Eleanor Burgess
Title of Play
Mocha
Date and Place of Reading
July 16, 2012
Manhattan Theatre Club Creative Center
New York City
How to Access the Play
Director
Lewis Magruder
Cast
Thom Christoper–Chehaya
Debralee Daco–Stage Directions
Mark Emerson–Mark/Lee
Rebecca Hirota–Donna
Gordana Rashovich–Merpati
Tim Rush–Ted
Rashmi Singh–Ameena/Alicia
Jessica Watkins–Eliot
Brandy Zarle–Carol
Journey of Play after Development at Broad Horizons
World Premiere at 2014 Frontera Festival, Austin, Texas
About the Playwright
Eleanor Burgess’s plays include The Ingenue, Galilee 34, The Niceties, Wife of a Salesman, Start Down, Chill, Mocha, and Sparks Fly Upward. Her work has been produced at theaters across the United States, including Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Rep, Geffen Playhouse, McCarter Theatre Center, Huntington Theatre Company, Writers Theatre, Milwaukee Rep, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Geva Theatre Center, InterAct Theatre, Portland Stage, Alliance Theatre and Contemporary American Theatre Festival, as well as Finborough Theatre in London. She has developed work at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Playwrights Horizons, New Group, and The Ensemble Studio Theatre, and been a member of the Dorothy Strelsin New
American Writers Group at Primary Stages, Page 73's writers' group Interstate 73, The Civilians’ R&D Group, and New York Theatre Workshop’s 2050 Fellowship. She has also written for film and television, including work on Perry Mason for HBO, WeCrashed for Apple TV+, Interview With The Vampire for AMC, and the new Little House on the Prairie series for Netflix, as well as screenplays for Bad Robot, Amblin, Anonymous Content, Netflix and Universal. Originally from Massachusetts, she studied history at Yale College and Dramatic Writing at NYU/Tisch.
About the Play
Mocha opens on an unspecified island within Indonesia, where a film star, Eliot Hennessey, is working with her assistant Donna to initiate an adoption of a local child. At the same time, in an unspecified American suburb, Carol and Ted begin the regular process of adoption by getting started filling out dozens of forms.
As her adoption paperwork goes through, Eliot attracts the interest of a journalist, who tries to trick her into revealing how little she knows about both child-rearing and the country her child is coming from. When the girl’s foster father turns on her, accusing her of having an immoral career path and an unstable personal life, Donna and Ameena, the local head of adoption, scramble to keep the story out of the papers. Meanwhile Carol and Ted undergo the home study process, with a social worker coming to their house to scrutinize their living space and interview them about their marriage. The expense and uncertainty of the process frustrates Ted, and he lashes out against Carol, criticizing the adoption process and refusing to give the “right” answers to the social workers’ questions.
As both groups proceed towards the end goal of adopting a child, they are forced to ask themselves how many sacrifices they would be willing to make to become parents, and how likely they are to succeed at raising an adopted child. Concerned with themes of racial and gender identity and the shifts in power that occur between husbands and wives, developed nations and developing nations, and celebrities and the public, Mocha is a topical play that offers multiple perspectives and no clear answers.