words — Diane Exavier

Selected Plays

Playwriting Representation: Bonnie Davis @ Bret Adams Ltd.

cats for change

11P: After leaving the big city, Getty has made a new life for herself and her daughter Acca in the Pacific Northwest. But life in the great outdoors has not quite lived up to its promise. A chance (and smelly) meeting with a cat who happens to be a god unlocks a world of creatures, deities, and a few catchy songs that make Getty and Acca question everything. From retired feline gods to instigating squirrels, Cats for Change is a play that reflects on what we are meant for in this life, what is required of us in this world, and who we relate to along the way.

Bernarda’s Daughters

6W: It’s summer in Flatbush and the Abellard sisters are in the heat of mourning their father, their neighborhood, their lives. Flames in the forms of desire, longing, and family secrets slowly burn in their mother’s house, where it seems there is no one to cool it in this play inspired by Federico García Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba with poetic and literary cues from Kamau Braithwaite, Louise Glück, Mary Ruefle, Toni Morrison, and more. www.bernardasdaughters.club

HOTFIREPOETICS

2W, 1M: A winter whiter than most forces a man to venture to the land of the dead to bring back his wife, whose spirit has other plans all while the next door neighbor watches in this ghost story/elegy/spiral into the erotics of grief.

GoOD Blood

3W, 3M: The story of a Haitian family living in Brooklyn and their return to Haiti as they work to cure their history in the hopes of securing a future. From the journey of immigrants to the spread of a global epidemic, language, time, and an ocean are crossed in an investigation of the contracts we make, the conditions we live under, and what it means to reach for a love that might outlive you.

A Big House

6-10W: A woman finds herself on a deserted island and is tasked with building a home, welcoming a few visitors to help her along the way. In a hybrid of poetry and drama, this woman fractures and tries to make herself whole again.

The Analog Play

2W, 2M, 1P: In an exploration of intimacy during a sweltering digital age, a mother, daughter, and their respective partners negotiate the time, spaces, and terms of what may or may not be lasting connections in a brave-new-hot world that might just really be the same-old-lukewarm thing.