I’m so excited to announce that I have acquired the rights from Tillie Walden’s team at Gernert co. to adapt her graphic novel Are You Listening? (2019) into a play, which will be going up at the Playwrights Horizons Theater School. Working in collaboration with friend & long-time collaborator Sil Rivera as the director, the play will be going up for a four-show run October 31st - November 2nd.

Tillie Walden is an Eisner & Ignatz-award winning graphic novelist, whose work I’ve been lucky enough to admire from the age of 14, and I can’t wait to tackle this project.

Are You Listening?
by Noma Mirny
adapted from the graphic novel by Tillie Walden
directed by Sil Rivera

LOU, a 27-year old mechanic, is on a trip to San Angelo, Texas when she spots the 17-year old BEA stranded with a backpack by the side of the road. Both lesbians from the same small town in rural Texas (Lou has worked on Bea’s family car), Lou decides to offer her a ride. But when Bea gets in the car, Lou realizes that Bea is trying to run away from home, and won’t tell her why. 

While Lou drives west to visit family & process the grief of suddenly losing her mother, Bea must eventually come to terms with what happened to her back home, and find a way to sleep at night. But as the two of them travel further west, they run into a mysterious cat, a series of ghost towns, and a group of shadowy cowboys that appear in the night like the Marfa Lights. Will Lou overcome the loss of a mother who was hard to love? Will Bea ever be able to go back home? And what exactly are they going to do about the men & ghost towns in West Texas that seem to want to swallow them whole? A story about grief, trauma, friendship, care, mothers, their dyke daughters, & one particular cat – Are You Listening? – is a queer Western about grief like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

Playwrights Horizons Theater School, Fall ‘24 Season
October 31st - November 2nd, Studio 3D,
440 Lafayette St # 4, New York, NY 10003