Anna Langman

Most Seeming Virtuous Queen is an adaptation of Hamlet in verse, focusing on the interactions we don’t get to see in Shakespeare’s text, teasing out the thread of the theory that Gertrude holds some responsibility for Ophelia’s downfall, and examining the tightening spiral of the enmeshed relationship that leads them there. As Hamlet plays strange and cruel tricks on her, Ophelia is left to put all her trust in Gertrude, under whose guidance Ophelia is led to a tragic end, witnessed by no one but Gertrude herself. This just-barely-modernized Early Modern play is the feminist take on Hamlet you’ve always wanted, that cannot help but make a vexation of feminism in its taking.

In little houses on little streets, normal people go about their little lives. A husband looks for his wife; a wife looks for her self; a girl looks for her home; a woman looks for her purpose. All the while, nestled amongst her computers, a scientist finds an answer, and gifts the little world a solution to a problem that not everyone has, a variable that not everyone wanted varied. At once, each person must contend with the new technology shaking their sleepy world — the voluntary element to life, the choice in whether to have ever existed. The little, vasty dramas of the people’s everyday lives forge on as best they can, infiltrated and overshadowed by the weighty knowledge each soul carries of the choice awaiting them, if only they should choose to take it. This play slides the spectrum from prose to poetry, from farce to tragedy, and stops to smell the roses in between.

In this reimagining of The Taming of the Shrew, we watch the nature of Kate and Petruchio’s relationship develop through consensual power dynamics of dominance and submission. Within their world of corset-tight repression, their dynamic becomes a space to explore the desires, curiosities, and societal subversions that they have never been able to express with anyone else. This is The Taming of the Shrew you know and love and hate — but with the kinks worked in.

Sixteen students, each belonging to a certain artistic major at their high school for the arts, embark on a voluntary field trip to an enigmatic modern art museum during the apex of their senior spring semester. Desperate to have a meaningful artistic experience, the teens (and one precocious tween) contend with their conceptions of what makes for a proper artwork, artist, and person. These casual acquaintances converge by chosen circumstance to forge new connections and perspectives, becoming irrevocably bonded over the course of one fateful, unassuming day.

When Zack is presented with a handful of beans, there ought only to be one thing to do with them. However, Zack cannot for the life of him figure out what that is. In a familiar nursery tale entrusted to the wrong character, nothing can go right no matter how hard it may try, unless Zack can discover his destiny in time.

A play in stage directions, Beauteous Ganymede features zero human characters and no recognizable human language whatsoever. This evening of theatre comprises a series of vignette scenes and interludes, utilizing puppetry, scenery, projections, sound and music, and more to tell stories and craft moments.

A reclusive female artist strives endlessly to depict a perfect yet abstract feminine form, when just such a seemingly perfect young woman arrives in the flesh. The resulting bond between artist and muse evolves into a tumultuous wrestling over the nature of beauty and perception - and, ultimately, whether freedom and agency will ever be attainable for these two women, within the walls of the studio or in the world beyond.

The animals are gone from the city, and down in the streets, roving packs of humans seek nobly to fill the roles of the lost species, if only they could remember what animals were. Meanwhile, safe inside her high-rise tower, Dr. leads a self-sufficient life amongst the rituals of her kitchen, when the "animals" begin knocking at her windowpane. In the post-civilization city, how can anyone survive daily existence, connect across species, and most importantly of all, how do we remember what we have lost?

On an otherworldly island where no one comes and no one goes, the rain has not ceased for ten years. With the seas rising and the skies falling, the last remaining residents are ready to say their goodbyes — until one legendary visitor arrives and twists their fates irrevocably. In this verse drama, numerous poetic and dramatic influences converge to form a new tale of tragedy and triumph.

GRAY PLAY
A bazaar
A circus of perception
The human tragedy
A symphony of loneliness
A life drawing
A piece of realism
A tuesday

Somewhere in this universe or another, a professional pen pal keeps busy at his typing, stone-chiseling, and smoke-signaling, while mourning the disappearance of his dearest and only friend. When the mythical Mailman arrives, the order of reality is turned on its head. In this impossible play, the nature of love, relationships, communication, and physics are called into question; but most importantly — where's Thchrachveldtz?

An exploration of one person's experience of asexuality, told through seven voices. As the characters perform poetry and burlesque, attend a rave, battle through conflicting ideologies, and confess their deepest secrets, we gain a collaged portrait of an asexual individual.
Based on collages and The Ace Ish of the Aesthetic of Discontent Zine by @glam_grrrl.

In the Sadlands desert, under the gaze of a silent god, four lovers are trapped within their own drama, unable to leave unless they break free of their heartache - and their keepers are not immune either. Described as No Exit meets Beckett meets Midsummer meets Caryl Churchill meets Life is a Dream, as painted by Dali and written by Moliere, this short evening of theatre has only one rule: Don't sink.

In the Archive, the Archivist and the Robot work tirelessly and contentedly at their job of receiving and cataloguing all of the things. Living in one room, processing the remnants of everyone else's lives, sifting through their detritus and reminiscences, the Archivist and Robot do their best to pluck out moments of meaning for themselves. When human and robot begin to share stories and memories from their own pasts, the two are able to catch a glimmer of what their futures might be — if ever they can find it within themselves to leave the Archive behind.

Fusty the Fool has been tasked with a simple enough errand: take Lady Antonia's gloves into town to have them mended. But the fresh air and promise of Milan are too enticing, and Fusty hands off the task of the Lady's gloves to the first untrustworthy character who offers to take them. In this comedy of much error, too many gloves change too many foolish hands, before Fusty's deadline arrives at dusk and ticking Time untangles this knot of a plot. An Early Modern verse, Shakespearean-style comedy. A first draft with room to grow.

On a small planet that has built up over time out of Earth's detritus, humans of different ages must cope with a world that is at once nascent and dying. Status and societal positions dissolve as the inhabitants learn from each other and a new social order emerges out of the dust.

Richard has barely removed his sword from the body of Kate's father when he pops back in to interrupt her mourning and her peace with a tactfully timed marriage proposal. Battling out their power struggle through a sparring of words and swords both, Kate agrees to leave with Richard to be his bride, though still unbridled. This ten-minute play in Early Modern verse explores something like what might have happened if Richard had instead arrived to woo Katherine Minola, the Shrew, and had ended up a bit tamed himself. Inspired by Richard III Act II scene i between Gloucester and Lady Anne.

On a street, on a sidewalk, stands a sign. By that sign, stand two men. One a writer, one a curious disciple, the two bond over their reactions to the sign above, a call for memorial donations in lieu of flowers. Once they begin to talk, they discover the things that they can learn and teach, barter and trade, & share and give with one another. Though the city and its people move past and move on, these two unassuming men foster an unwitting friendship that spans minutes and lifetimes.

They need healing. He's a healer. But what are their ailments, and can they be cured? What is healing, what is medicine, what suffering and relief is real and what imagined, and how can we discern the difference?

Two young women get together to rekindle their relationship as frenemies and besties, but each arrives with an agenda — and a gift that is not what it seems. When unrequited love meets long-hidden betrayal, and truth serum meets love potion, the night boils over to become an entirely different beast. In this verse drama, can the women's relationship survive the unsurvivable?

A poet is left to their own devices to carve out a space in the empty world — until the love of their life returns, breaking apart the structural illusions of the world on which they had been operating. In this play, poesy meets absurdism by the side of the road, and neither will ever be the same.
Didi and the Poet is a tribute to Waiting for Godot, intertwining verse with prose and companionate friendship with romantic love on the liminal side of the road.

Oscar Wilde was a writer and the champion of the Aesthetic movement in the 1800s when he was suddenly convicted of indecency and homosexual conduct. While his work played every night at the Theatre Royal, he found himself trapped in jail. This play is an exploration and a reimagination of that moment, posing the question of what must happen when an irrepressable artist is kept captive. 

Alcesta and Ambrosine are sisters, either by birth or because they have been isolated for so long that they have forgotten that they began as anything else. While they wander for years through a decrepit labyrinthine estate, this play provides a glimpse of their struggle to maintain a grasp on the realities of their past and the world beyond. Are their recollections real, or has their isolation consumed all hope of holding onto their memories of life outside the walls?

A lone woman reads and seeks to write, drawing upon the musings of Virginia Woolf and Mary Shelley in the hopes of building and fulfilling a room of her own. Dreams and nightmares infiltrate her space, and through them, the woman forges and flexes the wings she has been waiting for.

In a wannabe-military operation that polices the nutrition of school cafeteria food, a rogue clue leads to new mutiny with an old rival and former ally. Can the Corps regain their authority and their craisins? You'll just have to read and find out.

Based on the true story of two American college students who were lured to join ISIS by two undercover FBI agents, this heightened Expressionist play explores the complicated journey that led these students to search for something to believe in, in all the wrong places.

Two strangers with the same name meet briefly in the woods. One innocent hiker, one enigmatic fugitive — is something sinister afoot, or could they just be joeshing around?

“Patience is for Poltoons !!: a Play-ful Poem-ful Performance Piece” is an embrace of the arbitrary nature of syllables and sentiments; of signs, signifiers and signifieds; of technicalities and traitorous truths. The piece draws upon archaic words and contemporary echoes in a mad dash toward a conclusion, any conclusion, that might result from such exploration. It is the ultimate exercise in existentialism, and its success is dependent on our faith in the exercise itself.
Is it a metaphor? No. Perhaps, if it must be, but it musn’t.

When an unwanted inhabitant invades the home Mel shares with her partner Dee, her sense of comfort and ownership in her space is forever overthrown. Where did the interloper come from? Is it the only one? Will Mel ever be safe in her own house again? Was she ever? A short, creepy play written in Halloween season, vibing with the tradition of the Yellow Wallpaper.

Scarlett vacuums in a vacuum. She gardens in a garden. She lives in a living room. All the while, she pitches us the deeply, unsettlingly true reasons as to why we should do as she says: buy telephones for the dead, give potted flowers to the living, plant gardens that can be seen from space, and more. Tune in to Scarlett's segment on the Home Gardening Network today. You may never be the same.

A short play in ironic housewifery, in which two women show us how it's done, in the style of a 1950s instructional video. Adapted from a collage piece by @glam_grrrl.

Hidden inside a human experiment, subjects are trapped within cubes of one-way mirror, with nothing to look at but their own reflections. When the time comes to break free, will they seize the opportunity, or is it too late to escape their own personal hells of self-loathing?

We wait for the time to arrive, and then it does.

Order must be maintained - after all, everyone is watching.

Luce sits on the moon and gazes across the gulf at those on Earth. Will the standoff ever come to an end?

Go on, go to the supermarket. It's probably fine. I swear.
A wordless short play written for the Quarantine Playwriting Bake Off.

Two old friends discuss the concept of Earth's last words, as one tries their hand at writing them. A #1MPF Coronavirus Play Project creation.

A new iMessage sonnet saga microinstaclosetdrama. A visual written piece in text messages, exploring the tension and necessity of staying in touch without touching. Written for @contagious_closet_dramas on Instagram.