MJ Halberstadt - Playwright

The Usual Unusual is a scrappy and quaint bookstore where Boston’s LGBTQ+ community has gathered to shop, organize, and flirt since the 70’s. When the store’s charismatic founder Penn announces his retirement, neurotic staff-member Charlie persuades him to pass leadership on, rather than close the store. The staff’s efforts to unite a fractured community under one banner – or simply coordinate a weekly reading night — stoke generational disputes about identity, community, and trauma, and lead to fraught and hilarious results.

The Usual Unusual was commissioned via SpeakEasy Stage Company’s Boston Project, and adapted into the first series of the Boston Project Podcast.

November, 2016. A close-knit board game group meets for its weekly game night in Oberon's father's garage with an uncomfortable "game" on the menu: kick Dez out. But echoes of the polarized world outside invade their sacred space, and no one is prepared to face the real problem, which threatens to flip the board on them all. Deal Me Out is a comic drama set inside the world of gamers.

Deal Me Out received a workshop production at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre in February 2020, directed by Shana Gozansky.

A career-launching prize is at stake, the winner's name sealed in an envelope. As a quartet of visual arts students prepare their graduate thesis exhibition, the gloves come off when one of them suggests that racial and gender identity will influence the prize committee's selection more than the merits of each artist's work.

Winner of the Elliott Norton Award for “Best New Play,” The Launch Prize was presented 3 - 20 March 2016 by Bridge Repertory Theater of Boston, directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene.

A group of young friends, who own and operate an imaginary restaurant at the picnic table between the garden and the monkey bars, are scrambling to prepare for an important shift and need a few hints. The youngest kid, Little Chrys, knows about a secretly magical pot that bubbles over with good ideas — suggested by you, the audience! Whenever these chefs are stumped, he turns on the bubbles and includes your ideas in the next “dish”. They’ll certainly need your help after a minor disagreement leads to a twisted ankle! Help the friends reconcile their hurt feelings, bake up the perfect treats, and get everyone ready in time for a visit from a very important restaurant critic!

How to Cook Up A Good Idea was commissioned by Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre, and produced there in July-August 2022, directed by Amie Lytle.

As featured in the Boston Metro: three audience members at a time are led into the backseat of a car, where two characters sit up front and take them for a (literal) ride — sometimes with and sometimes without a “fourth wall”. These short plays were mounted all around the greater Boston area in 2016-2018, produced by Nicholas Medvescek.

“Hardly Soft” was presented at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "One Last Ride" was presented as part of MIT's Hacking Arts Festival. "Me Monster", "Triple Word Score", “Worship2Go”, and "Teddy" were produced independently.

Chaos ensues at the Zuzzolo Zoo when Brutus, the zoo's most entertaining primate, puts on an unusual show for his guests. The Primate Specialist struggles to preserve the health and safety of her chimp companion, while the rest of the staff and visitors stand by and...watch.

Brute was performed at Pingree School in South Hamilton, MA in 7 - 9 November 2014, directed by Arlynn Polletta.

Mommy and Daddy Patterson have raised Sonny and Daughtery to live a sheltered life, comforted by thoughts of storks delivering babies, Santa Claus and the all-too-obvious lie that they are not adopted. The perpetually-recycled soul of the family pets watches on as the family inches closer and closer to moral (and literal) bankruptcy and Daughtery challenges Mommy's answers to life's bigger questions. Oh, and then the house burns down.

That Time the House Burned Down was presented by Fresh Ink Theatre in April 2016, directed by Stephanie LeBolt.

A ragtag troupe of six staffers from McMurdo Station in Antarctica offer a breakneck pageant covering 100+ years of milestones and mishaps in Antarctic history, including the first women to winter-over, an existential pair of abandoned sled dogs, the most unheroic explorer of the Heroic Age, and plenty more Antarctic stories you never knew you cared about. Amidst convoluted metaphors and obscure trivia, the team's impetus eventually emerges: to channel their passion for Antarctica into a call for shared stewardship of our planet.

(We Are) The Antarcticans was commissioned by Flat Earth Theatre and the Museum of Science as part of the Greenhouse Playlab in 2017—18.

In the wake of their mother's death, Jenny and Not Jenny reunite after thirteen years of estrangement. The twin sisters navigate the fraught ancient history they share and the murky recent pasts they don't share- which only becomes more complicated when they are joined by their younger brother Jimmy who has more than a few grudges to bear and secrets to spoil.

not Jenny was presented by Bridge Repertory Theater from Dec 6 - 15, 2013, directed by Rebecca Bradshaw.