Claudia Barnett

Claudia Barnett

Claudia Barnett writes experimental dramas about women and history and science. Her plays, including AGLAONIKE'S TIGER and WITCHES VANISH, have been developed and performed at the Great Plains Theatre Conference, the Ingram New Works Lab, the Kennedy Center Page-to-Stage Festival, Multistages, Stage Left Theatre, the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, the Tennessee Playwrights Studio, Venus Theatre, and the...
Claudia Barnett writes experimental dramas about women and history and science. Her plays, including AGLAONIKE'S TIGER and WITCHES VANISH, have been developed and performed at the Great Plains Theatre Conference, the Ingram New Works Lab, the Kennedy Center Page-to-Stage Festival, Multistages, Stage Left Theatre, the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, the Tennessee Playwrights Studio, Venus Theatre, and the Women’s Voices Theater Festival. She's developed many short plays, as well as THEODOSIA REDUX, at Pipeline-Collective's Salon, and her collaboration with Pipeline-Collective, OUTSIDE OF HERE, a 12-hour play featuring three dozen performers, premiered as a live broadcast event in 2021. She won the Andaluz Award Jury Prize from Fusion Theatre in 2016. She teaches Playwriting, Modern Drama, and Science Plays at Middle Tennessee State University, where she also coordinates In Process: A Creative Writing Event Series. Her books of plays are published by Carnegie Mellon University Press.

Plays

  • Aglaonike's Tiger
    Aglaonike, the first female astronomer, could predict lunar eclipses, but her science was suspect because she was a woman. She therefore billed herself as a sorceress and claimed she could draw down the moon. Inspired by her unsung history, this coming-of-age play follows the protagonist through a series of challenges, both magical and scientific. Drawing on ancient Greek traditions and postmodern performance...
    Aglaonike, the first female astronomer, could predict lunar eclipses, but her science was suspect because she was a woman. She therefore billed herself as a sorceress and claimed she could draw down the moon. Inspired by her unsung history, this coming-of-age play follows the protagonist through a series of challenges, both magical and scientific. Drawing on ancient Greek traditions and postmodern performance trends, Aglaonike’s Tiger is stylized and visual and uses puppets and masks to explore political, ecological, and scientific themes.
  • Theodosia Redux
    Theodosia Burr Alston (1783-1813) was known for her many virtues and achievements, but she made history by vanishing at sea. Erudite, beautiful, loyal, and wise, this daughter of a vice president and wife of a governor left a legacy of lore—Pirates! Indians! Tempest! Escape?!—that reduced her to two dimensions, the Amelia Earhart of her time. Theodosia Redux satirizes an array of possibilities while celebrating...
    Theodosia Burr Alston (1783-1813) was known for her many virtues and achievements, but she made history by vanishing at sea. Erudite, beautiful, loyal, and wise, this daughter of a vice president and wife of a governor left a legacy of lore—Pirates! Indians! Tempest! Escape?!—that reduced her to two dimensions, the Amelia Earhart of her time. Theodosia Redux satirizes an array of possibilities while celebrating the woman behind the fame.
  • Outside of Here (a 12-hour play)
    What does it mean to return to the world when every day has been the same as the one before? Over twelve hours, one performer experiences one story dozens of times over with dozens of different performers. (This project was created as a collaboration with Pipeline-Collective was broadcast live by the NECAT Network on October 2, 2021. A full recording can be viewed on Pipeline-Collective's website, and a 16...
    What does it mean to return to the world when every day has been the same as the one before? Over twelve hours, one performer experiences one story dozens of times over with dozens of different performers. (This project was created as a collaboration with Pipeline-Collective was broadcast live by the NECAT Network on October 2, 2021. A full recording can be viewed on Pipeline-Collective's website, and a 16-minute "supercut" is also available.)
  • Witches Vanish
    In a series of stylized, highly visual vignettes employing puppetry, poetry, and surrealism, the weïrd sisters from Macbeth explore the stories of women who disappear, whether by choice or force. Inspired by history, astronomy, and Shakespeare, Witches Vanish examines the nature of change and the value of human life.
  • Kingdom (a play about Snow White and climate change)
    Inspired by the true story of a Norwegian valley that never sees winter sun, Kingdom (a play about Snow White and climate change) traces a hundred years of environmental hubris, including attempts to split atoms, tame a waterfall, and transmute air, culminating in a radical act of community as an artist conducts sunlight onto town square. Kingdom presents history as a parable, focusing on a blind girl who...
    Inspired by the true story of a Norwegian valley that never sees winter sun, Kingdom (a play about Snow White and climate change) traces a hundred years of environmental hubris, including attempts to split atoms, tame a waterfall, and transmute air, culminating in a radical act of community as an artist conducts sunlight onto town square. Kingdom presents history as a parable, focusing on a blind girl who thrives in darkness and the personified conflict between natural history and unnatural selection.
  • No. 731 Degraw-street, Brooklyn, or Emily Dickinson's Sister
    Kate Stoddard murdered Charles Goodrich in 1873–after he told her they weren’t really married and had her evicted from his Brooklyn brownstone in a blizzard. Kate’s struggles to maintain her sanity and her identity, both before and after she shot her one true love three times in the head, are the subject of this play, which moves backwards and forwards through time and invokes a poetry of madness. This script...
    Kate Stoddard murdered Charles Goodrich in 1873–after he told her they weren’t really married and had her evicted from his Brooklyn brownstone in a blizzard. Kate’s struggles to maintain her sanity and her identity, both before and after she shot her one true love three times in the head, are the subject of this play, which moves backwards and forwards through time and invokes a poetry of madness. This script is published by Carnegie Mellon University Press.
  • Don't Kill the Angels
    At the intersection between two worlds—a coastal home at once sheltered and safe and also broken, slipping into the sea—an enchanted couple, artist and scientist, evolve into prophet and monster, seer and dream. As the drama drifts between times, a feckless fairy godmother hovers, her spells abortive; buzzards shadow windows with angel wings; and a nine-lived sloth plays housecat. Inspired by the poetry of John...
    At the intersection between two worlds—a coastal home at once sheltered and safe and also broken, slipping into the sea—an enchanted couple, artist and scientist, evolve into prophet and monster, seer and dream. As the drama drifts between times, a feckless fairy godmother hovers, her spells abortive; buzzards shadow windows with angel wings; and a nine-lived sloth plays housecat. Inspired by the poetry of John Keats, the paintings of Henry Fuseli, mythology, and neuroscience, Don’t Kill the Angels leads its audience on a journey through the haunted mind.
  • Natural Traps
    Sylvia’s dicing onions, but that’s not why she’s wielding the knife. Edgar's been here too long, and she wants him gone.
  • Highway 16
    Highway 16 is a retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, inspired by numerous (real) vanishing women in British Columbia. In this coming-of-age play, Granny is a brothel keeper and the Wolf may be Red’s fairy godmother. The cast includes three women, one of whom is a wolf.
  • Mice into Horses
    In this mouse-eyed view of “Cinderella,” a rodent mother grooms her daughters to attend the ball, but the dutiful stepdaughter wins the mouse prince.
  • Palooka
    Deep in the woods, someone's punched Wil in the face. Surprise! It's his fiancée.
  • Velveteen (a short play inspired by Esther Lederberg)
    Esther Lederberg presents to her husband a hypothesis that will forever change science--and for which he will win the Nobel Prize.