About
The Tasters
Three times a day, every day, a group of young women have the opportunity to die for their country. They are Adolf Hitler’s food tasters. And what do girls discuss as they wait to see if they will live through another meal? Like all girls, throughout time, they gossip and dream, they question and dance. They want to love, laugh, and above all they want to survive.
Written by Michelle Kholos Brooks, H*tler's Tasters won the 2017 Women Playwrights Series, Susan Glaspell Award, leading to the world premiere at Centenary Stage in April 2018, and paving the way for New Light Theater Project's New York premiere at IRT Theater in October 2018. The New York production was a pivotal moment for the play; an all-female team drove the hugely successful production to subsequent productions including North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in July 2019, Chicago, IL; 59E59 Theaters East to Edinburgh Festival in July 2019, New York, NY; and Greenside Venues Olive Studio in August 2019, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest international arts festival in the world. At the Fringe, H*tler's Tasters was named Best of Fringe by The Stage and was a 2019 Sell- Out show. In March of 2020, H*tler's Tasters made its L.A. debut at the Electric Lodge, only to be shutdown after two performances due to COVID-19. After a forced hiatus, H*tler's Tasters returned on the scene for a virtual run at Edinburgh Fringe with Pleasance Theatre; The John Drew Theater at Guild Hall in East Hampton, NY; Pendragon Theatre, Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks and Calliope Stage in North Carolina. The production then returned to New York, Off-Broadway this time at Theatre Row. The incredible journey culminated in 2023 at the MeX Theatre in Louisville, KY.
Since then H*tler's Tasters has been published by Theatrical Rights Worldwide and has been produced at colleges and professional theaters in the U.S. and Europe.
Stay tuned for exciting plans for H*tler’s Tasters in 2024!
Meet The Team
Michelle Kholos Brooks is an award-winning playwright with productions staged internationally. Awards and distinctions include the Susan Glaspell Award for H*TLER’S TASTERS and the Riva Shiner Comedy Award for KALAMAZOO, co-written with Kelly Younger. ROOM 1214 was a finalist for The Ashland New Plays Festival. HOSTAGE was a finalist for the Woodward/Newman Drama Award, The Fratti-Newman Political Play Contest, and a Showcase finalist for the National New Play Network. CHAIR received second place in the Firehouse Theatre Festival of New American Plays.
Plays have been produced and/or developed at the Skylight Theatre (World Premiere, HOSTAGE), Centenary Stage (World Premiere, H*TLER’S TASTERS), Pacific Resident Theatre, Bloomington Playwright’s Project (World Premiere, KALAMAZOO), The Colony Theatre (World Premiere, FAMILY PLANNING), Florida Repertory Theatre, Boston Court Theatre, The Road Theatre Company, Wordsmyth Theatre, The Barrow Group, Bay Street Theatre, Venue 9 Theatre, Wings Theatre, Laurel Grove Theatre Company, Drama West, Vox Humana Theatre Ensemble, iTheatre Collaborative, New Light Theater Project, 59E59 Theaters, Olive Theatre at Greenside (Edinburgh), Arena Stage (Veteran’s Day 2020, an adaptation of WAR WORDS), NewYorkRep, Syracuse Stage, City Theatre Miami, InterAct, Syracuse Stage, Stage West,The Actors’ Gang, MeX Theatre, Theatre Row and A.R.T. Theatres.
Publications include Dramatists Play Service, Theatrical Rights Worldwide, Room literary magazine, The Daily Beast and Zocalo Public Square.
Brooks earned a B.A. from Emerson College and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Otis College of Art and Design. She is a board member of ShPIel-Performing Identity Theatre Project, and a member of The Dramatists Guild of America. In addition, she is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. More about Michelle at www.MichelleKholosBrooks.com
Sarah Norris (Director) is a theater artist and producer based in New York. Her work has been seen around the country including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, and around the world in Scotland, Australia, England and Ireland.
Select producer and production credits include: Playwrights Horizons (I Am My Own Wife Off-Broadway and Tony Winning Broadway transfer), Disney Theatrical Productions, Bisno Productions (Hughie on Broadway w/ Forest Whitaker; My Report to the World w/ David Strathairn). She served as the Artistic Director of Access Theater from 2016-2018, creating an Artist
Residency program and Access Association Series program, which provided subsidized and free performance space to NYC artists including Primitive Grace (Paul Calderon & David Zayas), Elevator Repair Service, and Bedlam. Most recently, she joined the team at Pendragon Theatre (upstate New York), working as the Artistic Producer.
She is the Founding Artistic Director of New Light Theater Project, an Off-Broadway company dedicated to an ensemble of artists, that has mounted over 30 productions including: The American Tradition (TimeOut NY Critics Pick; Best of Theater - Slant Magazine; "The gleefully anachronistic show...has a rambunctious punk-rock energy that’s all too rare on our increasingly sanitized stages" - The New Yorker); H*tler's Tasters (featured around the country and Edinburgh, Scotland); Imagining Madoff (featured in This Week in Arts - NY Times; "Engrossing and philosophically lively" - The New Yorker); Breeders ("Both ridiculously and strangely moving!" - Jesse Green, NY Times; TimeOut NY Critics Pick; "An unexpected marvelous new comedy" - Huffington Post); A Burial Place (featured on NY1); and countless other productions.
As a theater director, select credits include: Everything is Super Great (TimeOut NY Critics Pick), This Wrestling Place (w/ Executive Producer Ben Folds), Picture Ourselves in Latvia (Best of Theater, The L Magazine), Hitler's Tasters (Best of the Edinburgh Fringe; featured in the Chicago Tribune, LA Times and the BBC). Other highlights include: Guild Hall of East Hamptons, Pleasance Theatre (Edinburgh), Greenside Theatre (Edinburgh), Bottom Dog Theatre (Ireland), Adelaide Fringe Festival (Australia), 59E59 Theaters, LAByrinth Theatre, Working Theater, Electric Lodge (LA), Chicago Dramatists, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, The Flea Theater, Zeiders American Dream Theater, Calliope Stage, Forestburgh Playhouse, and Pendragon Theatre.
Sarah served on the Artistic Advisory Board of The Artist Co-Op, worked with Theatre Communications Group (TCG), and currently serves on the Program Evaluation Working Group for NNPN (National New Play Network) and is a volunteer with i-Mentor.
Member of SDC and AEA.
Founding Artistic Director of New Light Theater Project.
MFA in Directing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
BA in Theatre from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.