in, and what we're teaching them. I didn't realize I would be thinking about this when I went to a basement in South Philly this weekend to catch a reading of Eliana Berson's Zombie Play, produced by GirlPope Theatre Company.
Eliana writes a lot about the nonhuman: from the Ooze monsters in Queers In A Thrift Story With Monsters to Tim the cat in Average Jo, when a story is taken outside of a human's head, their thoughts can be pushed to their logical extremes. In Zombie Play, this is done through Baby, a literal two-day-old embodied by a paper mache rock, with AJ Ruger vocalizing all of Baby's thoughts. A delightful way to get around the "no babies onstage" rule of theater, it brought the stakes of an infant to the humor of a rock with googly eyes, with fantastic results. Watching Baby internalize and repeat what was said around them, things that were both related and unrelated to a zombie apocalypse, felt like a pressing reminder: the kids are always listening!
There was a particularly striking throughline of Baby's father, Matthew, repeatedly referring to Baby's aunt, Kate, as a "stupid fucking bitch" that Baby then takes and turns towards herself. While Matthew's misogyny isn't meaningfully challenged during the events of the play, Baby successfully channels it into an explosive rage. We don't know what happens after the events of the play, it's entirely possible they're all eaten by zombies the next day, but Baby, for a moment, ascends past her body's limitations and shows a zombie who's boss.
I'm excited to see how this piece grows, and what Eliana writes about next! This was a solidly funny, campy, gorey piece, and will be a lot of fun for the theater who produces it next (which, you didn't hear it from me, may be sooner than you think)!