Selected for IAMA Theatre's Emerging Playwrights Lab

Pleased as punch to report that I’ve been selected for IAMA Theatre’s Emerging Playwrights Lab.

The Lab is an incubator for new work that will culminate in a reading festival in the Summer of 2025. The group of playwrights I’ll be workshopping new material with are phenomenal and I’m really excited and daunted by the new play I’ll be tackling.

I can’t really discuss what the play is I’m working on— it’s not written yet— but I can say it’s a tragic, international, queer love story that involves catfishing and Orwellian doublethink. It’s gonna be fun.

Best Little Boy a Cordillera International Film Festival Semi-Finalist

Pleased to learn the BEST LITTLE BOY made it to the Semi-finalist round at Cordillera International Film Festival screenplay competition. Apparently it was in the Top 30 scripts submitted to the contest, representing just 5% of scripts.

Best Little Boy Black List Recommended

Hey! My obsessional, gay high school thriller comedy BEST LITTLE BOY is currently a Black List recommended script. (Enough people gave it a high rating when they read it!) Additionally, it was recently featured in their monthly newsletter highlighting some of their staff’s favorite projects. Check it out:

O'Neill Semi-finalist

Excited to share that my new play i might delete this later is currently a semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill 2024 National Playwrights Conference. Approximately 250 of 1500+ submissions made it to this stage of the selection process.

I’m stoked to get to this point. I’ve submitted to the O’Neill before and this is the best a play has done in the process.

Fingers crossed it will continue on in the process and make it to the conference this summer.

In Residence at Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts

Excited that later this month I will be in residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, Nebraska. I’ll be working on a new play that still a little inchoate, but eager for the time and space to focus and explore.

I MIGHT DELETE THIS LATER at Road Theatre

Since first setting up an AOL profile way back when, I’ve had an ambivalent relationship to social media. I’ve often been tormented thinking about what version of myself should I be on any given platform. And like, what even should be my profile pic? Also.. who am I really? Oh fuck. Investigating these feelings, I’ve realized it goes deeper than social media, it’s about being represented at all in any media. I’m nagged by a feeling that photos of me are off somehow—me but not really me. The pressure to perform a self, and being perceived, in a highly mediated age can be total mindfuck. It’s also for sure having deep impacts on our culture and politics.

That’s where my new play comes from… i might delete this later takes these questions to a radical extreme. It tells the story of a woman who wants all the recordings that exist of her in the world to be destroyed (and the story of the people in her life who really, really do not take this project well). What follows is a Sisyphean quest into a mediated netherworld, a family tragicomedy, and an exploration into the thorny problem of seeing and being seen.

I’m excited it will have its first public reading at the Road Theatre, directed by the very talented Alana Dietze. It features a stacked cast from the Road’s ensemble including: Ghost: Lilli Passero, Tally McCormack, Gerard Joseph, Susan Diol, and Alaska T. Jackson.

New play development for Road Theatre's Under Construction 4

I’m excited to share that I’ve been selected to jon the Road Theatre’s Under Construction playwright group. I have a little under a year to write a new play that will have a public reading in early 2024. It’s a really great group of writers and I’m looking forward to developing new work alongside them.

The play I’m working on is about technology, family, self-negation, representation, and living in the radical present. Working title: I MIGHT DELETE THIS LATER.

HUMAN RESOURCES at InkWell Theater

It was a true delight to see the talents of InkWell Theater put up a very thoughtful, impactful reading of my play HUMAN RESOURCES for their Playwrights LAB. For a play about connection and sharing space, it was so nice to see my work in a physical theater in front of a real audience for first time since the pandemic. Annie McVey, my director, and the tremendous cast put so much into this reading it felt so close to being a fully realized production and I think the play grew and evolved a great deal over the three weeks of rehearsal.

HUMAN RESOURCES CREATIVE TEAM

Director: Annie McVey
Producer: Daniel Shoenman & Annie McVey
Stage Manager: Shani Hogan
Cast: Christine Dunford, Luke Medina, John Lavelle, Sharon Freedman

BIG RICK at City Theatre Summer Shorts

My lil’ existential play about plummeting from the sky is in Miami! As part of its Summer Shorts program City Theatre is producing A SMALL BREACH IN PROTOCOL AT BIG RICK’S ROCKIN’ SKYDIVE ACADEMY. Wish I could make it to Miami to see the production, as this production still looks great— also it’s pretty fucking cool I’m sharing a bill with plays by Lin Manuel Miranda, Steve Yockey, Dominique Morisseau, and David Lindsay-Abaire. If you’re in Miami, go check it out! (Or buy the play here.)

A Small Breach in Protocol at Big Rick’s Rockin’ Skydive Academy

When a routine skydive jump seems to go awry, Rae, Alicia, Chad and Tina face big existential questions about meaning, mortality and maybe a mistake as they plummet 200 miles per hour to Earth.

By Daniel Hirsch
Directed by Elena Maria Garcia
Southeastern Premiere, 2020 Finalist City Theatre National Contest for Short Playwriting.
Rae: Stephon Duncan
Alicia: Diana Garle*
Chad: Daniel Llaca
Tina: Lindsey Corey*

(*Actors Equity)

SIR & I selected for Orchard Project Episodic Lab

Excited to announce my pilot SIR & I has been selected for the the Orchard Project’s 2022 Episodic Lab. Over the course of the summer, I’ll be part of a cohort of writers developing original TV pilots. This will include peer feedback, industry guests, and mock writers rooms. Very excited to be working on this pilot inspired by that one time I was some dude’s butler. Here’s the logline for this 30-minute dark comedy:

SIR & I - half hour, dark comedy

When an adrift yet ambitious twentysomething takes a gig economy job as a mysterious European emigre’s butler —yes, like actual butler —the two form a toxic, codependent and not not gay relationship that will have both of them emotionally and financially extorting the other and exorcising long-held secrets.  

Radio Play for Antaeus Theatre's Zip Code Plays Out Now

I’m pleased to announce that my play for Antaeus Theatre’s Zip Code Plays is out now! It’s a story of ecological collapse, gentrification, and a queer couple trying to make their new place look cute amidst a massive Biblical-scale play.

You can listen to the episode as well as the all the plays in Season 3 of the Zip Code plays on Antaeus's Website, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

Thanks for listening!

Upcoming Podcast Commission for Antaeus Theatre's Zipcode Plays

After a year as a proud member of Antaeus Theatre Company’s Playwrights Lab, I’m pleased to announce I’ll be writing a piece for the third season of their Zip Code Plays podcast series. 

The Zipcode Plays are short-form audio dramas that take inspiration from the unique neighborhoods of Los Angeles. My play will focus on 90039, the zip code in which I currently live, specifically the neighborhood of Frogtown. Here’s a lil’ blurb of what to expect:

Isa and Hannah are thrilled to have just bought their first home in the offbeat but rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Frogtown— it’s got a great back yard, proximity to the river bike path, and only slightly unfriendly neighbors. However, when a mysterious, practically Biblical infestation of Western Toads (the near extinct original denizens of Frogtown that gave it its name) swarm the streets and creep into every room of their house, the young couple must face the fact that they just put down roots in a place on the brink of likely ecological collapse. They’ll discover they have very different ideas of how to deal with this hard, loudly croaking truth.

Climate change! Gentrification! Queer homeownership! Biblical infestation of amphibians! The podcast will be out in December. Stay tuned. 

Human Resources at Great Plains Theatre Conference

After learning my play Human Resources had been accepted out of 800 submissions to the 2020 Great Plains Theatre Conference, I was thrilled. Then, quickly disappointed. News of the pandemic hit right as I was meeting my creative team. The 2020 conference was postponed and alas so was my anticipation of a free trip Omaha. 

However, I was delighted to see my play get a virtual staged reading at the online-only 2021 conference. The conference featured a week of work by extremely talented playwrights from around the country as well as workshops led by some of the leading voices of American theatre. 

My reading was directed by Nick Zadina and featured Omaha actors Teri Fender, Raydell Cordell III, and Bill Brennan, dramaturgy by Anne G. Morgan, and had a design presentation by Bentley Heydt. I was thrilled (and terrified) to receive feedback from acclaimed playwrights Anne Washburn and Jaclyn Backhaus. (They didn’t hate it! In fact, they liked it.)

The pandemic year actually gave my existential office buddy comedy surprising space to grow and develop. And in a moment in which all workplaces seem totally changed forever, Human Resources’s exploration of mortality, the nature of work, intimacy, and techno dystopianism felt more pressing and timely than ever before.

Here’s hoping I’ll get to go to Omaha IRL someday.

2020 was not all bad

Me and my shadow, a quarantine craft project.

It’s been kind of a year, huh? It’s been a challenging about 2020— global pandemic, rising threats of white nationalist terror, toilet paper shortages — so I have to admit the self-promotional act of updating my website has felt pretty low on the hierarchy of needs. But, even sequestered at home, this year hasn’t been a total loss personally, and this is my website and this is what it’s here for, so… Some 2020 highlights below. (And a couple 2019 ones that slipped through the cracks.)

SOLD FIRST FEATURE SCRIPT – At the beginning of this year I sold my feature script PAST & PRESENTS to MarVista Entertainment. It’s a time-traveling Christmas rom com that takes place in a department store and is secretly about the toxicity of nostalgia. If all goes well in this chaotic world it could go into production in 2021.

NEW LABS, READINGS, AND NEBRASKA – My play HUMAN RESOURCES was selected out of hundreds of submissions for the Great Plains Theatre Conference where it was slated for a staged reading. However, COVID pushed the actual conference until 2021. Again, if all goes okay in the next couple of months, I may head to Omaha in 2021.

 This fall, Antaeus Playwrights Lab, the playwright’s group of an award-winning actor-driven LA theater, selected me to be part of their weekly playwrights night. Great to be part of new theater community, albeit a Zoom-based one for now.

My play THE SISYPHI is a boulder that keeps rolling. I ended 2019 with a workshop of it at the Apprentice Company of the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, and this fall it was one of Parsnip Ship’s selections for its COVID-friendly Play Club reading series.  

I received a commission through Playground-LA for my play about the millennia long history of the Bering Strait, TOWARDS TOMORROW ISLAND.

PUBS – I saw my name twice in print this year. This year I received a stack of Samuel French’s OFF OFF BROADWAY FESTIVAL PLAYS, 44TH SERIES which features my play A SMALL BREACH IN PROTOCOL AT BIG RICK’S ROCKIN’ SKYDIVE ACADEMY. I also contributed to the anthology THEATRE MAKER’S MAKING THEATRE WITHOUT THEATERS, a series of one page “plays” made during the pandemic.

…

So, it’s been a pretty okay year. Here’s hoping 2021 will let me leave the house.

"Big Rick" Wins at Sam French

We won!

Happy to announce that my play “A small breach in protocol at Big Rick’s Rockin’ Skydive Academy” was one of the six plays to win at the 44th Samuel French Off Off Broadway Festival. It will be published and licensed by Samuel French in anthology with work by five other playwrights Rodney Witherspoon II, Bixby Elliot, Becky McLaughlin, Jeff Ronan, and Bonnie Antosh. My anthology-mates are quite talented, it’ll be a good read.

I felt quite honored to be part of a lineup of 30 plays (picked from over 900 submissions), many of which were really good. There were several times watching other people’s plays in which I felt fairly certain my play wouldn’t advance to the finals. It was very cool to be in such great company. Read more about the festival and the winning in Playbill.

My winning team included director Stephen M. Eckert and a cast featuring Hannah Mitchell, Rachel Yong, Eleanor Pearson, and Henry Ayres-Brown. They did a bang up jump. Cute pic of us all below.

Sam French Off Off Broadway Festival!

Getting ready for another jump into the abyss!

My play “A small breach in protocol at Big Rick’s Rockin’ Skydive Academy” was selected for the 44th Samuel French Off Off Broadway Festival. It’s one of 30 plays picked out of over 900 to be performed in the Sam French Festival this August. Out of those plays, six will be selected for publication in a best of anthology. I’m pumped! I’ve also assembled a pretty great team for the production, Stephen M. Eckert will direct a cast that includes Hannah Mitchell, Rachel Yong, Eleanor Pearson, and Henry Ayres-Brown.

Read more about the play here and the festival here.

Buy tickets here for the August 23rd performance.

Towards Tomorrow Island Gets Full Length Commission

After appearing the in Best of Playgroud-LA, my play "Towards Tomorrow Island” about a woman who swims the frozen Bering Straight, between Alaska and the USSR, during the height of the Cold War is getting a commission to expand it into a full-length. It’s funded in-part by Planet Earth Arts, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting performing arts projects that highlight environmental theme. The new play that I’ll develop over the course of the next year will examine issues related to Arctic ecology, human geography, and swimming in very cold water. Looking forward to diving in on this.

Sisyphi Heads to Theatricum Botanicum

I was pleased to find out today that my play The Sisyphi will be part of Theatricum Botanicum’s Green Reads series, a developmental reading series for new plays. I’m excited that this play about meaningless and futility I’ve been toiling on forever will get some time around a table with actors. Hopefully it won’t depress everyone!

In other recent small rolling hill up boulder news, The Sisyphi was a finalist for Kitchen Dog Theater’s 2019 New Works Festival.

Met Cute!

It was very fun to be apart of Meet Cute LA , an event curated by directors Hannah Wolf and Katie Lindsay to pair playwrights with directors for a night of new theater. Annie McVey directed my existential comedy about skydiving and it was a blast. Cast included the very talented: Geri Nickole Love, Kari Nicole, Andy Dubick, and Kay Wilson. It was also great to see work of other LA playwrights like Sigrid Gilmer, Megan Breen, Celine Song, Anna Fox, and Brian Otaño.

I love being match-made. I never want to make a choice again. Look how cute Annie and I are in this pic:

(Photo by Annie Lesser)

Roguish Machine Shortlisted for Neukom Literary Arts Award

Roguish Machine, my play about the industrial revolution and gender and nostalgia and rebellion and more, has been shortlisted for the 2019 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Playwriting Award. The award distributed by Dartmouth University honors plays that explore humans’ relationship to computing. I’m delighted to be selected and that a play about brutally smashing new technology gets a little love from an institution dedicated to advancing knowledge and technical understanding.