SISTERPLAY To Make World Premiere With Communal Theater Company
Performances will run September 1-13 at the Siggy Theater.
Communal Theater Company is set to present the world premiere of SisterPlay, written and directed by Elizabeth Ostler, running September 1-13, 2026 at The Siggy Theater at The Flea in New York City.
Ten years ago, Lisa Ostler died in the Salt Lake County Jail after being denied the medical treatment she desperately needed. She was 37, a mother of three, and a pretrial detainee, meaning she had not been convicted of anything. Her older sister, playwright and director Elizabeth Ostler, has spent much of the past decade turning that loss into SisterPlay, a theater piece blending an ensemble cast, puppetry, original music, and real case documents to tell Lisa's story from the inside out.
'When you lose someone close to you, anniversaries hold a deeper meaning. Ten years is significant,' Ostler said. 'Creating art from a tragedy takes time. I needed to be in a place with my grief where I could honor the play. I had to heal enough that I could sit with the events surrounding her death without being swallowed by the grief. That would not serve me, the play, the theater makers involved, or the audience.'
That time also let the story grow beyond a single family's loss. 'Ten years has given me the time and perspective to tell this story with both the love and the complexity it deserves,' Ostler said. 'It has also given me the space to make this more than a story about my sister. I could make it an advocacy piece that asks us to look more closely at the systems that failed her and consider how we care for people who are incarcerated and struggling with addiction.'
Lisa's death is not an isolated case. A 2025 USA Today investigation by reporter Austin Fast found that 1,780 people died in U.S. jails and prisons from sepsis or septic shock over an eight-year span. In 2016 alone, 24 other people died in the Salt Lake County Jail. Ostler sees a direct line between what happened to her sister and what is happening now.
'The issue is as relevant today as it was ten years ago when Lisa died. It is the same system and the same way of thinking about and treating detained individuals that is at work in the medical and humanitarian crisis in immigration detention centers today,' Ostler said. 'When we dehumanize people, we lose our humanity. That is what makes Lisa's story feel so relevant today. Her story is about one person, but it is also about a system and the ways we decide whose lives are worthy of care.'
'I want Lisa to be remembered not only for how she died,' she added, 'but for the questions her life and death continue to ask us.'
For Ostler, the play begins with her sister as a person, not a case file. 'Before she was someone who died in jail, before she struggled with addiction, before she became the subject of a lawsuit or a play, she was Lisa. She was my little sister. She was funny, complicated, loving, frustrating, creative, and deeply human. She was a whole person,' Ostler said. Writing and directing SisterPlay became a way of continuing that relationship. 'Grief does not end when someone dies. It changes. It has also made me confront the ways we can reduce people to the hardest parts of their lives. Lisa struggled with addiction, but addiction was not who she was. She was my sister before she was anything else.' She added: 'This story has taught me that love and grief can coexist with anger, and that seeking accountability does not have to mean losing compassion.'
Ostler hopes audiences leave seeing both Lisa and themselves. 'I hope SisterPlay allows audiences to see Lisa as a human being, but also to see themselves in the story,' she said. 'We all have people we love who are complicated. We all have circumstances we cannot fix. And we all have a responsibility to ask what happens to people when the systems around them stop seeing them as human.'
Performances will run September 1-13, 2026 at The Siggy Theater at The Flea, 20 Thomas St, New York, NY. Tickets start at $35.
About Elizabeth Ostler
Dr. Elizabeth Ostler is a Brooklyn-based theater-maker specializing in directing and puppetry, with over two decades of experience creating theater in New York and Utah. She has collaborated with companies including St. Ann's Warehouse, Theatre Barn, Life Jacket Theatre, Adjusted Realist, Drama of Works, Riverton Arts, Estrogenius Festival, Prospect Theater Company, and Pioneer Theatre Company. She is the creator of Communal Theater, an approach to performance rooted in the belief that theater is a sacred exchange, a communion, between artists and audience, and serves as Founder and Artistic Director of the Communal Theater Company, founder and Storyteller-in-Chief of Life's Echoes, and co-founder of the NYC Artist Group. Ostler holds an MFA in Theater Directing from Brooklyn College, a BA in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College, and a Doctorate in Contemporary Learning and Interdisciplinary Research from Fordham University, where her research focused on cultural master narratives.
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