are you listening?
adapted from the graphic novel by tillie walden
synopsis
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. So 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 sudden death of her mother, Bea must 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 go back home? And what exactly are they going to do about the men & ghost towns in Texas that seem to want to swallow them whole? A story about maps, mothers, their dyke daughters, & one particular cat – are you listening? – is a queer Western about grief like nothing you’ve ever seen before.
info
3w, 1-2m
run time: 90min
key words: western, texas, lesbian/dyke stories, road trip, coming of age, magical realism, southern gothic
production history
Playwrights Horizons Theater School — Fall 2024 Season - Oct. 31st - Nov 2nd 2024 (Production)
Among The Coats
synopsis
It’s the year of our lord and savior – 2003. It’s hot, dry, and deadly boring – Utah. LEE (24) is a butch lesbian who's one hell of an actress and one nightmare of a waiter. When she gets cast in a non-Equity summer production, she flies down to Utah, excited to finally get work after coming out. There, she meets JANE (19), a Catholic kindergarten teacher who's fresh out of high school and freshly engaged to a man whose eyes she secretly imagines scooping out with grapefruit spoons. And she's just gotten her first gig as a seasonal acting apprentice.
But when the two of them are cast in a regional production of the worst play you’ve ever seen, they are forced to replay the same scene of intimacy over & over again. And with a reckless director, a poorly written script, and lack of intimacy coordinator --- the two of them begin to become attracted to one another -- and all of a sudden, find themselves unable to perform the show.
info
2w (one femme-presenting, the other butch-presenting), 1m
run time: 90min
key words: french farce, sex play, dramedy / tragedy, period piece, religion, intimacy, stage violence
production history
Good Apples Collective — Rootstock Reading Series — October 2024 (Reading)
Broke People Play Festival — Full-Length Festival (Closed out fest!) — May 2024 (Production)
Playwrights Horizons Theater School — Fall 2023 Season — November 2023 (Production)
Uproar Theater Corps — “Love, Actually” Festival — May 2023 (Reading)
LOWLANDS
synopsis
In Boston, a woman named Jenna threatens to leave a man named Colin, and the man named Colin threatens to set every single tree in the world on fire. In Northern Ireland, the Catholic Sister M is driven sick with lust, Joan of Arc comes back as a young trans man who works as a grocer, and a TV host chronicles the hotels built on the scorched earth of dead forests. When Jenna arrives in the small town in 1998, where the residents fight for a bloody independence & nothing is as simple as it seems, the last remaining trees in the world stand swaying in the wind — waiting for her to save them.
info
2w, 2m, 1 nb/trans man or transmasculine actor
run time: 60min
key words: folklore, magical realism, trans narratives, religion, historical
production history
Playwrights Horizons Theater School — Spring 2024 Season - April 2024 (Production)