Peregrination
Peregrination: noun /ˌpɛrɪgrəˈneɪʃən/
A long journey or period of wandering, especially in foreign lands; from the Latin: peregrinus, meaning “foreigner”.
Peregrination is a wordless play with original music and sound design exploring journeys of displacement and migration. It is drawn from interviews with displaced people and personal stories of our international performance collective and performed in masks. Peregrination uses the poetic, metaphoric language of the masks to explore shared experiences of journeys across borders.
Created by Long Story Short, a collective including collaborators: Irini Ampoumogli, Megan Campisi, Julia Cavagna, Jay Dunn, Blake Habermann, Samantha Herrera, Joan Hofmeyr, Brendan McMahon and Malcolm Opoku. Pergrination is co-produced by Dutch Kills Theater and was developed during two Deep Space residencies at NACL and with the support of Fifth Wall Studio and the Bechdel Project. Premiering in January 2025 at The Tank in NYC.
Breeders
Six soon-to-be-parents meet in a childbirth class. It’s a comic crucible as they confront their opinions, fears, and baggage about becoming parents. The play examines both the life-changing empowerment of giving birth and the ridiculous circus of childbirth in America, as well as how our expectations and experiences differ based on class, income, race, gender and sexuality. Finalist for the Henley Rose Playwriting Award, 2023
Malus domestica
A modern domestic tragedy about a subject often deemed “beneath” epic storytelling: mom. It’s very loosely based on two ancient myths of rule-breaking women, Eve and Medea. Their stories are known; we think we have their measure, but these two heroines are more than cautionary tales and villains—they have much more to say. FMM Longlist Prize for Works in Heightened Language from Synecdoche Works, 2021
The Subtle Body
A fictional comedy performed in Mandarin and English with dual-language subtitles. Premiered at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre’s ACT Festival in November 2013 sponsored by a TCG Global Connections grant and in NYC at 59E59 Street Theaters in 2015.
In the early 18th century, Dr. John Floyer and his wife Charlotte travel to China where they witness the traditional medical practice of pulse-diagnosis in which not one, but six pulses are felt to diagnose illnesses such as liver cirrhosis and cancer. Dr. Floyer is at a loss to prove how the practice works using Western reasoning and the scientific method; as far as he is concerned, there’s one pulse and it comes from the heart.
Charlotte also begins to rethink her understanding of the human heart when she falls in love with translator Wang Ming. When Ming asks Charlotte to join his household as his second wife, Charlotte and Ming’s first wife confront together how perceptions of truth and love can rarely be extricated from culture.
The Pinks
Will extreme political differences always end in violence? Staged in the style of a dime novel, The Pinks is a fictional encounter between two historical women: Confederate woman spy Rose Greenhow and the first woman detective (a Pinkerton) named Kate Warne who may have worked Greenhow’s case in 1861. The Pinks premiered in NYC at Dixon Place in 2013
Floating Brothel
Floating Brothel (created in collaboration with Loren Fenton, Kevin Lapin, Liz Vacco and Ben Vershbow) is a physical theater play adapted from historical accounts of women criminals on their harrowing year-long voyage in 1789 from the underbelly of London to the underside of the world where they discover their role in a terrible government plan: to provide breeders and whores for the struggling male penal colony. Floating Brothel premiered in NYC at HERE Arts Center in 2007.