Review Fix chats with playwright Sophie McIntosh, who discusses her new production, “benevolent.”
About Sophie McIntosh:
Sophie McIntosh (Playwright) (she/her) is a New York–based playwright and theatermaker. Her writing gives voice to women and queer folks, examines life in the small-town Midwest, and explores how our interactions with the natural world reflect back our own humanity. Sophie is the co-founder of Good Apples Collective, a developmental orchard for new theatrical works that she co-leads with her frequent collaborator Nina Goodheart. Recent productions of Sophie’s work include the world premiere of macbitches (New York Times Critic’s Pick), the premieres of Road Kills (recommended by the New York Times and New Yorker), cunnicularii, and cityscrape with Good Apples Collective, and Eleven Weeks of Nuclear Summer at Notre Dame University and the University of Michigan. Sophie’s plays have also been developed at Pioneer Theatre Company, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, the Bechdel Group, the Unicorn Theatre, Atlanta Shakespeare Company, Breaking & Entering Theatre Collective, The Tank, The Brick, and the 24 Hour Plays: Nationals. Her play macbitches has been produced more than 30 times across the country, alongside international productions in Canada and Australia. She is a proud recipient of a BA in drama from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and recently graduated with an MFA in playwriting from Columbia University.
About the Production:
Good Apples Collective (Sophie McIntosh and Nina Goodheart, Artistic Directors), an orchard for new theater, will present the World Premiere of benevolent by Sophie McIntosh (Road Kills; cunnicularii, macbitches), directed by Nina Goodheart (Road Kills; cunnicularii) at IATI Theater (64 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003), August 14-September 5.
Set in 1917, benevolent follows four inmates consigned to Inwood Benevolent Home, a draconian reformatory for fallen and friendless girls. They forge unlikely connections as they pass their days on laundry duty, and, when one of their group finds herself in trouble, the others must decide how much they’re willing to risk to help her.
Performances are scheduled on:
Friday, August 14 at 7:30pm (Press Preview)
Saturday, August 15 at 2pm (Press Preview)
Saturday, August 15 at 7:30pm (Press Preview)
Sunday, August 16 at 6pm (Opening Night)
Thursday, August 20 at 7:30pm
Friday, August 21at 7:30pm
Saturday, August 22 at 7:30pm
Sunday, August 23 at 2pm (mask required)
Wednesday, August 26 at 7:30pm
Thursday, August 27 at 7:30pm
Friday, August 28 at 7:30pm
Saturday, August 29 at 7:30pm
Wednesday, September 2 at 7:30pm (mask required)
Thursday, September 3 at 7:30pm
Friday, September 4 at 7:30pm
Saturday, September 5 at 7:30pm
Tickets ($25 Starving Artist; $40 General; $60 Supporter of the Arts) are available for advance purchase at www.benevolentplay.com. The performance will run approximately 100 minutes, with no intermission.
Review Fix: You’ve got plenty of great experience. How did it affect this one?
Sophie McIntosh: Every play is different and requires unique things from me as a playwright (and producer, which is the other hat I’m wearing for this production)! This play is my first real period piece, and it took a lot of adjustment after working primarily on hypermodern or temporally ambiguous plays. benevolent’s setting of 1917 predates the era when audio recording was accessible to the everyday person, and any recorded conversations from the era would not have reflected the actual speaking patterns of working-class incarcerated women. Instead, I turned to transcripts of contemporaneous criminal trials—for lewdness, prostitution, abortion, and other crimes similar to those committed by the characters in the play—to help get a strong grasp on my characters’ voices. That was a new one for me!
But while the show offers fresh and exciting challenges, Good Apples is such a grounding and wonderfully familiar place in which to make work. This is my fourth world premiere that I’ve put up with my director and Good Apples co-founder Nina Goodheart, and I’m very grateful for our creative rapport and how it has informed benevolent’s trajectory over the years we’ve been working on it. I truly would not have been brave enough to take on this play without her, and I genuinely owe her so much.
Review Fix: Review Fix: What was development like? How did the production change?
McIntosh: I started writing the play in fall 2024, and spent that September tromping around the former grounds of the Magdalen Benevolent Home and House of Mercy (two real-life institutions that served as the basis for benevolent’s “Inwood Benevolent Home”) over in Inwood Hill Park. That first iteration had a larger cast and involved ghosts and seances, but all supernatural aspects have fallen away as I’ve found that benevolent felt most meaningful when focused on the characters’ personal struggles and tragedies rather than any sort of spectral spectacle. The play had its first reading under its old title—light as light—in spring 2025 as my grad school thesis project, with the support of my professors Lynn Nottage, David Henry Hwang, and Leslie Ayvazian. Further development (and its new title) came through readings with Good Apples Collective over the year following, and benevolent has only continued to evolve as we’ve had the chance to start putting it up on its feet.
Review Fix: Any fun stories from rehearsals?
McIntosh: Every day is an adventure with this gang, but the first day that we brought the washboards into rehearsal was a particular blast! Our cast immediately formed a sort of impromptu skiffle band, strumming crazily on their boards and dancing around. It was also incredibly cool for me as playwright to see the physical elements in place after imagining them for so long! I had an idea of what the stage business would look like when I was writing, but having these items there to explore and play with means that we’ve found so many ways to make an essentially simple act—scrubbing clothes—feel distinct to each character and reflect their proclivities, previous life experiences, and work ethic (or lack thereof).
Review Fix: What do you want people to take with them after this production?
McIntosh: One of the things that I was most struck by while researching the play, and that I’m hoping folks think about as they’re leaving, is how the questions of bodily and reproductive autonomy explored in benevolent are still relevant today. So much has changed in the last hundred-odd years, but many of the same obstacles remain in place—including the Comstock Act, which deprives the play’s characters of crucial knowledge of contraceptives to disastrous consequences, and is today being used to threaten the distribution of abortion medications like mifepristone or misoprostol. I hope that audiences reflect a bit on how much is left to do, especially after the step back that was the Dobbs decision. Separately, it’s my goal to leave people thinking critically about the hierarchies and hypocrisy that can so easily come to define charitable institutions when their motivations are focused more on serving a moral ideal than the people who have been sent to them for care.
Review Fix: What else would you like to add?
McIntosh: I’d really like to spotlight our absolutely killer cast: actors Mia Fowler, Livvy Marcus, Rachel Ravel, and Chani Reese, alongside our fabulous covers Morgan Perry and Healy Knight. This play asks a lot of them, with moments of intensity that range from the passionately romantic to the hideously awkward to the deeply, quietly painful. The success of these beats rests entirely in their capable hands and boundless emotional depth, and I’m profoundly grateful to these performers for not only rising to the challenge, but also offering up suggestions and feedback that push me to further refine the shape of the play. Since we also recently staged the first pass of an intimate scene, I’d like to add a special shoutout to our intimacy coordinator Willow Funkhouser, who imbued the moment with a tenderness that fully brought me to tears. I am very lucky indeed to have these folks on board.
Review Fix: Where can people find out more?
McIntosh: Check us out at benevolentplay.com, and get your tickets here! You can also find updates on the Good Apples Collective Instagram.
Review Fix: What’s next?
McIntosh: Nina will be directing an industry reading of my Formula 1-themed play Chicane in November, which will be a complete change of pace (no pun intended) from this project! Also, I have a (yet to be announced) production of one of my new plays going up in January here in NYC that I’m very excited about.
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