Riven is a play about Melina and Alessandra, two women from the global south working at a waste picking cooperative – a place where recycled materials are sorted and people are rescued from neglect. Based on interviews conducted with over 35 Brazilian waste pickers, Riven is set to investigate the intersection between environmental justice, thematics of accumulation of waste, and complexities of hope. Melina and Alessandra, like most of the 20 million waste pickers around the world, have been rivened by life and prejudice. Side by side, these characters share not only a lifetime of sorting the accumulated discards of a society that has failed them, but also a promise: to survive and to stay bound to each other.