December News: Upcoming Production and Publishing!

Marisa's play SAMANTHA INSIDE OUT will receive its world premiere production at NJ Repertory Company this coming February! Tickets available soon at www.njrep.org.

Samantha, a woman of a certain age has had it—with her life, her marriage, modern life, everything. She’s a high school English teacher, mother of grown twins and wife of Eliot, a cruel, pompous philanderer. After a humiliating and violent encounter with her husband, Samantha flees a stultifying Christmas party at the President of the College’s house. She ends up in the host’s teenage daughter’s cluttered room on the third floor. Amid the chaos Samantha reviews the wreckage of her life and reveals her truth and her secrets out loud. By doing so Samantha charts a new course for herself. It’s never too late to start again.

AND... Marisa's THE GIFT OF THE MAGI, A Modern Adaptation of the the O’Henry story, will be published by Broadway Play Publishers in January of 2026.

Broadway Play Publishers also publishes Marisa’s play MAD LOVE.

Theatre Review for SAMANTHA INSIDE OUT

TIMES ARGUS ONLINE: Smith’s script is apt psychologically and both touching and funny without ever making fun of Samantha’s plight. The writing is taut and witty until near the end when things get a little muddy, overwhelmed with just too much going on to be focused. But this is the first-ever reading and it’s not going to take all that much work to make “Samantha Inside Out” an intimate and brilliant comedy. Read more.

Jayne Atkinson starred in the initial staged reading of Marisa Smith’s one-woman comedy, “Samantha Inside Out,” Friday at Shaker Bridge Theatre in White River Junction.

New Interview with Marisa in THE VALLEY NEWS

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — If there are playwrights whose work springs from a sense of contentment with the world, Marisa Smith is not one of them.

“The things that usually inspire me to write a play are usually things I get irritated about,” Smith said in a phone interview on Monday. Read more.

Playwright Marisa Smith

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