Plays
Passivity is the death of theater. I believe plays should be experiences, and those experiences should wake us up, turn us on, and jolt us to a new way of thinking or being in the world.
I create theatrical experiences that are wild, sexy, musical, spiritual, and dangerous—sometimes all at once. For each, I aim to keep the audience essential, entertained, and immersed. Audiences have been trained to consider a play from a safe distance. I am more interested in plays that require the audience’s presence, and ask something of them in return. Sometimes, for me, the audience members are characters in the story. Other times, their participation means traveling to a site-specific location, eating food during the play, experiencing sensory immersion in the world, or engaging with the play days before the event actually starts.
My plays are each a distinct world unto themselves. I’ve made plays in bars, in an elevator, inside a cell phone, in an alley, in the woods, and in a magical cave for an audience of babies. I like that my plays look very different from each other because they are crafted individually to be the most meaningful experience for each particular audience.
The guts and hearts of my plays share common tissue. I’m interested in the way theater can create a communal experience out of very personal, internal struggles: anxiety, depression, sexual desire, spiritual longing, loneliness, and primal/animal instincts. My characters wonder what it means to be wild, where home truly is, how to make a meaningful life in a world of trauma, how to be in love, and how to plumb the depths of their minds, bodies, and hearts in search of truth.
The University of Texas at Austin, where I received my MFA in playwriting, was a wonderful home for me because of its emphasis on collaboration, risk, and kindness. I make theater because I like to be in a room with other beating hearts. I often work with composers, choreographers, visual artists, mobile app designers, chefs, and scholars, in addition to dramaturgically minded directors and performers skilled in devising. Together, we can make worlds bigger and bolder than my brain alone. Together, we make theater that makes us feel alive.
100 Heartbreaks (1W, 5M)
100 Heartbreaks at Sahara Lounge, photo by Roy Moore.
““One hell of a shit-kickin’ musical show!””
Sidle up to the bar at the Horseshoe Tavern where big-haired, sweet-voiced country darling Charlane Tucker is booked to play a set of barroom classics. She's not shy about the motor behind her cross-country tour: get her heart broken enough times to be sad enough to write the perfect country song. But her live show—with the Horseshoe's stellar house band—veers wildly off course when a past fling unexpectedly turns up. You have a front row seat for a night of whiskey-fueled drama. A story about not giving up, despite the odds, 100 Heartbreaks is a raucous send-up of and love song to the good ol' days of country music. The show features 17 brand-new, old-school country songs. More info at 100heartbreaks.com
Development: Seattle Repertory Theatre's New Play Program, Northwest Playwrights Alliance, Capitol Hill Arts Center, and Bumbershoot Arts and Culture Festival. The play premiered in Austin, TX, for a sold-out run at the Sahara Lounge.
Burn Me Down (4W, 3M, 2-4 musicians any gender)
“Premiering 2025 in Los Angeles
”
Hanna is so afraid of deep emotional connections that she makes a radical decision: she will go live off grid in her uncle’s trailer miles outside of Santa Fe, NM. She feels alive in the wild, but her solitude is short-lived when very pregnant, polyamorous Madeline and her new husband Gabe move their tiny house onto the land next to Hanna to start an intentional community.
As Hanna, Gabe, and Madeline navigate their new, unintentionally shared life together, they each grapple with the realities and expectations of their own families. Gabe—a seventh generation New Mexican with conservative, Spanish-speaking parents—has to explain his polyamorous lifestyle. Hanna’s penchant for risk activates a spark of adventure in her agoraphobic mother. And idealistic Madeline finds unexpected love and support when her own mother refuses to show up.
By the end, the characters have formed an unlikely new community, and the play celebrates the power of empathy and connection in a world that often feels deeply lonely and segregated. Hanna’s journey is one of learning to lean into the beautiful discomfort of desire: desire for vulnerability, caretaking, and love.
The play could be performed in a theater or site-specific on a piece of land. It also has a short immersive companion piece for an audience of 1-4 people in a trailer.
This is a play with original music played by a band of coyotes (can be played by humans).
Commissioned by: Seattle Repertory Theatre
Additional Development at: Teatro Paraguas, Santa Fe, NM; Santa Fe Playhouse; Salvage Vanguard, Austin, TX.
Gutting (3W, 2M)
The perfect murder victim, according to 16-year-old serial killer expert Maxine, is skinny, sexy-but-not-slutty, and white. Claudia fits the bill. Alberta does not. However, both women go missing on an isolated highway in British Columbia. As Maxine sets out to uncover the truth for her podcast (“Pray You Slay Me”), she stumbles into a world more dangerous and bizarre than she could ever imagine. Gutting makes a wild, bold collage of true stories and fiction to investigate the media’s sexualization of violence, feminist relationships to victimhood, and the simmering anger present in so many young men today.
Development: Workshop & Public Readings at Chance Theater.
Knotted (2W)
“Premiering in New York, Fall 2024 ”
Set in a conservative Texas town, the story follows Cheryl, a Seattle-raised elementary school teacher in her 40s, who grapples with her unfulfilled desires and struggles to fit into her new community. As her marriage's sexual spark fades, Cheryl secretly yearns for domination, a desire she's hesitant to voice to her complacent husband. Her life takes a tantalizing turn when she meets Abby, a 20-something covert online dominatrix battling her own inner demons. This unlikely friendship steers them both into an erotically charged journey, leading to a liberating exploration of their deepest fears and desires.
Development: Great Plains Theatre Conference; Kitchen Dog Theater New Works Festival; groundswell playwrights conference, The Tank (NY).
The Orange Garden (2W, 3M)
Kat Lozano in the university workshop production of The Orange Garden. Photo and lighting design by Kate Ducey.
“The Orange Garden exemplifies the kind of storytelling that inspires me as an artist.”
It's 1972 and John signs up for the Peace Corps to avoid the draft and impress a girl. He winds up alone in a country he couldn’t even find on a map: Iran. While his best friend, Gabor, ships off to Vietnam, and his girlfriend, Rainey, dreams of the adventure she’s too afraid to embark on, John is swept into a swirl of poetry, dervishes, and the growing fire of the coming revolution. John is ultimately forced to return to America as the Iran hostage crisis is unfolding, and he finds himself a foreigner in the place he thought was home.
Development: The University of Texas at Austin MFA Showcase; The Banff Centre Playwrights Colony, NEWvember Festival of New Plays. 2016 Kilroys List (honorable mention), 2016 Keene Prize for Literature
Please Open Your Mouth (2 lead performers plus an ensemble)
An immersive, participatory theatrical experience of food and sex. A select few lucky audience members gain entrance to a clandestine culinary orgy where a charismatic host and a cadre of servers lead their guests through a series of wildly unexpected dinner courses. On the menu: a feast of taboos, fantasies, and fetishes. Come hungry.
Development: Cohen New Works Festival (2016), Cafe Nordo (2017)
Wild Places (TBD)
Zoey Cane Belyea in the workshop of Wild Places with Rude Mechs in Austin, photo by Nik Perleros
An immersive play about drugs, healing, and the unknown. Two women lead groups of audience members through rituals of self-healing and consciousness-expanding; all the while their stories and fears begin to creep in and take over. Petra is a famous self-help guru who preaches against pharmaceutical companies; Girly is a panic-ridden weirdo who drank ayahuasca accidentally. Their two worlds squish and fold and slam together through experiential wildness and interactive technology. You might encounter a trampoline, a bucket of pills, thousands of glow-in-the-dark bouncy balls, blood, or snakes.
Development with the Rude Mechs as a Rude Fusion project March 2017.
James Asher and Megan Ahiers in 2x4.
2x4 (1W, 1M, ten-minutes)
A couple decides whether they will break up or not by re-enacting their relationship's most memorable moments.
Premiere: 14/48 Austin: The World's Quickest Theater Festival, 2015
“Finalist, Humana Festival of New American Plays/Heideman Award, 2016”
Cat Cafe, (2W, ten-minutes)
Two lonely travelers bond over sex and Xanax in a Tokyo cat cafe.
““Wouldn’t you rather go out in a flash, a mad, hot moment of pure ecstasy?””
Charged, (1W, 1M, ten-minutes)
A man falls in love with a woman who is lightning, literally.
Published: Bare Fiction Magazine, 2015 (UK)
Face the Strange (3W, ten minutes)
Two childhood friends kidnap the bride-to-be on the eve of her wedding night and take her to their old secret hideout to help the bride decide whether or not she wants to go through with the wedding. They invoke David Bowie, and things get strange.
Commission: Westmont College HIVE Fringe Festival, 2016 (Santa Barbara, CA)
Katy Taylor in Fireflies workshop at ZACH Theatre. Photo by Olivia DeBeck.
Fireflies, (3 performers, 2 musicians)
A 30-minute immersive theater and music experience designed for ages 0-5. In a magical underground cave, two creatures navigate the dark using sounds. They discover that by moving together, they can make beautiful music, and those unique sounds attract a fleet of fireflies who come to play. Created with Tamara Carroll.
Development: ZACH Theatre
““The most engaging play of the night. I imagine this is what Samuel Beckett would have written if he’d been gay.””
Miss End of the World (3W, 1M, one-act)
Stranded in a casino after the apocalypse occurs, a group of Las Vegas night club regulars stage a beauty pageant to compete for the last remaining candy bar.
Commission/Premiere: Live Girls! Theater (Seattle)
The Seven Seductions of Taylor Swift (1M)
““5 Fringe Shows Actually Worth Catching””
““An absolute bangarang of lunacy and a great date night show.””
Seven female playwrights wildly speculate about Taylor Swift’s sex life through the mouths of her seven boyfriends – Joe Jonas, John Mayer, Taylor Lautner, Cory Monteith, Jake Gyllenhaal, Conor Kennedy, and Harry Styles. Acclaimed LA actor, Thaddeus Shafer, plays all seven in a story of love, innocence, power, and douchebags.
Premiere: Hollywood Fringe Festival, Second run: New York International Fringe Festival
