Heartbreak Hotel

This exhilarating and award-winning new work from acclaimed New Zealand creatives Eleanor Bishop and Karin McCracken encapsulates heartache, breakup songs, and fresh starts in a swift 75-minutes. Karin McCracken and Simon Leary will reprise their performances for the New York engagement.

This one’s for the young hearts, the old hearts, and the broken hearts. From the acclaimed New Zealand company EBKM comes a new comedy about grief. Karin McCracken is a woman navigating heartbreak and Simon Leary plays all the men in her life in this funny and moving show that is studded with lo-fi covers of classic breakup songs, bad dates and attempted fresh starts. It ingeniously incorporates science and technology to give us a holistic picture of heartbreak’s impact on our bodies and minds. You’ll want to cry. You’ll want to laugh. Welcome to the Heartbreak Hotel. 

KARIN MCCRACKEN (Writer, Performer, EBKM Co-Artistic Director) is an award-winning writer and performer based in P?neke, Wellington, and the co-artistic director of EBKM, alongside Eleanor Bishop. Karin wrote and performs in Heartbreak Hotel, which has been presented at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, RISING Festival Melbourne and Soho Theatre London. She co-wrote (with Eleanor Bishop) the large-scale theatre show Gravity & Grace and Yes Yes Yes, a show for young people about healthy relationships. Yes Yes Yes has been presented in Canada, the USA, Germany, Iceland and Australia, and has been translated into Hungarian, Catalan and Welsh. Karin and Eleanor were the recipients of the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award in 2022, the first time in its history that it was awarded to a creative partnership. In 2025 Karin received a MacDowell Fellowship to write a new work for stage.

SIMON LEARY (Performer) has been working professionally as an actor in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally since graduating from Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School in 2010. Film and TV credits include: The Brokenwood Mysteries, Dirty Laundry, Shortland Street, and Hilary. Simon played the lead in A Very Good Boy directed by Samuel Te Kani which recently premiered in official selection at the 82nd Venice Film Festival. Simon has worked in over 30 plays at Circa Theatre in Wellington as an actor including Blithe Spirit, Transmission Beta, Cock, A Servant to two Masters, and most recently as Tom in The Glass Menagerie. He has performed with Auckland Theatre Company, The Court Theatre and Centrepoint Theatre. Simon is a core collaborator with EBKM, appearing in Heartbreak Hotel and the company's large-scale work, Gravity & Grace.

ELEANOR BISHOP (Director, EBKM Co-Artistic Director) is a director and writer working across theatre, opera and film. As the co-artistic director of EBKM (with Karin McCracken), their works include Gravity & Grace, Heartbreak Hotel and Yes Yes Yes. Their work has toured to the UK, Canada, the USA and Europe and Yes Yes Yes has been translated into Hungarian, Catalan and Welsh. EBKM are the winners of the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award in 2022, the first time in the awards history it has been given to a partnership. Eleanor is a former Friedlander Foundation Associate Artist for NZ Opera and was a member of Jane Campion’s inaugural pop up film intensive “A Wave in the Ocean” supported by Netflix. Her first short film “GIRL TIME” recently premiered in official selection at the 82nd Venice Film Festival. She holds an MFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, USA where she studied as a John Wells Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar.

EBKM - EBKM is one of New Zealand’s most innovative contemporary theatre companies, led by co-artistic directors Eleanor Bishop and Karin McCracken who founded the company in 2017. Foregrounding intelligent and emphatic writing, formal innovation, a strong connection between actor and audience, and social utility, EBKM’s shows run the gamut from exploring consent and healthy relationships, to artistic failure, to the physiological impacts of heartbreak. For the past five years the company has consistently toured abroad, appearing at esteemed festivals and presenting houses in the U.K., Canada, North America, Iceland, Australia, Serbia and Germany, while adaptations of their works have taken place in Hungary, Catalonia and Wales. EBKM develops new work through extensive research and in consultation with audiences, social agencies and academics, as well as long-term collaborations with leading designers and performers. In 2024, their large-scale adaptation Gravity & Grace was commissioned by New Zealand’s two largest arts festivals, winning multiple awards including Production of the Year, and Gold Award - Spatial Design from the Designers Institute of New Zealand. In 2026, EBKM will make their New York debut.

Occasional Drawl

OCCASIONAL DRAWL (Producer) Producers Brian Letchworth and Christa Scott Reed take a holistic and hybrid approach to producing, with a values system rooted in paying attention to people. They choose work that is socially electric and designed for cultural relevance and commercial upside. Occasional Drawl’s Off-Broadway production of Arlene Hutton's BLOOD OF THE LAMB was nominated for the 2025 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. Other projects include the new pop opera BLOOD/LOVE, currently running Off-Broadway at Theater 555. Projects in development include new plays by Karen Mason, Brenda Withers, Maggie Lou Rader, and dizzy turek. www.occasionaldrawl.com/

BRIAN LETCHWORTH (Producer) has over two decades of experience in both commercial and not-for-profit theater sectors. As a General Manager for Aruba Productions, Brian managed productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, in London, Las Vegas and multiple national tours. Brian also spent two seasons as the General Manager of the Tony Award-winning The Acting Company. Brian's areas of interest and inquiry include (but are not limited to) ephemera, public access television, adaptation, waiting, collage, theater of and about the American South, parentheticals (!), abandoned spaces and lists. He was born and raised in North Carolina and lives in New York City.

CHRISTA SCOTT-REED (Producer) is a producer, director, and actor whose work spans Broadway, Off-Broadway, Regional Theatre, Film & TV. Christa’s Off-Broadway directing credits include the first New York revival of Shadowlands, starring Daniel Gerroll, A Man for All Seasons, starring Michael Countryman and Carolyn McCormick, and The Great Divorce (also a 28-city national tour). Christa was formerly Associate Producer at Aruba Productions and the many shows she commissioned, produced and directed for virtual stages were streamed over 150,000 times in all 50 states and multiple countries. As an actor, Christa has extensive theatre credits in New York and beyond, as well as numerous on-screen roles.