Okay so this is a story about a gender-nonconforming 18th-century herb woman who’s trying to carve out a larger sense of space… and ends up on a journey around the world. Her name was Jeanne Baret, and nearly everything we know about her life comes from the journals of the men who knew her. An epic tale of historical fiction about our country's present moment, THRIVE, OR WHAT YOU WILL blends the style and language of our past & present in order to interrogate the nature of "discovery" and its legacy, of (mis)categorizing the world, of species and survival, of status and privilege, of gender and identity, and of the subjective nature of both history and self. Funny, gripping, poignant, and wild, THRIVE mourns the loss of Jeanne's perspective and tries to imagine possibilities of what it may have been. And as Jeanne journeys and changes, so too does her casting in this ensemble-driven quest of self-determination. Meanwhile, we watch Jeanne and her lover Commerson on their adventure – from meeting to parting – across lands & seas & 6,000 plants – in a voyage that is part love story, part Peer Gynt journey, part Latin taxonomy, part feminist wrestling with historiography, and part theatrical celebration of awe and the human need to thrive.

And here's the story teaser:
Jeanne Baret is a gifted 18th-century botanist who grew up laboring in the fields of rural France. While working in the fields, 20-year-old Jeanne meets a 32-year-old botanist with a chronic leg abscess; his name is Phillibert Commerson. He's been university-trained by Linnaeus himself. She's been field-trained by herb women. They're a botanical power couple. They fall in love. He's already married. Things happen. Babies happen. Moving happens. Illness happens. The dawn of binomial nomenclature happens. And an opportunity to join a French ship on an expedition around the world happens: the voyage is in need of a botanist and an assistant, but both must be men….