Randall Huskinson

Playwright & Producer splitting time between Salt Lake City and the UK (London, Manchester).

Triple-award winner at the 2022 Marsh Int’l Solo Festival for his show Out of the Mormon Closet, playwright Randall Huskinson embodies the playwright’s mantra to “write what you know,” and often looks to inspiration from his history growing up as a gay, Mormon potato farmer.

Huskinson’s play WAR BRIDE OF MORMON COUNTY will receive a workshop and staged reading at HOME in Manchester, England, in Nov. 2024, directed by Hannah Tyrrell-Pinder, supported by a generous grant from Arts Council England. The piece received two public staged readings under Hart Theatre Co. in Salt Lake City in April 2024. The piece was a recent semi-finalist in the NYC TRU Voices festival.

In addition to adult-focused...

Playwright & Producer splitting time between Salt Lake City and the UK (London, Manchester).

In addition to adult-focused work, Huskinson also writes TYA—Theatre for Young Audiences.

Huskinson is an also an ardent audience member. During 2023, he attended 100+ theatre productions.

Huskinson is honored to have served as a judge for the San Diego region's preliminaries for the Jimmy Awards program, and considers it a unique experience that both allows him to give back while recognizing his expertise in the musical theatre genre gained through a lifetime of involvement in the arts.

Knowing that the fastest way to get produced is to produce your own work, Huskinson has studied commercial production under Tony Award-winning producer Jane Dubin and UK producing expert Chris Grady.

While he’s been involved in just about every aspect of the theatre from acting to producing and front of house,
Huskinson comes to play writing following a distinguished career as a journalist and copywriter.

When he's not writing, you'll find Huskinson cycling, traveling, cooking, cuddling with the cat, or playing his beloved grand piano, a Yamaha G5.

War Bride of Mormon County

by Randall Huskinson

Cast Size

Genre

drama,

faith-based,

period,

tragedy

Think DOUBT + HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE + HANDMAID'S TALE

An underdog, outsider mom’s fight to save her daughter, and ultimately herself, from an abusive patriarchy and community where alternate facts are a way of life.

Think DOUBT + HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE + HANDMAID'S TALE

An underdog, outsider mom’s fight to save her daughter, and ultimately herself, from an abusive patriarchy and community where alternate facts are a way of life.

Trudy Thompson, a British convert to the Mormon Church, lives with her husband Ammon their daughter Eliza among Ammon’s loyal-to-a-fault family—all of them ultra-devout Mormons. When young Eliza reveals an explosive secret about the family’s revered patriarch, chaos ensues and Trudy is forced to make decisions that will shake their family—and herself— to the core.

This piece, set within a religious sect that continually intrigues the curious public, hits on topics that are as urgent and challenging in 2023 as they have ever been.

2020-21: Initial writing, private development reading, invited audience reading (Zoom)
2022: Dramaturgy work under Dominick LaRuffa, Jr., NYC actor developmental reading.
British/character-specific development under Manchester dramaturg Rob Ward.
2023: Table Read, Hart Theatre Company, Salt Lake City
2024: Semi-finalist TRU Voices, NYC
2024: Public Staged Reading: Hart Theatre Co., Salt Lake City, Slated for production on their 2025 season

by Randall Huskinson

Cast Size

5—6

Genre

adventure,

comedy,

fable/folktale,

fantasy,

immersive

Abo is a young yeti who is too hot and wants to go back home where life is more chill! Abo has traveled (by tunnel!!) with their parents from their home in YetMalaya to Sasquatchia, on the other side of the world, for the 30-year convention of the SoFoSnoMoSwaFo, which includes yeti, sasquatch, swamp creatures, etc. The focus of the conference is whether or not the SoFoSnoMoSwaFo should finally make contact with the H.H....the horrible humans...who are doing things to cause the yeti's glacier homeland to melt, and causing heat that affects every part of all SoFoSnoMoSwaFo beings' existence. While the adults debate things, Abo wanders off and meets (gasp) a young human...inside an ice cream truck. What could go wrong? What could go right? Can a young yeti and a young human conspire to find even a tiny way to combat the too-hot planet so everyone can get back to chilling out?

by Randall Huskinson

Cast Size

Genre

comedy,

dark comedy,

drama,

experimental,

satire

Sequins. Vaccines. Theme parks. Porn. You know…just another Covid family chat.

Think THE HUMANS + EUREKA DAY.

Sequins. Vaccines. Theme parks. Porn. You know…just another Covid family chat.

Think THE HUMANS + EUREKA DAY.

It’s Covid quarantine time in January 2021, and the Pierce family has weekly online video chats. Inspired by the absurdist-reality of family video calls during Covid lockdowns, UNDER THE FAMLY BUS brings out the best and worst between a mother and her three adult children—all of whom hide secrets that could derail a post-vaccination family gathering. Mom announces she’s secured a coveted vaccination appointment and is planning her 70th birthday party. The oldest son announces he’s not “getting chipped….” then a virus on his computer starts feeding porn into the family chat. Secrets are revealed, bouncing between laugh-out-loud comedy and grab-a-tissue drama, climaxing with a gathering that reveals even bigger shocks and surprises.
This piece is blazingly important right now: unpacking some of the craziness of our immediate past and learning to laugh at the bonkers period we’ve survived can help us all heal. UNDER THE FAMILY BUS is powerful, important, funny and entertaining theatre.

NOTE: renamed from "The Variants."

by Randall Huskinson

Cast Size

5—6

Genre

drama,

movement/physical,

tragedy

An intense family drama without a sofa! It’s 1997 in small-town Spokane, Washington, and middle-aged, closeted drug addict Mick blames all his problems on his stepfather, Keith, who lives with Mick’s Alzheimer’s-ridden mom in a seniors’ residence. Mick faces multiple crises, the worst of which is a pile of debt, and hatches a plan to force Keith to fix it all. Mick’s brother Ben (openly gay) is forced to play...

Website: http://www.curiousmodernplays.com

Artistic Statement

Recommended by

Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play

by Keiko Green

I was lucky enough to experience this bonkers-fun piece during its recent run at the vaunted Old Globe in San Diego, where I usher. After seeing the show, I raced home and paid full-price for tickets to return with my husband.

There's much to unpack in Exotic Deadly. But at its core Green gives us a rollicking romp through issues of racism and misunderstanding that WORK (many other writers' don't) without ever hitting us with a sledgehammer. Alongside the characters' challenges, the story of how MSG became so misunderstood is a metaphor for much disinformation and misunderstanding of present...

I was lucky enough to experience this bonkers-fun piece during its recent run at the vaunted Old Globe in San Diego, where I usher. After seeing the show, I raced home and paid full-price for tickets to return with my husband.

There's much to unpack in Exotic Deadly. But at its core Green gives us a rollicking romp through issues of racism and misunderstanding that WORK (many other writers' don't) without ever hitting us with a sledgehammer. Alongside the characters' challenges, the story of how MSG became so misunderstood is a metaphor for much disinformation and misunderstanding of present times.

read more
FUKT

by Emma Goldman-Sherman

With FUKT, Goldman-Sherman has written a gut-puncher of a play, using three actors to simultaneously play versions of one character at three different ages (plus filling in as cameos of her parents and others), brilliantly compressing a lifetime of shame and denial / acceptance and catharsis into a 90 minute whiplash-of-a-ride. It left both my jaw aching from laughter and my heart sickened from the overarching theme of the piece. FUKT is simultaneously hilarious and sickening -- the gods of comedy and tragedy fighting to a draw for stage time. I cannot wait to see it live.

With FUKT, Goldman-Sherman has written a gut-puncher of a play, using three actors to simultaneously play versions of one character at three different ages (plus filling in as cameos of her parents and others), brilliantly compressing a lifetime of shame and denial / acceptance and catharsis into a 90 minute whiplash-of-a-ride. It left both my jaw aching from laughter and my heart sickened from the overarching theme of the piece. FUKT is simultaneously hilarious and sickening -- the gods of comedy and tragedy fighting to a draw for stage time. I cannot wait to see it live.
Big Angry Dyke

by Sharon Goldner

What fun! Sharon Goldner's "Big Angry Dyke" delivers a hefty dose of karma to holier-than-thou Christian Anita Bryant, the former beauty queen turned orange juice pitch-person and archnemesis of the LGBT community. The setup is old as time--someone meets the grim reaper, who in this case appears as a gender-neutral hippie. But in Goldner's romp, the otherworldly news for Bryant is extra-grim, and seriously hilarious. A schadenfreude fantasy, to say the least! Seriously smart writing.

What fun! Sharon Goldner's "Big Angry Dyke" delivers a hefty dose of karma to holier-than-thou Christian Anita Bryant, the former beauty queen turned orange juice pitch-person and archnemesis of the LGBT community. The setup is old as time--someone meets the grim reaper, who in this case appears as a gender-neutral hippie. But in Goldner's romp, the otherworldly news for Bryant is extra-grim, and seriously hilarious. A schadenfreude fantasy, to say the least! Seriously smart writing.
Kalispell

by Kim E. Ruyle

Great characters in a situation that was immediately recognizable to me--a family that has vast differences, and plenty of secrets, while still really caring for each other, coming together at the "family home" for the holidays. A couple of really solid and funny auxiliary characters that flesh out a thoughtful and very funny script. I loved the mountain-town setting and could practically smell the food coming out of Ma's kitchen and the coffee at the Sit-A-Spell Cafe.

Great characters in a situation that was immediately recognizable to me--a family that has vast differences, and plenty of secrets, while still really caring for each other, coming together at the "family home" for the holidays. A couple of really solid and funny auxiliary characters that flesh out a thoughtful and very funny script. I loved the mountain-town setting and could practically smell the food coming out of Ma's kitchen and the coffee at the Sit-A-Spell Cafe.

Randall Huskinson

Scripts

War Bride of Mormon County

by Randall Huskinson

Chill Out Yeti!

by Randall Huskinson

Under the Family Bus

by Randall Huskinson

Down the Road from Yakima

by Randall Huskinson

Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play

FUKT

Big Angry Dyke

Kalispell