Description of Work

A sleepover play. Audience members (around 15) arrive at my apartment and watch a play in our living room. This play is about a woman selling parts of herself to Death (eg her ability to leave the house, her voice, her soul) in exchange for the ability to see the beauty in being alive. It is also the story of her widower, haunted by her, waiting patiently to die.

Then we serve the audience dinner, which we were cooking in the kitchen during the first act. While they eat, they watch another play, which is about the daughter of the previous couple and her romance with a young man who would eventually become her brother's husband and the father of her child. This piece is a comedy and an abrupt tone shift.

After this, some audience members leave, but everyone who wants to spend the night stays in the apartment. In the living room, a very long, slow, repetitive play goes on until 4am. The woman from the previous play, newly (maybe) pregnant, having just found her father dead, stays up all night, trying to decide whether to die herself. There is an ambient soundscape that plays through the night, and periodically within it, unrelated stories are told. In the bedroom, there are many couches and beds. On the roof deck, members of the cast play a game of truth-or-truth with any audience members who sit with them, with a curated list of questions made to encourage intimacy and vulnerability. In the morning, we eat pancakes together and the play is over.