writing
a new world - one story at a time
plays
10-minute play
A queer interracial couple navigates taking their relationship to the next level over their cross country road trip to meet the parents.
Full-length, TYA adaptation
A collaborative reimagination of the children's story centering the importance of belonging, independence, and interdependence.
Full-length documentary play
A docutheatre piece weaving together Chicago residents reflections on their experiences within the confining systems of schools on Turtle Island.
Full-length, participatory, devised, TYA play
A devised participatory TYA piece based on resistance histories and legends of the Nahua, CHamoru and Taíno peoples.
SPECTRUM
Playwright
The play Spectrum was written as a result of the Old Globe Theatre advanced playwriting workshop and premiered as a reading for the Powers New Voices Festival in 2024. The staged reading was directed by Desirée Clark Miller, and a full length play is in process.
On a cross country road trip to meet their partner’s parents, Basil, a trans and gender non-conforming, queer person must confront the blocks to their relationship entering a new phase. Can they place some past relationships in their right place, being honest with with their bike store butch babe Chelli? Can they be honest with themselves about where they want these relationships to live?
Learning 101
Story Collector, Lead Writer
Learning 101 is a documentary theatre piece about the impact of the Chicago Public School system and higher learning education systems on both teachers and their students. The piece weaves together thoughts on the impact of living and working within the material reality of a school to prison pipeline, the mental and emotional toll of responding to violence in communities of color, the pressures school systems can put on their marginalized students to conform and the real or imagined consequences that result from breaking beyond those walls. The audience goes on a journey of reckoning with privileges and establishing an identity that feels safe and free from the oppressive forces of white supremacy.
Erasing the Distance DocFest
Strawdog Theatre
Chicago, 2018
Thumbelina
Lifeline Theatre’s KidSeries' Thumbelina, was a world premiere production adapted and directed by Lifeline Theatre ensemble member Amanda Demheimer, in collaboration with MG Green, Brandi Lee, and Liz Rice; based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen.
The production began in physical devising workshops, examining how to make flowers bloom and waterfalls rush; how to show the scale of the human-size world to that of a fairy-sized creature. This adaptation focused on a central theme of finding community and belonging in a world where a young girl, with nothing but her wits and will to protect her, seems to be alone.
Lifeline Theatre
Chicago, IL - 2017
from the Land of Melanin
Co-Writer, Composer, Producer, Actor-Musician
About the Play
Based on histories of real-life women of color and non-Eurocentric legends from Nahua, Chamorro, and Taíno peoples, Epic Tales from the Land of Melanin is a participatory theatre for young audiences (TYA) play that tells the hilarious, imaginative adventure of three gxrl warrior-explorers building community and skills to stand united against their oppressors.
As the three heroines encounter obstacles that encourage them to forget their roots - like the "Missing Memory Mist" and a "HulaHoop Forcefield," young audiences members become a part of a journey of reclaiming their power by collectively calling in ancestors and asking for guidance, learning breathing techniques for clear-headedness, and leaning into bombaso dance to bust each other free from these traps!
Epic Tales has been produced at the American Alliance for Theatre Education in New Orleans, LA (2017), Free Street Theatre in Chicago, IL (2018), and the Latinx Theatre Commons' Sin Fronteras TYA Festival in Austin, TX (2019).
Synopsis
Jefferson Playouse
Chicago, IL - 2016
Growing up in the city of Chicago, three girls feel the sting of aggressive remarks about their identity from their classmates and ongoing gentrification in their neighborhoods. In order to escape from the struggles they face in the real world, they travel to an imaginary land called the Land of Melanin, where their alter-ego warrior selves (Ha’Ani, Carmen and Anacaona) are facing a similar problem: their lands have been colonized by the evil pale-faced Takers. On their quest to confront the Takers, they meet each other and overcome obstacles thrown their way including a harrowing monster, a missing memory mist, and a forcefield entrapment! Through facilitated audience participation, young audiences will help the heroes defeat monsters and evil forcefields, reaching their goals by activating the forces of community support and action using nonviolent means. In the end, the warriors call on their ancestors to give them guidance and use the knowledge they gained through the play to reinvent their approach to taking down the Takers.
Free Street Theatre
Chicago, IL - 2017
Queering CHamoru Legends
The character Ha'Ani is based on a character in the CHamoru classic legend - The Tale of the Two Lovers. In the legend, the daughter of a village chief is being forced to marry a Spanish conquistador, but having no desire to marry him, she flees the village with her CHamoru lover. They are pursued by both the Chief and the Spaniards until they reach a cliff where they can go no further. Legend says, desiring their freedom and each other more than a life without one another, in their last moments they tie their hair together, kiss, and jump from the cliff to the crashing waves below, never to be seen again.
In Epic Tales, we meet this woman - Ha'Ani, a headstrong, heart-led wayfarer, just weeks after jumping from the cliff. She is still intently searching for her love, a woman named Pulan. Will she decide to join Carmen and Anaconda on their quest to reclaim their families, their land and their ways of life as well?
Salonathon
Chicago, IL - 2016
Latinx Theatre Commons Sin Fronteras TYA Festival
Austin, TX - 2018
performance pieces
A short audio collage written and performed in response to the oratorio Considering Matthew Shephard, which appropriates the spiritual language and symbolic imagery of a many different organized religions. The piece questions the practice of calling on the sanctity of land without noting the history of the violence of colonization, my connection to indigeneity as a descendant of Chamorro people and the complexity of being a settler on Kumeyaay land due to displacement.
A 10-minute personal narrative piece about coming out as a queer person and the relationship to physical safety in the body as it pertains to encountering homophobia within friendships with fellow femme folk.
A devised piece with short monologues written by multi-ethnic and queer femmes of color. The piece wove together reflections to the question: what was I told to believe about my body, and from whom?