plays:
To view all publicly available plays, visit New Play Exchange.
It's 2020 in middle America. BEAT meets at the confluence of life-giving and life-taking, following the interconnected stories of daughters, mothers, friends, and the ones in-between. As they strategize for a less gun-violent world, they become recipients of different forms of violences, enacted by strangers, spouses, and the state. What lives are protected under the guise of "the right to life?" or the right to guns? What does it mean to be the ones who survive? Trauma and its politicization is explored in this story of motherhood, sisterhoods, and survivors.
BEAT.
BEAT was awarded the Hopwood Award (Roy W. Cowden Memorial Fellowship) for dramatic writing. It was workshopped at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre, and Dance from January through March of 2020 and had numerous staged readings. It was set to debut in a full performance in April of 2020 at PLAYFEST. This performance was cancelled due to COVID.
Two 20-somethings sharing an apartment in Berkeley wake up the morning of September 9, 2020 to a red-orange sky. they find themselves caught in a double-bind: with wildfires outside pushing them to evacuate, and COVID forcing them to stay in, the two contemplate what it means to face the absurd, apocalyptic world together, when the simple act of breathing has become a fraught task.
AND FOR YOUR LAST BREATH? was most recently developed with Dragon Theatre in Redwood City, CA in March 2021.
AND FOR YOUR LAST BREATH?
FIRE AND ICE
In the rugged Icelandic landscape, an American human rights researcher meets an Icelandic local in a geothermal hotspring. The two discuss and navigate the complex dynamics of globalization, which has brought environmental harm to much of Iceland's natural lands as well as brought people from around the world together. The short play hinges on taking a plunge — into the cold, the unknown, and the unlikely.
FIRE AND ICE was part of Blank Space Workshop's inaugural season, including a month of development and a staged reading. Press from Broadway World Detroit and Arts at Michigan. Recently, it was read with Dragon Productions in Redwood City, CA.
POLITICAL SATIRES: GEORGIA WASHINGTON & STALLING
GEORGIA WASHINGTON is a comic re-telling of the country's origin by political leaders Georgia Washington, Alexandra Hamilton, Tonya Jefferson, and Jane Madison.
STALLING details the story of a time-traveling archaeologist who stumbles upon the cave paintings of the 21st century: bathroom stall graffiti. The friendship that ensues between a futurist optimist and contemporary nihilist will leave viewers laughing.
These short plays were produced with RC Players at the University of Michigan in 2017 and 2018.
