For playwright Phanésia Pharel ’21, The Waterfall feels inseparable from her time at Barnard College — from the first moments of inspiration to the relationships that brought her creative vision to the New York stage.
Bean, a first-generation immigrant, has come home to take care of her mother, Emi, after a brief hospitalization. The two are placed together, again, as parent and child, now confronted as adults with conflicting beliefs about what it means to live a good life, and what it means to be a good woman. The third character is "the waterfall,” Pharel explained — the private space the pair created for themselves in America and an emblem of the home neither can return to: Haiti.
The play, Pharel’s Off-Broadway debut, premiered at WP Theater on January 31, 2026 and is now extended through March 8, 2026. So far, the feedback has been affirming. In a recent review, The New York Times praised the rich themes of motherhood and inheritance: “The relationship between Emi and Bean feels deeply inhabited, sharpened by Emi’s easy wit (“Everything your therapist says, Oprah has said it better”) and by the force of her conviction.”
The language of water has long appealed to Pharel, who describes relationships between parents and children in related terms. “I think that mothers love like the ocean,” she said. “It can be so deep. It can pull us and move us. And then I consider, as a Haitian woman, how difficult it would be to say no to my mom. I wanted to show both sides — this mother who is so powerful and beautiful and sacrificial, and this daughter who feels trapped in her mother’s expectations.”
At Barnard, Pharel was an Urban Studies major but engaged often with Barnard Theatre, acting in productions like Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. With funding from the Beyond Barnard Internship Program, she secured an internship at WP Theater, the nation’s oldest and largest theater company dedicated to uplifting the work of women writers. (WP would go on to co-produce The Waterfall; the play’s other producer, Thrown Stone Theatre, was connected to Pharel by a Barnard friend.)
In college, Pharel found artistic inspiration throughout her coursework. The seeds of The Waterfall came from reading the book Regretting Motherhood, a sociological exploration of Israeli women who consider parenthood to be a mistake. It would be interesting, she thought, to wrestle with the limits and opportunities of women's bodily autonomy in a play, particularly against the social pressures that children of immigrants can face. Pulling inspiration from other works — including the Greta Gerwig ’06 film Ladybird, which Pharel calls “the perfect mother-daughter film” — she began to write, completing the script while earning her MFA in Playwriting from the University of California, San Diego.
Since graduating from Barnard, Pharel has received widespread recognition and support for her creative portfolio. In 2024, The Waterfall received the esteemed Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award from The Kennedy Center, which honors outstanding plays that capture the African-American experience. (Previous recipients include Jeremy O. Harris and Katori Hall.) In 2025, another one of Pharel’s productions, DEAD GIRL’S QUINCEAÑERA, was developed with the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, often called the “launchpad of American theater.”
Last fall, she was named the Playwriting Fellow at Emory University, a two-year salaried position that includes both teaching and the development of a new play.
“Barnard put so much into me as a first-generation, low-income student. It’s the highest honor to be a professor now, because I know what this education can do,” she said. “The critical thinking that a liberal arts education fosters is how I’m able to do this work. I built those skills at Barnard. It’s a special place.”
Tickets are available for The Waterfall at WP Theater (2162 Broadway, New York, NY 10024) through March 8, 2026.