R. FOREST MALLEY
Playwright of Ms. Cleary's Last Supper
R. Forest Malley is a playwright and performer from Massachusetts. His work explores memory, migration, violence, queerness, divas, and his Arab, Irish and Jewish heritage. He was the winner of the 2024 Goldberg Play Prize, the 2025 Ryan Hudak Award, and was named a 2025 MacDowell Fellow and Yaddo Resident Artist. His work has also been recognized and supported by Theater Masters (Winner, 2022), Page 73 (Workshop, 2025; Writers Group, 2024), Working Theater (Workshop, 2026), Bay Area Playwrights Festival (Finalist, 2025) and American Blues Theater (Finalist, 2025). He is currently a member of the SWANA Writer’s Co-Op and a Planet Fitness in Brooklyn. MFA: NYU Tisch School of the Arts; BA: Harvard University.
Why are you excited to bring this piece to the O'Neill and what are you hoping to accomplish here?
I'm so thrilled to be bringing this piece to the O'Neill, to hear it aloud for the first time (!!) and really get to play and devise with actors to bring these characters to life. Ad-libbing very much encouraged. I'm excited for all of the questions and rewrites and surprises that we'll discover together, and I'm completely open to this play looking very different by the end of the week.
What inspired you to create this piece?
I wrote this play in honor of (and very loosely based on) my dear aunts Ann and Jean, whose sense of humor, razor-sharp wit and deep love of literature made me the writer I am today. I also wanted to write about the culture of silence and self-reliance in so many Irish-Catholic families in New England, and its many consequences. And I wanted to make myself laugh!
Why are you drawn to plays/musicals as a medium for storytelling and/or for telling this particular story?
This play is about communication (or lack thereof), and it's about truths and fictions. So I can't really think of a better way to tell this story than live theater. There's a spontaneity and unpredictability to these characters, especially the role of "Elizabeth," that makes the prospect of a performer bringing them to life onstage really thrilling. And I also think the claustrophobia of the stage—much like the claustrophobia of life—will really enhance the tension and the comedy.
What advice would you give to aspiring playwrights?
Fall in love with your own writing. Be a little narcissistic about it. Do it wherever, whenever, and however you can. And read as many plays and see as many plays as possible, everything from the classics to a first draft of your friend's new script.
Forest's reading recommendations to accompany your experience with Ms. Clear's Last Supper:
Harvard Square by Andre Aciman
The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) by Rabih Alameddine
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring
Cider House Rules by John Irving
The Secret History by Donna Tartt