Elise Marenson

Playwright, Screenwriter, Script Consultant and Director

New York City, New York

Member Since:
July 2014

Last online:
6 days ago

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About Elise

Written screenplays and stage plays in drama and comedy. She holds two screenplay options and is developing a TV series ELENA MONTOYA with a female lead detective on social justice themes and a feature thriller THE PURPLE PHOENIX, drawn from the current American political landscape.

2024 LOVE FROM FRIENDS, a short I wrote, is screening at the Golden State Film Festival on Friday, Feb 23 at 3:00 PM (in Block J which starts at 2:00 PM). Theatre 4 at TCL Chinese 6 Theatres, 6925 Hollywood Blvd.

2023 LOVE FROM FRIENDS
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2023 PERFECT DECEPTION optioned by Enlighten Content.

2022 A NEW KIND OF CHRISTMAS is a Semifinalist in the InkTip Pro Screenwriting Contest - Holiday Scripts.

2022 script TWO SIDES OF MY HEART is a Quarter-Finalist in the Emerging Screenwriters Drama Screenplay Competition.

2020 pilot script ELENA MONTOYA was a Semifinalist in the Stage 32 Diversity Springboard Screenwriting Contest.

Her short story ELLIS MORNING appears in the May 2020 Issue 6 of the literary magazine FLEAS ON THE DOG.

Also in 2019, her political play CRITICAL AFFAIRS was seen in the LIC Short Play Festival. Her dark comedy HEAD TRAUMA was part of the Boo Festival at the Players Theatre in New York. Her play WIDE BLOSSOMS was produced at HERE Arts Center in October/November 2016 in SoHo. In 2015, her play REAL ESTATE OF EMERGENCY had a production at Metropolitan Playhouse in New York. LEARN TO DRIVE was voted Best Drama at the First Stage Los Angeles Playwrights Festival in 2014. COLONY was seen in the 2014 Midtown International Theatre Festival. In 2011, she wrote and directed STRAIGHT FROM THE RIB, a show gleaned from life experience, with twenty-seven monologues performed by a cast of nine women.

She directed productions at the Abingdon Theatre, WorkShop Theater Company, Samuel French OOB Festival, New Center Stages, Strawberry Theatre Festival, Sounding Theater, Atlantic Theater School, Westbeth Theatre, The Triad, as well as numerous readings. With AMERICAN FLAMINGOS, she recently completed another full length play COMFORT ZONES.

Her feature length screenplays Jeremy, Malcolm, and Bess, Spacious Skies, Chorus Girl, and Picked Out, were finalists in Ace Fest, FilmMakers International, Scriptapalooza, and Chesterfield Writers Film Project competitions. She is a member of SAG-AFTRA, AEA, and NYWIFT (NY Women in Film & Television).

Unique traits: Bilingual in English & French

Gender:
Female

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Loglines

Blessingway Budget: $100K - $1M | Thriller ⋄ Crime A New York pulp fiction writer discovers his mother's Navajo heritage when he and a young, paraplegic Navajo man bust human traffickers illegally settled on the Navajo reservation.
Perfect Deception Budget: $100K - $1M | Thriller A happily married woman’s perfect life turns into a nightmare when her grifter husband leaves her broke and hires an assassin to kill her. A woman-in-peril MOW script. OPTIONED.
A Fool's Game Budget: $100K - $1M | Mystery ⋄ Crime After a string of female deaths that were ruled accidents, a sheriff and his teen daughter hunt a killer in their sleepy forest village. Set in present day.
Boys Love This Budget: $100K - $1M | Comedy ⋄ Romance A late bloomer in working class Brooklyn kidnaps a hot personal trainer to be her boyfriend.
Elena Montoya Budget: $5M - $10M | Crime ⋄ Drama Elena Montoya, a sexy, fearless Texas born Mexican-American, investigates social justice cases for a liberal lawyer in her conservative Texas town, despite the prejudice she faces.
Falling in Love in Paradise Budget: $1M - $5M | Romance When a San Diego zookeeper brings her precious giant tortoise to a South Pacific island where tortoises face extinction, she falls in love with the island’s passionate marine biologist.
Budding in Winter Budget: $1M - $5M | Independent ⋄ Drama A sheltered young woman tries to make a new life taking care of two eccentric, reclusive brothers and discovers her passionate true self with their hot nephew.
Hot Deals Budget: $10M - $30M | Comedy Five swindlers, posing as self-help healers, make piles of money conning neurotic suckers into buying their formula for how to get rich.
No Way But Up Budget: $10M - $30M | Romance ⋄ Comedy A struggling chorus dancer has a hard time accepting the unfamiliar newness of good luck when a lovely rich man out of her league falls in love with her.
A New Kind of Christmas Budget: $100K - $1M | Romance ⋄ Family A young mom with two kids reluctantly moves to a crumbling old inn up north with no internet, a grouchy old caretaker and eccentric old staff, when her boss tasks her with its renovation. But they find mystery, new friends, and a romance for mom.
Dazzled Budget: $100K - $1M | Romance ⋄ Comedy A young music publicist falls hard for a bad boy rock singer while a sweet, corny guy she mistakes for a beach bum tries to win her heart.
Two Sides of My Heart Budget: $100K - $1M | Romance ⋄ Drama An idealistic NY lawyer falls in love with her legal opponent, the developer whose plan for a hotel marina in her Maine hometown will destroy her family's fishing livelihood.
The Ride of My Life Budget: $1M - $5M | Romance A professional chef who hasn’t attended church in years discovers her faith when an unlikely romance blossoms between her and her hometown’s new pastor.

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Credits

Wide Blossoms (2016)
Theater by The Eagle Project/Jessi D. Hill (Drama) Playwright Wide Blossoms takes place one evening at a Baton Rouge bar, shortly after Hurricane Katrina. James, a young lawyer drinking perhaps to numb a guilty conscience, is from a biracial family but passes for white. He is about to leave when a mysterious young African American woman appears, disheveled and disoriented. She drops phrases and poems that haunt him. James, why didn’t you bring the boat? Mari asks. He insists that he doesn’t know her. But Mari persists. The storm left her with nothing but the poems of her grandpa who drowned in the flooding waters. As the bar nears closing time, James learns that the grandfather he never knew perished in the storm, because he did nothing to rescue him. Mari forces him to come out of denial, face the past, and take a first step at looking after someone other than himself. This night, James gets a second chance at redemption.

Awards

Play LEARN TO DRIVE voted Best Drama at First Stage LA.
(2014)