Brianna Barrett

Brianna Barrett

Brianna Barrett is a writer and performer fascinated with identity crises, double lives, mortality, grief, queer stuff, weird stuff, dick jokes with heart, and the forgotten history of stuff that happened surprisingly-not-that-long-ago. Recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize in Comic Playwriting, twice-voted Portland’s Best Storyteller in Willamette Week and has short plays are published by Samuel...
Brianna Barrett is a writer and performer fascinated with identity crises, double lives, mortality, grief, queer stuff, weird stuff, dick jokes with heart, and the forgotten history of stuff that happened surprisingly-not-that-long-ago. Recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize in Comic Playwriting, twice-voted Portland’s Best Storyteller in Willamette Week and has short plays are published by Samuel French/Concord Theatricals and Applause Books. This dyed-in-the-wool Oregonian has an MFA in Playwriting from UCLA.

Plays

  • Acts of Creation
    | Full Length | Marigold is having a baby. Francine is just in commercials. One of their moms is trying to hold it together while the other creates an artificial intelligence algorithm to write her a masterpiece before she dies because surely by now she doesn't have enough time. The family reckons with what it means to honor someone's legacy.
  • Florence Fane in San Francisco
    | Full Length | A Civil War Era romantic comedy inspired by real columns from the city's most popular weekly newspaper: The Golden Era. When an ambitious woman comes looking for a job as a journalist, she begrudgingly agrees to write a gossip column in the persona of a young single lady out on the town. What she finds is a new side of herself she didn't know she had, and a chance at a life she didn...
    | Full Length | A Civil War Era romantic comedy inspired by real columns from the city's most popular weekly newspaper: The Golden Era. When an ambitious woman comes looking for a job as a journalist, she begrudgingly agrees to write a gossip column in the persona of a young single lady out on the town. What she finds is a new side of herself she didn't know she had, and a chance at a life she didn't know she wanted. Battles rage between North and South, between rival publishing companies, and between her relationship with her own alter ego.
  • Still Harvey Still
    | Full Length | Harvey and Evan used to play in a band together. They've been best friends since high school. Then Harvey got a little too into drugs, Evan got straight-laced and settled down with a wife.... and now Evan has cancer. Harvey hasn't been a very good friend, in fact, he hasn't shown up at all. When Harvey finally comes back into Evan's life, they finally see the world through...
    | Full Length | Harvey and Evan used to play in a band together. They've been best friends since high school. Then Harvey got a little too into drugs, Evan got straight-laced and settled down with a wife.... and now Evan has cancer. Harvey hasn't been a very good friend, in fact, he hasn't shown up at all. When Harvey finally comes back into Evan's life, they finally see the world through one another's eyes. Not in a good way.
  • 36 Perfectly Appropriate Mealtime Conversations
    | Full Length | Cameron is a hopeless romantic trying to turn online dates into real relationships to no avail until a chance second encounter with Parker. Newlyweds Morgan and Terry want to "spice things up" when they get a lot more spice than they bargained for. With a script designed such that every character can be played by an actor of any gender without changing a single line of dialogue, six...
    | Full Length | Cameron is a hopeless romantic trying to turn online dates into real relationships to no avail until a chance second encounter with Parker. Newlyweds Morgan and Terry want to "spice things up" when they get a lot more spice than they bargained for. With a script designed such that every character can be played by an actor of any gender without changing a single line of dialogue, six actors trade roles each night to present a series of conversations that carry different implications with every performance.
  • After This Episode
    | Full Length | Rae is diagnosed with cancer during her senior year in high school. Her sister Margo stays home from college to care for her. TV shows and social media posts become their main outlets to the world outside, as Rae copes with isolation in a highly-connected digital world.
  • Olivia: Twelve Nights Later
    What happens after the Shakespeare classic ends and Olivia realizes she's just married someone she doesn't know at all. After being in love with his sister.
  • How You Get Burned
    | 10-Minute | A fraud investigator is caught by the person he's investigating. She has some questions
  • Namesake
    | 10-Minute | Noted Oregon historian Frances Fuller Victor is known to have spent most of her life as a
    struggling artist, selling beauty products door to door when she was unable to afford publishing
    costs for her books. She arrives at the home of Judge Matthew Deady and convinces him to help her
    with research for her book on the early history of Oregon. Based on a true story.
  • M-I-S-S
    | 10-Minute | At first they appear to be two young strangers waiting for the bus. A young couple confronts questions of gender, sexuality, and who they really are.
  • Relationship Tests
    | One Act | Time blurs together as Liz remembers a romantic past filled with tests both literal and figurative.
  • Slipper Tongue
    | 10-minutes | Cinderella with a twist
  • Ugly Cry Christmas
    After a chance encounter on an online message board, a young woman is determined to help an old woman find true love at Christmas.
  • The Princess Who Would Be a Prince
    | 10-Minute | Based on the Romanian folktale, this short play follows a knight's quest to save a beautiful princess from a giant.