Cecelia Raker

Cecelia Raker

Originally from Santa Fe, NM, Cecelia Raker is a playwright, devisor, instigator, opera and weird modern dance lover, dramaturg, and director. After many years making theater in Boston, she's now based in Austin while she pursues an MFA in playwriting through the James A. Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin. She writes fantastical fables that bring to life the imaginations of women (and sometimes men...
Originally from Santa Fe, NM, Cecelia Raker is a playwright, devisor, instigator, opera and weird modern dance lover, dramaturg, and director. After many years making theater in Boston, she's now based in Austin while she pursues an MFA in playwriting through the James A. Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin. She writes fantastical fables that bring to life the imaginations of women (and sometimes men) who are wrestling with identity, power, spirituality, and coming of age. And also the occasional immersive bread-baking play or opera.

Plays

  • La Llorona by Cecelia Raker
    Recommendations: 9
    ·
    Cast: 
    5–10
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, comedy + 9 more
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    Keyword: Fairytale, Southwest + 7 more
    Genre: adaptation, comedy, dark comedy, drama, experimental, fable/folktale, faith-based, horror, political, satire, young audiences
    Keyword: Fairytale, Southwest, ghost story, conversos, Catholicism, Spanglish, Latinx, judaism, Indigenous peoples
    Maria has a secret growing inside her and not quite enough toughness and badass gene-sequencing internships on the outside to keep it in . Rachel is considering taking up rugby in addition to Hebrew School just to piss off her mother—except maybe she cries too much to be a real athlete. And Molly has plenty to say to the Capitalist Made-in-China Internet Clothing Company who doesn't think her fat Native...
    Maria has a secret growing inside her and not quite enough toughness and badass gene-sequencing internships on the outside to keep it in . Rachel is considering taking up rugby in addition to Hebrew School just to piss off her mother—except maybe she cries too much to be a real athlete. And Molly has plenty to say to the Capitalist Made-in-China Internet Clothing Company who doesn't think her fat Native body is flattered by horizontal stripes--but who will she be when she's alone with herself?

    When these three girls got thrown together on a school project to research the local urban legend of La Llorona, they didn't quite bargain for some horrifying weeping murderess ghost to start showing up in their lives with haunting advice.
  • bread/blood by Cecelia Raker
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    3
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    Genre: biography, comedy + 6 more
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    Keyword: challah, bread + 7 more
    Genre: biography, comedy, dark comedy, drama, experimental, faith-based, holiday, young audiences
    Keyword: challah, bread, immersive, interactive, baking, Movement, Jewish, intermarriage, white privilege
    Through an immersive, interactive bread-baking class, a Baker invites the audience into how she has concocted her religious and cultural identity using the seemingly contradictory “ingredients” of her background. As the audience learns to bake her challah, they are challenged to explore and question how they are also made of what they eat.

  • Song for a Windy Night in the Suburbs by Cecelia Raker
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: adventure, drama + 4 more
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    Keyword: Adolescence, Poetic Drama + 5 more
    Genre: adventure, drama, experimental, fantasy, holiday, young audiences
    Keyword: Adolescence, Poetic Drama, tree-climbing, suburbia, halloween, summer, midnight
    Lia climbs out of her window into the wind. The neighbors witness everything. If you watch through your white picket fence through your walled up privacy through your quiet contained life as somebody falls, are you responsible?
  • Webbed Hands by Cecelia Raker
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: adventure, experimental + 4 more
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    Keyword: ocean, coming of age + 5 more
    Genre: adventure, experimental, fable/folktale, fantasy, mystery/thriller, young audiences
    Keyword: ocean, coming of age, mermaid, selkie, fishing, father-daughter relationships, mother-daughter relationships
    Shashi has grown up with just her father and some strange stories about a mother who disappeared when she was a baby. But when she begins to hear voices calling her from the sea, she confronts her father about who her mother was and gets a disconcerting answer.
  • dry bones rising by Cecelia Raker
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    3–4
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    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 8 more
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    Keyword: Jewish, Golem + 4 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, experimental, fable/folktale, faith-based, fantasy, horror, political, science fiction, young audiences
    Keyword: Jewish, Golem, mud wrestling, religion, children in war, Survival
    In the wake of the world-shattering catastrophe, two children from very different sides of the Wall emerge from the rubble, alone except for each other. With nothing familiar left, they agree on only one point: they gotta find help. But he wants to embark on a journey to a safer place, and she wants to stay, calling upon an ancient power to kiss a protective golem to life. When creating a Mud Man doesn't...
    In the wake of the world-shattering catastrophe, two children from very different sides of the Wall emerge from the rubble, alone except for each other. With nothing familiar left, they agree on only one point: they gotta find help. But he wants to embark on a journey to a safer place, and she wants to stay, calling upon an ancient power to kiss a protective golem to life. When creating a Mud Man doesn't turn out the way she'd hoped, will the two human survivors be able to make a new world together, or will they reap the dire consequences of playing pretend God?
  • Bog Butter by Cecelia Raker
    Cast: 
    5–8
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 5 more
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    Keyword: butter, mother + 8 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, fantasy, period, political, science fiction
    Keyword: butter, mother, daughters, Sisters, History, women, climate change, environmental, sci-fi, feminist
    When A tries to bond with her sister B over their shared obsession with the fermented ancient butter that’s found buried in peat bogs, she digs up more than she bargained for: not only the end of the whole polluted, broken world, but also the dairymaids of the deep past and the far future—and some vulnerability she might not be ready to handle.