Playwright, Storyteller,
Builder of Fictional Worlds
Live Performance
Remain in Light
(a starship road trip)
A starship road trip for sad verbose creatures, Remain in Light is the story of five aliens who work aboard a remote space station, venturing out on interplanetary assignments to gather information about other worlds and report what they’ve learned back to their employers (a mysterious entity called “Management”). After a night of partying, the team awakes on a dilapidated starship cruising towards the planet Earth. The recently-promoted Captain seems more interested in doing hallucinatory space drugs and listening to Talking Heads cassette tapes than preparing for the team’s assignment. As the ship approaches the planet, relationships are tested, hierarchies are toppled, and secrets are revealed about Management’s true intentions for the planets they visit.
Gallery:
Jane Kim Stein:
The Modern Prom Thesis
The queer, femme Frankenstein for chaotic neutrals who can’t socialize! Jane, a doctoral student of science, has fled to her childhood home in hopes of finishing her dissertation in peace and quiet. But the science isn’t working right, and she keeps getting distracted — by her lovestruck lab assistant, by the impending high school reunion, and by the ex-prom queen who for some reason wants to be her friend. Can Jane balance her own hubris with the emotional needs of others, or will she spiral further into cruelty and madness in order to earn her doctorate? Is she destined to be an evil science genius, or will she remain the lonely valedictorian that nobody talked to in high school? And what on earth is she supposed to sing at karaoke?
Gallery:
Anatomy of a Fangirl
Part of Undiscovered Countries, a Brooklyn-based new works incubator, Anatomy of a Fangirl was a series of live solo works performed semi-monthly from October 2012 to August 2014.
Featuring the blue-haired, trench coat-wearing, media-obsessed Mary Sue Fangirl, these performances attempted to transform the wild, untamable, and overemotional world of tumblr into theatrical narrative through original songs about shipping, the reproduction of memes, and the blatant refusal to stop crying about fictional characters.
Podcasts & Television
Drifteen
Writing Team | Faculty Assistant
Drifteen is a television pilot produced by Film & Digital Media Arts students at the University of New Mexico.
A group of MFA candidates and recent graduates met weekly from January-September 2020 to develop eight 30-minute episode scripts. The pilot episode was shot in June 2021.
“There’s No Ghost In Ghost Ranch”
Podcast episode commissioned by Blackout Theatre for El Campo Santo
A house full of letters. Each one describes a god, a monster, a ghost. What is it about the ground of New Mexico that brings magic? In this episode, plans change and reality distorts when the texter finds themself alone on a silent retreat that was meant to be shared with their ex.
“Hypotenuse”
Podcast episode commissioned by Blackout Theatre for a forthcoming science fiction podcast
A family space odyssey starring Dr. Bashwiner Junior, a morose young explorer whose sister has gone missing on the search for habitable planets. Junior likes the solitude of space, but the longer it takes to find Jessica, the more likely it is that Junior will be doomed to drift alone forever.
Digital Theatre
& Short-Form Video
XOXO Gollum Girl
Produced in a bedroom for Brooklyn-based arts incubator Undiscovered Countries‘ @ HOME series, XOXO Gollum Girl features the return of Mary Sue Fangirl, this time transported back to middle school to re-live her days as the one-and-only Gollum Girl…
Performed live for a Zoom audience in February 2021.
Don’t Make Me Stop
Wearing this Mask
Produced in a sunroom for Brooklyn-based arts incubator Undiscovered Countries‘ @ HOME series, participants were given a list of ingredients to include in an original digital performance.
Performed for a Zoom audience in April 2021.
GISH Scavenger Hunt
Founded by actor Misha Collins, GISH (the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt) was an annual project in which participants completed art, performance, and community-service challenges over the course of one week.
Dissertation & Zines
MFA Dissertation
Approaching the ‘Small Planet’: Remain in Light’s Starship Road Trip as Metaphor for Theatrical World-Building
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing, The University of New Mexico (Awarded Distinction)
Abstract:
Using Elinor Fuchs’ “Visit to a Small Planet” as inspiration, I consider my play Remain in Light as its own small planet, examining theories of world-building, science fiction, and utopian performativity to investigate possible functions of imaginary worlds onstage. In chapter one, I appropriate Fuchs’ script analysis exercise for my own purposes of play development, discovering a world of sensory detail that parallels the characters’ experience in the play. In chapter two, I conceive of the play’s starship as an imaginary world crashing towards this one, its escape a hopeful reflection on the utopian possibilities of alternate worlds. In chapter three, I examine how the play’s characters imagine alternatives to their circumstances while refusing to comply with the rules of their world. In the fourth and final chapter, I consider the play as an incomplete world in terms of my writing process and the inherent incompleteness of theatrical performance scripts.
Zine: Approaching the
‘Small Planet’
This zine was created for the working session “Disidentifying Borders: Coalitional Futurity and Migration-Utopias (A Muñoz-Initiative Sponsored Session),” part of the American Society for Theatre Research Annual Conference in 2023.
Zine: The Art of Change
This zine was created as a final project in a graduate-level Topics in Performance class at the University of New Mexico called “The Art of Change,” taught by Dr. Dominika Laster and Erik Ehn.
A Yourd 