Grandmother/Bathtub

👵🛁

Grandmother won’t leave the tub, even though it’s on a fault-line ready to blow. Nat comes home sometimes to give her a bath and keeps vowing to leave for good. They don’t speak the same language but they try to reconcile every death and every word. The world keeps splitting open. They keep trying.

This play is an experimentation of theatricalizing and rehearsing the act of translation. Language in the script is earmarked for translation to any language other than English, specific to each production/reading/workshop.

characters:
grandmother
now-and-then (nat)

a note on the play as archive:
each iteration and translation can be archived and remembered to allow the world to accumulate

-Finalist, Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference (2025)
-Finalist, Amphibian Stage’s SparkFest (2024)

University Production @ Yale Cabaret (Jan – Feb 2025)

including translations in Mandarin Chinese, with
Christopher Thomas Pow (Nat)
Nancy Yao (Grandmother)
Sarah Machiko Haber (Producer/Director)
Maya Louise Shed (Producer)
Mia Van Deloo (Producer)
Héctor Flores Komatsu 小松輝 (Assistant Director/Dramaturg)
Silin Chen (Scenic Designer)
Richard Lee (Set Assistant)
Theo Sung (Lighting Designer)
Micah Ohno (Costume Designer)
Emilee Biles (Sound Designer)
Ein Kim (Projections Designer)
JL Hagmann-Lopez (Stage Manager/Props Designer)
Gaby Rodriguez (Assistant Stage Manager)
Andrew Aaron Valdez (Intimacy Director)
Ramona Li (Translator)
Yun Wu (Technical Director)

Reading @ Theater Mu’s New Eyes Festival (November 2024)

with
Rich Remedios (Director)
Katie Ka Vang (Grandmother)
Dexieng Yang (Nat)
Keivin Vang (Stage Directions)

Workshop & reading @ Brown University’s Writing Is Live Festival (May 2024)

including translations in Yoruba, with
Talley Murphy (Director)
Marielle Buxbaum (Assistant Director)
Shannon Constantine (Dramaturg)
Lucia Aremu (Grandmother, Translator)
Kayla Bennett (Nat)