Willed Bodies

At a Willed Body ceremony—an event where medical students meet the families of medical cadavers, Lydia, an ambitious first-year med student, encounters Harrison, an anxious and tender young man who is the son of the cadaver she is about to dissect. As Lydia and her lab group cut deeper and deeper into his father’s body, Harrison and Lydia enter into an unconventional relationship that straddles the line between...
At a Willed Body ceremony—an event where medical students meet the families of medical cadavers, Lydia, an ambitious first-year med student, encounters Harrison, an anxious and tender young man who is the son of the cadaver she is about to dissect. As Lydia and her lab group cut deeper and deeper into his father’s body, Harrison and Lydia enter into an unconventional relationship that straddles the line between sweet and horrifying. Willed Bodies is a play about strange forms of intimacy and what’s under our skin.
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Willed Bodies

Recommended by

  • Jan Rosenberg:
    10 May. 2022
    All of Ashley's plays combine the sacred with the gruesome. I'm stunned by how she constantly finds such beauty in the darkest of places.
  • Cheryl Bear:
    31 Dec. 2020
    It's rare that we get to this level of exploration of the relationships between the living and the dead with the love between. Well done.
  • Hannah C Langley:
    8 Apr. 2018
    "Willed Bodies" dissects human love, attraction and the concept of grief with guts—literally. Wellman authentically captures the strange and beautiful ways medical science saves lives without letting us forget the cost. In the dryness of the Arizona desert, beyond the noise of the fans keeping things cool, the most unlikely pairs of people try their best to open up and share their hearts with the ones who need them most.

Development History

  • Reading
    ,
    Ensemble Studio Theatre Los Angeles (EST/LA)
    ,
    2018
  • Reading
    ,
    Last Frontier Theatre Conference
    ,
    2018