Dahn Hiuni

DAHN HIUNI is a Los Angeles-based playwright. His most recent play SICK won the West Hollywood Gay Pride Playwriting Competition and was presented as a staged reading, live on Zoom, in June of 2020. Mr. Hiuni's previous full-length play MURMURS & INCANTATIONS was produced as part of the New York International Fringe Festival (20th Anniversary, 2016) at the historic Soho Playhouse, where it won the Award for Excellence in Playwriting. Previously, MURMURS was also presented as an immersive theatre experience in former Chelsea art gallery, Mixed Greens, in 2013. Other one-act plays include ONE MAN SHOW, CALL WAITING, and INTERVIEW. As solo performance artist, Mr. Hiuni has been presented at such venerable New York venues as P.S. 122, Franklin Furnace, Artists Space and Thread Waxing Space...

DAHN HIUNI is a Los Angeles-based playwright. His most recent play SICK won the West Hollywood Gay Pride Playwriting Competition and was presented as a staged reading, live on Zoom, in June of 2020. Mr. Hiuni's previous full-length play MURMURS & INCANTATIONS was produced as part of the New York International Fringe Festival (20th Anniversary, 2016) at the historic Soho Playhouse, where it won the Award for Excellence in Playwriting. Previously, MURMURS was also presented as an immersive theatre experience in former Chelsea art gallery, Mixed Greens, in 2013. Other one-act plays include ONE MAN SHOW, CALL WAITING, and INTERVIEW. As solo performance artist, Mr. Hiuni has been presented at such venerable New York venues as P.S. 122, Franklin Furnace, Artists Space and Thread Waxing Space. Other performance venues include the Cleveland Performance Art Festival, the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Lancaster Museum of Art. His video performance "Twentieth Century Art" is part of the permanent collection of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Mr. Hiuni's work has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Playbill, and The Dramatist, the magazine of the Dramatists Guild of America, of which he is a proud member. Mr. Hiuni has taught playwriting at the New York Public Library. He has also taught at Pratt Institute, School of Visual Arts, Hofstra University, Bucknell University, and at the National Theatre School of Canada. He holds an MFA in performance art and an interdisciplinary PhD in performance studies--both from Penn State. He is adjunct professor at UCLA, UC Berkeley and Woodbury University www.dahnhiuni.com.

Scripts

SICK

by Dahn Hiuni

Cast Size

6—7

Genre

comedy,

docudrama/historic,

drama,

period,

political

A new, full-length dramedy, SICK tells the story of the early 1970s struggle to remove homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Based in part on the historical record, the play follows Ron Gold, a gay activist and aversion therapy survivor, whose growing resolve to rid the manual of its damning diagnosis puts him on a collision course with...

A new, full-length dramedy, SICK tells the story of the early 1970s struggle to remove homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Based in part on the historical record, the play follows Ron Gold, a gay activist and aversion therapy survivor, whose growing resolve to rid the manual of its damning diagnosis puts him on a collision course with the psychiatric establishment. Unbeknownst to Ron and his fellow activists, forces from within the APA have also secretly begun to lobby for change. In the end, those for removal of the diagnosis, and those against it, clash in a dramatic confrontation at the 1973 APA Convention in Hawaii, where historic change is about to take place.

With humor and poignancy, early 70s music, and the ghost of Freud himself, the play recounts a pivotal moment in gay history, while affirming the power of the individual in the struggle for equality and human rights.

*WINNER* LA GAY PRIDE PLAYWRITING COMPETITION

MURMURS AND INCANTATIONS

by Dahn Hiuni

1

Cast Size

4—5

Genre

comedy,

dark comedy,

drama,

experimental

MURMURS & INCANTATIONS tells the story of a gay, New York performance artist with creative block who fatefully travels to Poland in an attempt to revive his art career, only to be confronted by the feisty ghost of his grandfather, a rabbi killed in the Holocaust.

Harrowing, poignant and irreverently funny, MURMURS & INCANTATIONS explores the anguish and the responsibility of being an artist. It sharply...

MURMURS & INCANTATIONS tells the story of a gay, New York performance artist with creative block who fatefully travels to Poland in an attempt to revive his art career, only to be confronted by the feisty ghost of his grandfather, a rabbi killed in the Holocaust.

Harrowing, poignant and irreverently funny, MURMURS & INCANTATIONS explores the anguish and the responsibility of being an artist. It sharply examines the ways in which identity, cultural history and personal baggage affect, impede and shape the creative process. Theatrically, MURMURS & INCANTATIONS is groundbreaking in its meaningful incorporation of performance art into both the form and content of the play.