Pedro Eiras

from the terror of flight (or the discovery of a nation) (playwright)

When João da Silva, a man in his early twenties, leaves Brazil to pursue a new life as an undocumented immigrant in the United States, he embarks on an epic, difficult, and often comedic journey. Along the way, he encounters the many extraordinary challenges faced by immigrants crossing the border in search of opportunity, freedom, and bravery... only to discover that there is another America, one in which opportunity is for a very few, freedom often unattainable, and bravery an act of daily survival. Previously titled "The Other America." For a 5-page sample, click here.

Dramatist Guild Foundation National Fellowship semi-finalist.
Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative semi-finalist.
Finalist in Company One Theater’s 2023-2024 Volt Lab.
Staged reading at the UMass 22’ Fringe Festival (Arts Council Grant Recipient).
Staged reading at the Coalescence Theater, Illinois.
Selected for DQT’s Classic in Color program, led by Caridad Svich, New York.
Finalist for LPC and Teatro Círculo's Media Luna X First Call Mixer Series, New York.
Finalist for La Lengua Theater Decolonization Stories Festival, San Francisco.

This is Half a Play (playwright)

A penniless playwright is struggling with writer’s block when he decides to do something he has never done before: ask Chat, an Artificial Intelligence, to assist him. What starts as basically just a new way to google something quickly transforms into a complex and confusing game of upmanship and, when the playwright decides to turn his conversations with the AI into an actual play, the very act of creativity is called into question, forcing him to decide whether or not this creation actually counts as art, and, therefore, a full play. For a 5-page sample, click here.

Neukom Institute Literary Awards at Dartmouth College semi-finalist.
Playwright Incubator Collective Play in Progress selection - staged reading in Northampton, MA.
STX Latinx New Play Festival semi-finalist.
Finalist at the Black and Latino Playwriting Celebration at Texas State University.

A Subject of Interest (playwright, screenwriter)

It's 1968, four years into a vicious military dictatorship in Brazil, when Rodrigo Ferreira, an idealistic college student, becomes an interpreter for John Moretti, a U.S. agent sent to Brazil to teach "advanced interrogation techniques" to the local police. As they travel the country together, the two men form an unlikely bond. But when Rodrigo uncovers the reality behind these lessons, it drives him and John in opposite directions, forcing them to confront their loyalties... to their countries, to each other, and to themselves. For a 5-page sample, click here.

Winner of the James Baldwin Playwriting Award.
Selected for the Word! Theater Festival (Five College Theater Committee).
Smith College’s New Play Reading Series selection - staged reading at Northampton, MA.
Staged Reading at the Building Bridges As We Walk: A Latinx/Latine Theater Symposium at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst.
Semi-finalist for the Blue Ink Award from the American Blues Theater, Chicago.
Semi-finalist (as of March, 2026) for the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference.
Selected as a Sundance’s Cultural Impact Residency Fellow.

Anatomy of Silence, (creator, writer and narrator)

When journalist Pedro Eiras discovers that his grandfather was persecuted during Brazil’s military dictatorship—a secret long kept from his family—he embarks on a personal investigation that soon expands into an inquiry into the pacts that sustained the dictatorship’s impunity, leading him to other victims, survivors, and relatives of the disappeared, and to the House of Death, a clandestine torture center located just two miles from where he was born, and largely erased from his hometown’s memory. As Pedro enters this space, speaks with residents, seeks out former agents of repression, meets those fighting to turn the House into a memorial, and turns to his own family, he confronts the traumas of decades of silence. Blending investigative journalism and testimony, Anatomy of Silence is an audio series that reveals how these silences continue to shape relationships, identities, and Brazilian democracy.

Developing this nonfiction audio series with Audible Brasil (pilot in development).

Histories of the Brazilian People (screenwriter)

“Histories of the Brazilian People," based on the work of historian Mary Del Priore, is a 26-episode documentary series that takes the audience into the everyday lives of its ancestors, showcasing a different history of Brazil, a grand narrative of the small things, of the multicolored and complex fabric of its people... a tale of pleasure and anguish, civilization and barbarism, harmony and conflict. The series blends dramatization and interviews with experts to peek through the keyhole and see how the Brazilian people lived, dressed, ate, worked, laughed, loved, and dreamed. To watch the preview, click here.

Writer of this 26-episode documentary series with elements of dramatization for Brazilian TV channel Curta; produced by Giros Filmes.
Selected for the Curta! Documentary Festival 2024.

If I Die, (screenwriter)

In 1968, four years after the military coup, Inês Etienne Romeu, a young college student, abandons her life to join an armed resistance organization and takes part in the kidnapping of Swiss Ambassador Giovanni Bucher — an action that places the group squarely in the crosshairs of DOPS, the dictatorship’s secret police. Soon after, Inês is captured and transferred to a clandestine torture center in Petrópolis, in the mountains of Rio de Janeiro, known as the House of Death. A decade later, as the Amnesty Law advances through the National Congress, journalist Sílvia Fernandes discovers that Inês — the sole survivor of the House of Death — is being held in the Bangu Complex. When their paths collide, the two women embark on a perilous journey to tell Inês’s story and expose the horrors she endured, confronting a regime that, though weakened, remains willing to do anything to protect its darkest secrets. For a 5-page sample, in Portuguese, click here.

Creative Journey Award at the 2023 Rio Creative Conference (Rio2C), currently under development.

Genesis, (screenwriter)

United States of America, 2059. The Genesis Project, a corporate autocracy, rules the country. Pregnancies are forbidden and all babies are generated in a scientific complex called The Incubator. Human reproduction is controlled by the Project and only those who undergo the Evaluation, and are considered Apt, can foster the children conceived in the Incubator. Fernanda and David are strangers, but, when he fails the Evaluation and his entire life turns upside down, it is her who comes to the rescue, pulling him into a plan she has been working on for years. They soon embark on a journey to overthrow the Project, but when long forgotten secrets emerge, and their past connections to the very autocracy they are trying to destroy come into light, their entire plot to save the country is put at risk. View full pitch deck here.

Semi-finalist at the FRAPA Screenwriting Contest.

Savage Land, (screenwriter)

America, the New World, early seventeenth century. Every week, hundreds of men and women embark on a forced journey across the Atlantic, leaving behind their homeland, their families, their lives, and, above all, their freedom. Simon is only seventeen when he arrives at Valongo Harbor, the largest slave market in the Americas. Matadi is a runaway slave who has spent the last two decades among the Cayapó natives, hidden in the dense forest and far from the settlers who once enslaved him. Zilá has spent her entire young life as a farmhand on the Santa Efigênia Plantation, a sprawling sugarcane farm. In Savage Land, when these three paths collide, long-buried truths resurface, ancestral bonds are remade, and the hope for freedom is reignited, but the fight to achieve it will be more arduous and dangerous than any of them could have imagined. View full pitch deck here.

Finalist at the FRAPA Screenwriting Contest.
Selected for the Fiction Pitching at the Rio2C Conference.
Selected for the Varilux Screenwriting Lab.

Other projects:

Save Ana (short film): screenwriter and co-director
The Distances (short film): screenwriter and director - awarded at the Cel-U-Cine Festival
The Interview (short movie): screenwriter and director
A Toca do Vídeo (short movie): screenwriter and co-director
If I die, (short movie): screenwriter and director - nominated for the Argila Award.

As a dramaturg\director:

Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (UMass Amherst): assistant director
Olvidados by Elisa Gonzales (UMass Amherst): assistant dramaturg and director
Twelfth Night by William Shakspeare (UMass Amherst): dramaturg
Tight Pants by Betel Arnold (reading at Silverthorne Theater): director
Our Town by Thorton Wilder (UMass Amherst): dramaturg