How The Baby Died

When the hapless, unemployed actress Stace opts out of her marriage, she becomes (rather suddenly) a live-in nanny for her best friend, his husband, and their newborn baby.  But then she gets the chance of a lifetime: an audition for a French Horror Theater. Hilarity, mayhem and Grand Guignol hijinks ensue with the only prop available. Baby, it gets bloody. A dark, absurdly comic play about parenting and performing invisible pain.

Tori Keenan-Zelt on How the Baby Died

“As my marriage was ending, my peers were having babies. I realized how deeply the assumption that I’d do the same had defined my life in both seductive and destructive ways. I had nowhere to express the pain of that. Women lack the room to express the jagged complexities of their lives – motherhood, pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion – except when defending our rights. I wanted to kick down the door to that room. Grand Guignol, with its blood and violence and horror, helped me break in.”

Tori Keenan-Zelt

Originally and proudly from Pittsburgh, Tori writes curiosity-chasing plays that sniff out in-between spaces in big theatre to change the world. Many of them decide to be comedies.

She has presented work around the country and abroad. Recent plays include How the Baby Died (BAPF, Ingram New Works), Seph (Araca Project, Princess Grace Finalist), Air Space (Kilroys Top 5, Ingram New Works), Truth/Dare (Project Y, Best Ensemble Pittsburgh Fringe), Egypt Play (InterAct Finalist, PWC Mentorship), Episode #121: Catfight! (Yale Cabaret), How to Be a Widow (Ellie Award), and others. 

Having written for Colonial Williamsburg’s Emmy Award-winning PBS education series, Tori has been named an Emmy Nominee, Kilroys Lister, Jerome Finalist, 3-Time Princess Grace Finalist, 2-Time O’Neill Semifinalist, Playwrights of New York Nominee, and some other things. She is affiliated with The Lark, The Playwrights’ Center, Ingram New Works Lab, Ensemble Studio Theatre Playwrights’ Unit, Fresh Ground Pepper, & the Dramatists Guild. Some of her short plays are published by Next Stage Press. AB, Harvard. MFA, NYU Tisch Asia (Singapore)