Bob Balaban Directs Catherine Curtin and Ephraim Birney in Industry Reading of BRAT

Savage Wonder Art Center will present an exclusive one-day industry reading of Brat, a new play by Afghanistan veteran Jason Pizzarello, directed by Bob Balaban. The reading will take place on Wednesday, December 3rd from 3:00-5:00 p.m. at Savage Wonder's Pop-Up Gallery in Tribeca NY. Seating is limited, and industry RSVPs are required and may be sent to Sean Christian Taylor at seanct@savagewonder.org.

The reading will star Catherine Curtin (Orange Is the New Black; Stranger Things; Homeland) and Ephraim Birney (The Gilded Age; Cherry Lane's A Man of No Importance).

Set in 2012 and 2016, Brat is a tragicomic two-person play set in an apartment in Elizabeth, NJ, where a military mother and her neglected, misfit son try to cope with lovers, loss, heartache, and each other before her last deployment and after his first deployment to Afghanistan. Brat captures the fraught relationship between the two as he grows into the soldier she was, mirroring her life in more ways than she wanted for him-including deployments to a multigenerational war in Afghanistan.

Darkly funny and claustrophobically intimate, Brat traps a mother and son in a looping emotional foxhole-before her final deployment and after his first return from war. Nora, a battle-tested Army sergeant, raised Jake with discipline, detachment, and just enough love to keep him guessing. Now he's back from Afghanistan, wearing the uniform she once wore, haunted by the same ghosts, and stuck in the same cramped New Jersey apartment. As the play ricochets between timelines, a tragic cycle reveals itself-one that mirrors America's first intergenerational war, where soldiers inherit not just the mission, but the mindset. Equal parts brutal and absurd,Brat explores what happens when military logic bleeds into family life, and the person you trained becomes the person you can't reach.

Written by Afghanistan veteran Jason Pizzarello, Brat is a raw, darkly comic examination of the war we bring home-and the roles we can't stop replaying. Directed by Bob Balaban, the reading continues Savage Wonder's commitment to developing bold, intimate, and surprising work by veteran and veteran-adjacent playwrights.

Creative/Production Team

Playwright: Jason Pizzarello

Director: Bob Balaban

Produced by: Savage Wonder Art Center

When/Where: Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025, 3:00-5:00 p.m. - Tribeca, NY. Specific location given upon RSVP approval.

RSVP: seanct@savagewonder.org