ONE-WOMAN PLAY GIRLFRIENDS IS A CROSS-COUNTRY CABARET OF QUEER CONFUSION

Girlfriends

LOS ANGELES — GIRLFRIENDS is a true story that starts with a lie. The not-so-straight play will be at Hollywood Fringe at Theatre of Note (1517 N. Cahuenga Blvd, Los Angeles) the following dates:

- Tuesday, June 9 at 8:15 p.m. (PREVIEW)
- Friday, June 12 at 8:45 p.m.
- Saturday, June 13 at 6:30 p.m.
- Friday, June 26 at 8:30 p.m.
- Saturday, June 27 at 5 p.m.
- Sunday, June 28 at 7:15 p.m.

Why get breakup bangs when you could cross the country with a stranger? In GIRLFRIENDS, Scout doesn’t have words for her heartbreak, her queerness, or for her plan to cross the USA. Nevertheless, she drives until she finds something beautiful.

Playwright Sara Malinowski admits the play surprised her. “It’s a true story I didn’t know the truth of for a decade,” she says. She sat down to write Thelma & Louise meets Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion meets The Goofy Movie meets Fleabag — just a cute road trip about two strangers-turned-boundaryless female besties!

She explains: “Around scene three, I shared it with a writing group. They were so excited to know when these women would realize they’re in love. I genuinely responded: ‘huh?’ But the more honest I was in retelling my road trip, the more blatantly obvious it became. Everyone could see but me. I found love for my full queer self through writing this.”

Follow “girlfriends” Scout and Oliska as they travel across the American landscape in a 1998 Honda Civic in 2014 with $200. Drive along as they journey from New York to California, with music shifting from country to blues to folk as they travel from New Orleans, to Texas, to California. Watch as they explore everything from sex to sandstone, and Shakespeare to singing for gasoline.

Interweaving Shakespeare, Bob Dylan, Norah Jones, Joni Mitchell, and more than a few vibrator references, GIRLFRIENDS is a cabaret of queer confusion. Directed by Ash Malloy, and starring and written by Sara Malinowski, Girlfriends will have a world premiere at Hollywood Fringe, followed by a feature in The Tank’s Pridefest (NYC).

For when you don’t yet know how to heal, but you know how to drive.

Tickets are available online at Hollywood Fringe: www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/14059

Find more information about GIRLFRIENDS at saramalinowski.com/girlfriends and on Instagram at @girlfriendsplay. Find details and tickets for upcoming performances in New York and Edinburgh as well at paa.ge/girlfriends/en.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Sara Malinowski is a playwright, singer, actress, and location scout. As an Equity actress, she has performed with Tennessee Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare Forum, Shakespeare on the Fly, and Aquila Theatre. She’s trained with Shakespeare & Company, the Humanist Project, Brooklyn Improv Training, and London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. She has collaborated with Letter of Marque Theater Company since 2018.

As a location scout and manager, she’s worked on FBI: Most Wanted, Tick, Tick…. Boom!, Private Life, Broad City, Sneaky Pete, Mozart in the Jungle, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Her first play, Girlifriends, has been performed at WOW Cafe Theatre, Houghton Hall Arts, Opera America, and El Barrio’s Artspace in NYC. She has an acoustic album “Home Before Dark” and her novel “What Are They, Then” was chosen in Santa Fe’s New Voice Award for publication in New Mexico. She won NPR’s Moth Storyslam at Rodney’s in NYC, to be aired in 2027. She will be bringing her one-woman show to Philadelphia and Edinburgh Fringe 2026.

ABOUT HOLLYWOOD FRINGE:

Hollywood Fringe is an annual, open-access, community-derived event celebrating freedom of expression and collaboration in the performing arts community.

Throughout the festival, which runs June 11-26, the arts take over the Hollywood neighborhood. Hundreds of productions are staged in fully equipped theaters, parks, clubs, churches, restaurants and other unexpected places by local, national, and international arts companies and independent performers.

Media contact: [email protected]
Photos and interviews with playwright Sara Malinowski are available upon request.