Abe Koogler is an Obie Award-winning playwright. He writes symphonic, surprising, funny plays about ordinary people whose lives are shaped by larger economic and environmental forces. In addition to writing plays, he works as a political speechwriter and teaches playwriting at Bennington College.

Read this profile in The New York Times or check out his collection of plays published by Bloomsbury. For more information on Abe’s individual plays, read on…

DEEP BLUE SOUND
Drama Desk Nominee, Outstanding Play
Premiered at Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks, with a remount at the Public Theater

“Rich, funny, and devastating. As Abe Koogler’s sweet, sad village mosaic revealed itself heart fissure by heart fissure, silence spoke volumes. The ghost of Thornton Wilder surely perched on Koogler’s shoulder during the composition. ” — Observer

“Radiates a humanity that is a balm for the soul. Koogler…creates a pointillist community portrait constructed out of conversational fragments caught on the fly. And yet, by evening's end, you know everything about these singular, eccentric, often lonely, islanders. Koogler…has the master's knack for finding extraordinary meaning in everyday joys and sorrows.” — Lighting and Sound America

“A perceptive parable for our divided age. Koogler’s brilliant play captures a fundamental contradiction at the center of modern living — our yearning to engage with those around us as well as our fear that we might be rejected or dismissed. " - CultureSauce

“Sends us off marveling at the great tragicomedy that we all get to enact, just by living on our own little islands.” - Theatremania

“Both strange and naturalistic, as funny as it is deeply moving, even shattering.” — OffOffOnline

“Koogler is interested in human smallness, in our cosmic lack of control…full of treasures.” — Vulture

“Gorgeous. Five Stars.” — New York Stage Review

“Devastatingly beautiful.” - Obie Awards

“I’m wrecked that something so perfect lasts for so short a time. I want this show to run forever.” — Helen Shaw, on X.

Purchase Deep Blue Sound here or pre-order Bloomsbury’s Modern Classics edition

STAFF MEAL
Premiered at Playwrights Horizons

“What happened to our literature in 2020? What kind of document did we create of the vast bewilderment, the isolation, fear, and loss? Someone out there is probably already cooking up an English seminar on pandemic writing. If so, they should include Abe Koogler’s Staff Meal, a quietly surreal shapeshifter of a play with a tilted sense of humor and a generous, sorrowful heart. Staff Meal feels like a portal: We tumble through its funny, eerie evocation of the moment that made—is still making—our present, and we come out the other side feeling, for all its ebb toward emptiness, full.” — Vulture

“it’s hard to describe exactly what happens in Staff Meal, much less diminish your enjoyment of its uncanny, elegiac flux. Scenes zig and zag in dream logic, forming a nonlinear suite of episodes that become increasingly cartoonish and saturated with dread. Koogler stokes our affection for the comforts of civilization but also underscores how fragile they are. I’m no food critic but take my advice: book a table before word gets out.” — Observer

“Deliciously deranged. A bracing palate cleanser—strange but fresh.” — Wall Street Journal

Purchase Staff Meal here.

FULFILLMENT CENTER
Obie Award for Playwriting
Premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club

“Quietly shattering. Steeped in a luminous and illuminating empathy that feels both uncommon and essential right now.” — New York Times

“Koogler has staked out his own dramatic territory, inhabited by men and women whose lousy factory jobs drain them without offering anything like security or a decent paycheck. Fulfillment Center is as spare and elliptical as a New Yorker short story, but each scene is loaded with unspoken tensions, and its unsparing view speaks to the moment we're in.” — Lighting and Sound America

“The word Amazon is never mentioned in Abe Koogler’s play Fulfillment Center…but this wry, poignant, plaintive new work nonetheless feels part of the great debate roiling America. Koogler… is emerging as one of the best chroniclers of lower-middle-class life in America, especially in the workplace.” — Chicago Tribune 

“In its quietly distraught manner, Fulfillment Center makes a true portrait of today’s Americans.” — Village Voice

Purchase Fulfillment Center here.

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Other plays include Kill Floor (Lincoln Center Theater), Aspen Ideas (Studio Theatre), Blue Skies Process (Goodman Theatre) and Lisa, My Friend (Kitchen Dog Theater).

Professional inquiries:
Emma Feiwel, WME
efeiwel (at) wmeentertainment.com or (212) 903-1409