The 2023 Aphra Behn Festival

I just got back from St Louis, Missouri, where I was one of three Aphra Behn Festival playwrights for 2023! This year, each piece was inspired by an underproduced, public-domain play written by a female playwright. SATE produced my one-act play reANIMA, which was inspired by Amelia P. Rosselli’s turn-of-the-century drama, Anima.

I was also an Aphra Behn Playwright during SATE’S 2021 Season, which was presented online. They produced my piece Two of Every Animal, which also received a production at Colorado College in November 2022.

While I had a blast during our pandemic collaboration, nothing beats the synergy and excitement of an in-person world premiere!

reANIMA was directed by Britney N. Daniels, and featured Keating as Cricket and Taylor Kelly as Aven. The production was stage managed by Spencer Lawton, and produced by Rachel Tibbetts and Ellie Schwetye on behalf of SATE Ensemble Theatre. The phenomenal costumes were designed by Liz Henning, who went above and beyond and gave Cricket a costume that secretly lit up, creating a gorgeous moment of theatrical spectacle and brought the storytelling to the next level.

This is definitely a quirky play, but each night in the audience I found myself struck by the thought that it was the kind of sapphic, sci-fi, deeply felt theatrical world I wanted to see. Self-indulgent? Perhaps… but it means a lot that my work spoke to other people, too. Just a little more motivation to keep writing the weird, wonderful pieces that nobody else could create!