Beautiful Blessed Child
A Mother DaughterChild Roadtrip
1NB, 1F, 70mins
I thought you checked your car-fluids / I did ?
Professionally ? / No.
Mm.
Aimiko has never taken a road trip with t/her Mom. Sharon has never seen nor heard of any sort of mother-daughterchild road trip. And so, our brave pioneers take to the road, driving West, 10 miles per hour above the speed limit, with tales of cannibals (The Donner Party), crane wives (The Decemberists), and samurai children (the mythic family lore) buzzing over the airwaves, offering avenues of survival, all of which are only moderately helpful when Aimiko’s car radiator suddenly goes dead.
This is their story.
Finalist: The Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference | Honorable Mention: The Leah Ryan Playwriting Award | Semi-Finalist: Bay Area Playwriting Festival
Developed with Support from: Roundabout Theatre’s Underground Reading Series • Fault Line Theatre’s Irons in the Fire • Stillwright Playwrighting Retreat
This is Not What I Expected When I Imagined a Republic
A Usonian Historical Triptych
Ensemble: 8-12, 65mins
This is Not What I Expected When I Imagined a Republic is a historical tryptic following the development our nation from courageous nomads to cash-strapped IKEA millennials.
Part dance-theatre, part card game, and part good old kitchen drama, This is Not What I Expected When I Imagined a Republic challenges the Usonian* mythologies of what it means to be a republic(an), how that's changed over time, and what to do when you discover your supposedly future life partner has just voted Republican. And you are not “a Republican.”
*Usonian: Of, and or related to The United States. Because American refers to the whole continent, like, literally.
Finalist: Bay Area Playwright’s Festival | Semi-Finalist: The Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference
University Production: Tantrum Theatre at Ohio University
Developed with Support from: The Playwright’s Realm’s Scratchpad Series
cropt
A CrossCountry Dance Trip
Ensemble, 6, 70min
Moving from the fig orchards of United Farm Workers to the brunch tables of Instagram It Girls to the data server farms of Instagram itself, CROPT is a connective triptych that investigates the systematic violence inherent in the millennial bourgeois life that some of us have grown into/aspire towards to ask what is the price of that perfect brunch photo.
Finalist: The Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference
Developed with Support from: Jackalope Theatre’s New Frontier Series
893 | Ya-ku-za
A Woman's Bid to Become The First
2F, 60mins
The way to make a person make a decision is to convince everyone around them / Maybe that's what I'm doing / I said win, Aya, not kill
Set over the course of a business lunch in a unknown Japanese restaurant somewhere in the United States, 893 | Ya-ku-za follows Aya's bid to become the first female member of the infamous Japanese crime syndicate. Exploring themes of ambition, power, and loyalty, 893 | Ya-ku-za asks what it means to be first and what we're willing to do to get there.
Showcased Play: ConFest: Revolutionary Acts: 6th National Asian American Theater Conference & Festival (CAATA)
Workshop Production: Generic Ensemble Company at the VORTEX (Austin, TX)
UNTAMEABLE
An Immersive Diamond Heist
6F, 2M, 90mins
There are things more important than love / Name them / Diamonds
Pitting diamond heist against museum intrigue, Untameable follows the story of two young women, one trying to steal a jewel and the other trying to keep it safe. The work is an immersive romp between a criminal den and a modern museum; the audience navigates their own experience and much like the characters themselves, must decide between love and diamonds, honesty or victory. Untameable is an investigation into what we will do to achieve our magnum opus and what gets lost in the winning.
Production: The Unsoft War & Highly Impractical Theatre (NYC)
Awards/Noteworthys: New York Innovative Theatre Award Nominee • Performance Pick from Bedford & Bowry • Wordsmith Theatre Finalist • Dionysia New Play Competition Finalist • Botanicum Seedlings Semi-Finalist
Developed with Support from Sanguine Theatre's Project Playwright • The Unsoft War's Reading Series • Marrow's Edge's Writers Group • Espacio Arevalo
3F, 1M, 60mins
After Josephine returns home to find her cats brutally murdered for a crime she committed in a past life, she enlists her boyfriend to help her avenge her cats’ deaths. What follows is a series of small, violent acts that are mundane and yet deeply tragic in their cyclical nature. Rooted in both contemporary suburbia and the historical traditions of Japanese Theatre, We Are Samurai uses cats, iPhones, and simultaneous action to explore age-old questions of agency and entitlement.
We Are Samurai is an immersive suburban revenge tragedy about four twenty-somethings engaging in petty acts of violence in an effort to absolve a millennia-old offense. As the piece unfolds simultaneously across four different playing spaces, it is up to the audience to choose what to witness.
Productions: Venus Theatre (Laurel, MD) • Marrow's Edge (NYC) • Brown University (PVD, Dir. Erik Ehn)
Awarded: Best Play in Professional Theaters by DC Metro Arts
Published In: Fourth Wall Review
A Departure
A Love War Story
7 Total | 3F, 1M, 3E
They say you are leaving / Yes
Do you even know what love is? / No but I know what it is not
Ume has fallen in love, again. This time, with a woman. In Japan. And what about her family in The States? Who is the woman she has become and who is the woman she thought she would be? Taking place on the eve of World War Two in both The United States and Japan, A Departure follows Ume as she negotiates her duties as daughter, mother, and lover in her decision between loyalty or love in the great war of her heart.
Developed with Support from: The National New Play Network's MFA Playwrights Workshop at The Kennedy Center • SPACE on Ryder Farm
Ravenous
A Play of Hunger and Survival
2, 1M 1F, 60mins
You don't understand how hungry I am / Trust me I do
Adri’s come home for her gun and Cian just wants to be left alone. And both of them know that without a gun they surely will die. Set in Post-World War II Italy, Ravenous examines what it means to be hungry and what we will do to become satisfied.
Finalist: The Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference • DVRP Playwrights Program
Semi-Finalist: Princess Grace Playwriting Awards • Bay Area Playwrights Festival
Staged Reading: Kitchen Dog Theater
Developed with Support from: The New Harmony Project
Excipio
An Assassination Roadtrip
9, 2F, 3M, 4 NonBinary
40 Minutes
They could be anywhere. I mean, they could be listening to us, right now.
There's been a spat of of remarkable deaths among the wealthy, white, and privileged. Who's behind them, and surely, they must all be accidents? Excipio tells the story of a ragtag band of female and trans assassins hellbent on annihilating American Exceptionalism by taking out bad men in power. Driving from the caves of Moab to the penthouses of New York City, Excipio is an immersive theatrical experience that questions privilege, how change is made, and to what it means to be truly exceptional.
Developed with: Pavel Zustiak & Kirk Lynn at The University of Texas at Austin
THIS IS WHAT I CHOOSE AND NO I'M NOT SORRY ABOUT IT AND YES IF YOU ASKED I'D DO IT AGAIN
An Interactive Experience for High Schoolers
12, 9F 3M or 12E (Casting Flexible) 55 mins
Even after William’s death, high school life has trudged on. But when Sara & Aimée start planning “Alive Together” to honor William, his sibling Vivian finally takes a stand and ask-demands Sara to cancel the event.
But should Vivian get to decide, given that William and Sara were “a thing, like romantically” and The Band has been planning their debut for the event? And did anyone think to ask Brett and Aüge who really knew Will, but have been cutting class all year? And what’s going on between Brett and Aüge anyway?
With three moments of decision and eight play tracks, this is what i chose and no i'm not sorry and yes if you'd ask i'd do it again is a birufcating modular play that explores who has ownership over a tragedy, when to stand by your friends, and what it is to try and make sense of a loss when you still have to show up and survive school every single day.
A 2020 Kilroys List Play • Licensed with Uproar Theatrics - Read the Play Here
Selected: New Visions New Voices with TYA-USA 2020 at The Kennedy Center
Developed with: Weiss High School (Pflugerville, TX) • Broadway Training Center of Westchester, NY
Turn Left
An Audio-Interactive Adventure for One
3, 1F, 2 Any + Audience Member, 35mins
Do you even know who you're dealing with? Don't answer that. You don't. If you did, you'd leave immediately.
What is the line between our personal lives and our political ones? Turn Left is an audio interactive theatre for one piece that places the audience at the center of the action as they find themselves going on a first date with a highly controversial political figure. Written specifically for The Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, the audience member's story changes based on the decisions made previously in the experience. Spanning national politics, grassroots activitsm, and a few dates in an art museum, Turn Left asks us about the choices we make and how we know whether we're turning towards our ideal self or leaving behind the things we hold most dear.
Developed with: The Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, TX) • The University of Texas at Austin • The Broadway Training Center of Westchester (NYC)
Time | All
A Multi-Media Exploration
Time | All is a multi-media experience that combines dance, original music, projection and poetry to explore the vastness and granularity of time. How can seconds seem eternal and years move at the speed of light? Beginning with the Big Bang and ending with the flipping of a light goodnight, Time | All spans five different timescales and four different mediums to investigate our experience of time and our place within it.
Developed with: PrismATX
7F, 3M, 2 Hours
If this trip doesn't kill you, I might
105 is a post-apocalyptic trilogy that follows siblings Jackson and Sybil across the country, into new societies, and onto the battlefield. Spanning radio play (WalkingSounds), immersive theatre (HeartWeight), and dance (WarDance), 105 offers an interactive theatrical experience exploring sacrifice and survival and ultimately asks who we become when faced with a broken world.
Workshop Production: University of Texas at Austin as Part of the Cohen New Works Festival
Recipient of: A University of Texas at Austin Fine Arts Council Grant
The One You Feed
An Immersive War of Town vs Wolves
6W, 4M
Lupae, We are soon to war
Set in a town, the woods, and the space in between The One You Feed tells the story of a world on the brink of war. Townsen need more water to survive. Lupae are getting hungry. The work follows the story of Diane, a young women on the edge of the woods and at the moment of pledging her loyalty to either the Town or the wild women wolf tribe in the woods.
The play is an immersive piece that splits at various moments of decision, allowing a distinct story arc to develop each night, depending on moments of decision based on a read of the audience. There is a war to be waged, and what happens is determined in the flash of a decision.
Seen at: #serials at The Flea | Developed with: plumage. (a writers' group)
Red
A Dance Between Mayors & Wolves
2F, 2M, 1 Hour
It’s wolf season. When Red Wolf comes running, the tablecloth comes out from under Diane’s nicely organized existence. A new work that features half-men half-wolves, grandmothers getting eaten, and fable running into life, Red is a story about how love can make us into monsters and how it makes us human again too.
Workshop Production: Production Workshop (Providence, RI)
Shorter Works
Faster Than Bullets | A Huntress of Bus Driver's Quest for Revenge
The Louboutin | A Shoe-Driven Heist
After You | 100 Dates in 10 Minutes
Done | A Post-Apocalyptic Lullaby
I'd Rather Not Say | A 10-Minute Journey to A Place UnNamed
The Urnest Speaks | A Funeral Navigation
Slippery, Slippery | A Talking Soap Romp
The Thing I Forgot | A One-Minute Dance
Seen at: HERE Arts Center • Ensemble Studio Theatre • The Access Theatre • The Arts Center in Carborro, NC • Brown University • Rye Country Day School | Published in: The Dionysian • Bare Fiction • 1 Play 1 Day