Plays & Artistic Statement
PLAYS
Click the posters for more information.
BRAWL!
Dug into the backyard of Diesel Philips’ home is The Pit: the home and training ground for young boxers in the Mowbray Mountain valley. Here, limbs lock until a bell dings or a body drops. Here, loving looks a lot like fighting. And here, boys don’t leave; they escape.
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Cast: 5
Run time: 90 minutes
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Development
WORKSHOP READING, The Understudy / Raven Theatre (2024)
AWARD, Semi-Finalist for GPS, Shattered Globe Theatre (2022)
Gnaw Bone
Those who return to Gnaw Bone looking for salvation never seem to find it. Not even our Angel.
*Work in progress*
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Cast: 6
Run time: 90 minutes
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Development
WORKSHOP, Jackalope Theatre (2023)
Boxed In
For more than 15 years, John and Louise have been torn between uprooting themselves and the lives they know and planting themselves even deeper into their house and routine. But after tragedy strikes, husband and wife must determine whether bodies can ever be laid to rest and if memories are enough to bring a house to its knees.
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Cast: 2
Run time: 90 minutes
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Development
EDUCATIONAL PRODUCTION, DePaul Univ. (2020)
WORKSHOP READING, DePaul Univ. (2019)
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
I write to excavate. My writing stems from a desire to unearth a truth; a coarse and unpolished truth.
The kind of truth that takes years to find and decades to confront. The kind of truth that releases itself in tight whispers at church or screaming matches at the dinner table. The kind of truth that stings like finally tearing off a hangnail.
As an international adoptee, I’ve always grown up with the knowledge that the people who share my hands, my nose, my eyes – they will never see me again. Part of my past will remain forever hidden, forever imperceptible. This is why I write to understand the buried truths. This is why I write about family.
My plays highlight matriarchs and patriarchs – and the roles a family fills for one another. My plays feature transactional love. My plays feature virulent love. My plays feature undiluted, scalding, screaming love. All of it in the name of family.
My characters know how a communion wafer tastes and never agree on what it represents. My characters dream of traumatic brain injuries, central A/C, clean water, Nature Valley bars, and escape plans. My characters can’t decide whether they want damnation or salvation.
What my writing excavates isn’t a fossil of something long-dead. It excavates the dusty childhood photo albums, the odd and unexplainable loyalty to high school football teams, the hangovers spiraled into toilet bowls, and the ways a home can be both bomb shelter and minefield.
My plays scoop out the inhumane and present it as what it actually is: something unceasingly human.