Krista Knight

LIPSTICK LOBOTOMY imagines a friendship between JFK’s little sister Rosemary Kennedy and the playwright’s great aunt Ginny at an exclusive high-end sanitarium for women in the fall of 1941. The women undergo the peculiar cutting-edge treatments on offer by a society desperate to find the cure for womanhood. When Rosemary is selected by the famous surgeon Dr. Walter Jackson Freeman II for an exciting new procedure, Ginny will do everything in her power to take control of her own future.

Professor Leia is befuddled by the task of ushering undergrads into the dramatic principles of playwriting and life lessons simultaneously. When a student brings in a violent play, she suspects him of being a possible school shooter. As Leia's home life becomes more dangerous, she doubles down on her fear of the potential shooter. A dark comedy about the danger of the dislocation of fear—both to the object of that fear and its agent.

American couple Keaton and Deanna, saddled with debt and buoyed by lust-driven optimism, move abroad for a fresh start. When Deanna runs an illicit errand for her husband, Keaton takes a Selkie’s seal coat on the beach and hides it. Alondra, trapped in human form, has to stay with Keaton until she can get it back. Deanna comes home to find Alondra, the Selkie, living with Keaton—though it’s ambiguous if she is doing so by choice or not. The play is a dark, funny, and saturated exploration of violence – of being trapped – and two approaches to escape.

Kristina’s handicapped father Kirk lives in the San Francisco Airport Hyatt with his Ethiopian nurse/girlfriend. He can't afford to live in a hotel but he's had a theory for the last 32 years that he is not going to live much longer. The catch is that he continues to. He lives every day, paralyzed and joyous, like he is going to die tomorrow. Now he’s running out of money.

Primatologists know: we all do strange and wonderful things when we don’t think anyone is watching. Eat some grass. Scratch an itch. Reveal the fundamental secrets of our species. British primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall lost her mother slash assistant in Tanzania. She now returns to the Congo to try to find her mother and restore her reputation with the biggest expedition slash investigation of her career. Dr. Goodall’s mother is missing, but may be disguising herself as one of her subjects.

Music and Lyrics by Jill Sobule
Book and Lyrics by Krista Knight

A riot grrrl musical that’s part scarlet letter adaptation, part queer romance.
Poetic justice has finally come for rebellious teen Winnie. She’s going to have to repeat the 11th grade unless she’s able to complete a book report. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that the book is Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter—which Winnie does NOT want to read. Well, that’s too bad because she’s in a whole play about it.

Deeply moved by some long-forgotten Julia Roberts vehicle, special-ed teacher Bonnie (nee Bonita aka ‘Sloppy Bonnie’ when she’s drunk), sets out on what she hopes will be an inspirational road trip to be with her fiancé, who has ghosted her ever since he left for a revival retreat in the mountains. But at every stop, her day-time tv femininity spells disaster for all in her path—for everyone and everything between Sloppy Bonnie and the one who’s getting away. A fable on the dangers of female subordination. A musical comedy about feminine toxicity with a country western Marilyn Monroe as a hapless serial killer.

A shot at college, internet fame, attention from the one they like. The stakes are high at Plain Springs High's first ever Dance-a-thon. As the demonic DJ transports them to dance crazes throughout history, each contestant must face their deepest desires and greatest weaknesses. Only one couple will walk out with "The Prize." The rest won't make it out alive.

The year is MCMLXXVI, and a brood of she-snakes are about to take Olympus by storm with an irreverent new sound and a stage presence both repulsive and seductive. When superfan Poseidon attacks backstage, Athena tries to protect Medusa by bestowing the power to turn anyone she looks at into a mindless zombie fan. Much more Iggys The Idiot than American Idiot, HISSIFIT invokes the sights and sounds of an era that was over almost as soon as it started. The gorgon sisters move from shock-rock obscurity, to snake-sploitation sellout status, to revered icons at a pace like punk rock pioneers of legend. Through image makeovers and fierce internal power struggles, we track the rise, fall, and squirming headless death rattle of Medusa and the band that would forever petrify the face of rock-and-roll.

It's 1890 in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. The loneliest man in the world makes a deal with the Devil: a wife and a family in exchange for his soul. When a beautiful stranger steps off the train, everything seems headed towards happily ever after. But neither the stranger nor the Devil is quite what they seem. A bitpop grand guignol about the price we pay for love.

An apocalyptic surf-rock musical in stereoscopic cyclorama. The bombs have dropped—leaving teens to fall in love, defy an authoritarian death cult, and doomsurf on the cashed ocean where wiping out means permanently. The story follows the unarticulated but desperate love between Bunny (as in beach) and Idiot Kid (marked by an acid-related, Phantom of the Opera-like deformity). Johnny Holocaust surfs into the village with the message that a tidal wave is approaching—necessitating escape or final destruction.

An interactive nerdcore musical.

Mad scientist Dr. X is running out of time to ensure her scientific legacy. There is a tumor growing inside her and traditional therapies have yielded nothing—neither for her life expectancy nor for the posterity of her intellectual merit on the biomedical sciences.

Like the scientists Jonas Salk, Werner Forssmann, and Kevin Warwick, who abandoned protocol to experiment directly on themselves, Dr. X becomes her own test subject. She creates 'The Nanoman': a plant virus transformed into a biomolecular engineered nanocarrier. The Nanoman is a tiny superhero on an important mission: to locate and destroy the tumor. In creating The Nanoman, Dr. X seeks to turn a villain (a virus) into a hero (a cure). She seeks to revolutionize cancer therapy through targeted nanotechnology and save her own life ... and to ensure her place in history.

The theatrical event is structured like an academic lecture and told through a combination of live-action, animated projections, and interactive video game play.

Cuts in public funding bring Adam Smith Middle School to the brink of closing – until it’s taken over by corporate stooges from the mega corn conglomerate CORNCO. The company wants the middle schoolers to do a play of its idealized origin story to shill their products and indoctrinate the institution. But a couple of smart students hatch a plan and subvert CORNCO's agenda by telling the story of Animal Farm, and the growing corporatization of US agriculture, instead. An original Orwellian Hee Haw capitalist allegory with music.

Glen, a house painter, is transfixed on the house that got away. When its childhood inhabitants return to sell the house, Glen has no intention of letting it slip away. He's done too much for this house, and for the people who lived there. All Glen wants is to get inside.

Santa Cruz High School is plagued by teen anxieties, fervent desires, and fiercely protected secrets. And one girl Raylene who is hell bent on creating an American Marching Band. The motley Band members strive to create themselves and their music—discordance all around—when mysterious exchange student Camille shows up with the kind of classical musical mastery they all crave. Plus she’ll save you from hearing the crushing pulsations of high school rejection. Instead you’ll hear music—until you don’t hear anything but music at all. A dark, comedic, and music-filled exploration of what it means to make art out of the chaos of your life and what it feels like to come of age in the first decade of a new century.

A riff on the classic Californian folk song set simultaneously during the 1850s gold rush and the 1990s dot.com bubble. These two eras collide to create a world of irrational exuberance and an ecstatic American Dream-scape. Instead of tripping, Clementine jumps into the river followed by the peculiar chorus of deviant ducks.

Two ghosts have lured robbers to an expensive apartment they've rented out on AirBnB.
The robbers think they have outsmarted the absent tenants, but are about to become
trapped themselves.

The wolves have gotten out of control. A live radio play for 3 voices.

He melted her heart, and then he melted.

A meet-and-greet between a teen idol and superfan rocks expectations.

Picking up roughly from where Kafka left off—a loner, squatter, and rebel dares to love.
We follow the anti-morphosis through a series of beat poetry performances as our hero draws nearer to the object of his desire and his undoing.

A satirical exploration of Henry Ford's failed utopia and rubber tree plantation in the middle of the Brazilian rainforest. When the eccentric auto baron sets his sights on foreign rubber, the people of Fordlandia get a taste of a bizarre American lifestyle half-remembered and partly imagined. Industry, hard labor, mandatory square dances, and good intentions mix to disastrous effect as communications with Ford fail to overcome the technological limitations and cultural barriers. Set to music inspired by a 90’s-era industrial sound, Fordlandia welcomes you to take your place on the assembly line. Ford will either succeed in converting the Amazonian people into his vision of the American dream or Ford’s folly will be the lasting American colonial legacy.

Mighty Ducks meets Gladiator set at the fall of the Roman Empire. Sensationalist, fun-loving, ring master and senator Julius Caesar captivates and distracts the people of Rome with his outrageous weekly sporting event: Julius' Super Sunday Blood Sporting Games. Julius' popularity, influence, and ambitions grow despite growing concern in the senate. Meanwhile a rag-tag group of gladiatorial underdogs must learn to work together or fall victim to the beasts of the pantheon. Their unlikely rise in the championship battle coincides with an act of political betrayal. The heroes emerge victorious, free of Julius’ games forever.

This duckling is ugly on the inside.

Icarus wants more than anything to help his father with his inventions. Daedalus wants more than anything to keep Icarus safe, and so refuses to teach Icarus anything. Their family is trapped in Crete surrounded by insurmountable obstacles and a city that is being told to despise them. Daedalus builds inventions to help Icarus' older siblings escape, but it is unclear to those back in Crete if they have really made it. When Icarus discovers that his father lied about the fate of his beloved cousin Talos, Icarus sneaks into Daedalus' workshop and tries out the wings Daedalus has been building. Icarus flies to the sun looking to escape his life in Crete, and falls into the ocean which ever after takes his name.

In this adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, Thessaly is desperate to escape her life under the sea where she's ignored for one on land. After getting a taste of the surface and a chance meeting with the Machiavellian prince, Thessaly makes a deal with the Sea Witch: her tongue in exchange for a chance to walk upon the land. When the Prince doesn't fall in love with Thessaly, she has to make the choice between killing the Prince or turning into sea foam. Thessaly spares his life and forever transverses the cusp of sea and land as the foam riding upon the waves. Available at Playscripts, Inc.