full-length plays

Women and Children

5 women

Set in the near-future, Women and Children takes the battle over abortion to chilling new heights as a group of reproductive rights advocates joins forces with big pharma for an experimental new treatment aimed at pregnant women charged with crimes against their unborn babies.

2021 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Finalist
2020 Page 73 Writing Fellowship workshop directed by Colette Robert

Two Minutes To Midnight

flex cast 4 to 7

Dan can no longer live with the anxiety of the coming climate disaster. He has gone up the mountain to join the jelly people. Leg knows Jen can lure him back to society, if only something terrible would happen to her. A journey through American environmental crises that asks, what is the point of no return, and what do we do when we get there?

2020 Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship workshop directed by Taylor Reynolds
2019 Clubbed Thumb Emerging Writers Group mentored by Sheila Callaghan

The Gap

4 women+, 1 man

Nicole thinks she was abducted by aliens. Lee thinks Nicole is insane. But Nicole is her sister, so Lee sets out with her best undergraduate student to discover the truth about their childhood.

2019 Kilroys List
2018 Barrymore Award for an Outstanding New Play
2018 American Theatre Critics Association/Steinberg Award Nominee

Local Girls

3 women+, 2 men

A queer coming-of-age dramedy with music about the best teenage metal band in Dekalb County, Georgia.

2015 Princess Grace Award Finalist
2015 Kilroys List Honorable Mention
2015 Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship, directed by Knud Adams

A Knee That Can Bend

4 women+

Set in Dakar, Senegal, an American sociology student stumbles into a clandestine community of local lesbians. A love story about culture, national identity, and the globalization of sexual rights.

2017 Dramatists Guild Lanford Wilson Award Nominee
2016 Barrymore Award for an Outstanding New Play Finalist
2015 L. Arnold Weissberger Award Nominee

one-act plays

We Can All Agree To Pretend This Never Happened

2 women, 2 men / 50 minutes

Liz is cheating on Andrew with Lincoln, but that's not the secret she and Maya are hiding from the rest of the American scientists in their Siberian lab. The secret is very serious. The secret is ecoterrorism. A madcap one-act farce about fucking organisms in the fucking ice.

Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon of One-Act Plays 2015
Òran Mór (Glasgow) 2014
Tiny Dynamite + InterAct Theatre Company (Philly) 2014
Commissioned by Tiny Dynamite 2014

First Date

2 women / 25 minutes

Is it queer love at first sight or another bad date at the Art Museum? Commissioned and produced by Philadelphia Museum of Art 2018

Lisa & David In The Hole

1 woman, 1 man / 45 minutes

David has found the perfect birthday gift for Lisa: an abandoned root cellar where they can build a survival shelter! Maybe Lisa wants to decorate it. Maybe Lisa wants to spend her lunch breaks in it. Maybe Lisa wants to move in forever.

Commissioned by Tiny Dynamite 2016

Safe Space

Coastal cities are flooded. Philly is overrun with refugees. Disease breaks out in the camps, and the government gives the order: Shelter in place. Can you secure your home against the climate change apocalypse? SAFE SPACE! Follow intersecting stories through a South Philadelphia row-home in this immersive play about environmental science students and their live-action role-playing climate change game.

Created for the 2014 Philadelphia FringeArts Festival with Emily Acker and Douglas Williams, directed by Maura Krause.

City Paper Pick, "15 Must-See Fringe Shows"
Uwishunu Pick, "Fringe Festival Neighborhood Performances"
Philadelphia Magazine Pick, "Fringe Buzz"

Emma Goidel writes for theater and TV in New York City.

Her plays include Women and Children (2020 Page 73 Residency, 2021 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Finalist), Two Minutes To Midnight (Clubbed Thumb Early-Career Writers Group, mentored by Sheila Callaghan), The Gap (Barrymore Award, 2019 Kilroys List, American Theatre Critics Association/Steinberg Award Nominee), Local Girls (Princess Grace Award Finalist, Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow), A Knee That Can Bend (American Theatre Critics Association/Steinberg Award Nominee, Barrymore Award Finalist, Lanford Wilson Award Nominee), and We Can All Agree To Pretend This Never Happened (EST Marathon, Òran Mór in Glasgow, InterAct & Tiny Dynamite in Philly).

Emma is the 2020 Page 73 Playwriting Fellow, continuing through 2021 due to Covid, and a member of the 2020 I73 Writers Group. She currently has an original TV series in development with FX.

Her work has been developed and presented by Ars Nova (Play Group), Azuka Theater, Clubbed Thumb, Colt Coeur (Resident Artist), Ensemble Studio Theatre, LAByrinth Theatre Co., Orchard Project (Greenhouse Lab), Playwrights Realm (Writing Fellow), The Playwrights’ Center, New York Stage & Film, PlayPenn’s The Foundry, Theater Exile, and InterAct Theatre Company. Commissions: Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Hearth, Tiny Dynamite.

Emma moved to New York in 2017 after five years in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Orbiter 3—a producing playwrights collective called "the most exciting development in Philadelphia Theatre since the opening of FringeArts" by Philadelphia Magazine in 2014.

Orbiter 3 premiered new works by James Ijames, Emma, Emily Acker, Douglas Williams, Mary Tuomanen, Sam Henderson, and L M Feldman to critical acclaim. In 2017, Orbiter 3 became the youngest company ever to win a Barrymore Award for Excellence in Theatre, after receiving twelve nominations.

Emma is also a member of The Kilroys, a bicoastal collective of theater artists dedicated to combatting gender bias in American theater. She is an alumna of Barnard College, new mom to a sweet baby, and a Virgo (Cancer moon, Aquarius rising).