Writing & Original Work
Plays, essays, and original storytelling by Michael Valdes.
Michael’s writing explores identity, family, memory, belonging, and the complicated spaces where the personal meets the political. Across theatre, live storytelling, and cultural commentary, his work approaches complex subjects through intimate human relationships, balancing humor, vulnerability, and contradiction.
ANEMONE
A story of friendship under pressure, identity in crisis, and the human cost of distance.
Jenna Barricklo as Becca and Shay Shalem as Nili in ANEMONE. Photo by Austin Patterson.
Set in New York City in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks in Israel, ANEMONE follows Nili, a young Israeli woman stranded thousands of miles from home, and Becca, the Jewish American friend hosting her. When Nili’s best friend Eden disappears at a music festival in Israel, she is left suspended between hope and fear as events unfold from afar.
Meanwhile, Becca watches the world around her in New York rapidly change, forcing her to confront questions about identity, belonging, and beliefs she once took for granted. As grief, fear, and an increasingly fractured outside world enter the apartment, their once-effortless friendship begins to strain.
ANEMONE is an intimate bilingual English-Hebrew portrait of friendship under pressure—and what happens when the personal and political can no longer remain separate.
About the Work
Michael is drawn to stories where large questions become deeply personal: how identity shapes relationships, how memory travels through families and communities, and what happens when the world outside changes the way we understand ourselves. His work often centers Jewish identity, family, grief, culture, belonging, and the contradictions that exist within them—grounding larger conversations in intimate relationships and individual experience.
"My job as an artist isn’t to give audiences predetermined answers. It’s to have them leave the theater with more questions than they had when they walked in."
- MICHAEL
Selected Writing & Original Work
ONLY CHILD’S
SHIVA CLUB
CAREFREE, PROUD, AND A LITTLE MELANCHOLY
EL PUENTE
Play · In Development
Original Spoken Piece
A partially autobiographical play exploring grief, cultural inheritance, family, and the fragile connections that remain after loss.
An original spoken piece written for Jewtina exploring Michael's relationship to his Cuban heritage, his late father, and the complicated question of cultural belonging. The piece later helped shape the development of Only Child's Shiva Club.
An original spoken piece written for Shana Tova: Stories & Songs of Hope & Renewal at Symphony Space.
Original Spoken Piece
Articles & Essays
