INSTRUCTIONS FOR A SEANCE
Part DIY Seance, part historical re-enactment, Instructions for a Seance is one woman’s attempt to contact Houdini from beyond the grave. My first foray into a solo show, I’ll incorporate sleight of hand and artifacts from the iconic escape artists life to unlock the assumed narratives we tell about ambition, creativity and motherhood.
I’m super excited to do a first draft of the show at Frontera Fest in Austin on January 29th, 2019. Supported by the City of Austin Core Fund there will be a workshop production at The Museum of Human Achievement, directed by Jeremy Cohen, with dramaturgy by Liz Engelman in September 2019.
The Survivors/Los Sobrevivientes is based on the historically documented group of women, children and slave people who survived the battle of the Alamo. It’s an epic historical drama told by a diverse ensemble of people who didn’t make it into the history books. It’s an intimately drawn look at the surprising alliances necessary to survive the shifting and mercurial rule of Mexico’s fledgling democracy.
I wrote this play to put myself in larger, more diverse rooms where cultural exchange is central to the process and story. The Survivors/Los Sobrevivientes was very much inspired by the American Revolutions plays that came out of OSF, and I’d like to see it developed and produced in conversation with plays like Sweat, Indecent, and Liquid Plain; large historical plays that explore the people and cultural collisions we don’t read about in the history books.
