Meet the Cartozians by Talene Monahon

Part riveting historical drama, part scorching satire, Talene Monahon’s Meet the Cartozians reopens a startling chapter of American history. In the 1920s, an Armenian American man fights for legal recognition. A century later, a new generation embraces pop culture’s appetite for influence and fame. Layered, surprising, and wildly imaginative, Meet the Cartozians asks how we decide who gets to belong — and at what price.

Talene Monahon is a playwright, performer and docu-theater maker based in Brooklyn. Her play Meet the Cartozians was a 2026 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Drama and also received the Outer Critic’s Circle Award for Best New Off Broadway Play and a Drama Desk Award nomination. Other plays include The Good John Proctor (Bedlam, The New Yorker’s “Top 10 Best Plays of 2023”), Eat Me (Southcoast Rep), Jane Anger  (The New Ohio, 2022 Off-Broadway Alliance Best New Play Nominee), and the docu-theater piece How to Load a Musket (59E59, TheaterMania’s “Best Theater of 2020”) Upcoming productions include Wonder! A Woman Keeps a Secret, premiering at Classic Stage Company in May 2027, and Meet the Cartozians at the Huntington Theater and Berkeley Rep. Talene is currently commissioned with Second Stage, Manhattan Theater Club, and Studio Theater and is the Sun Valley Playwright’s 2026 Resident. She teaches Playwriting at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. B.A. Dartmouth College