Patty Kim Hamilton

Patty Kim Hamilton

Patty Kim Hamilton is a poet-playwright, dramaturg, director and performance artist. Her work exists at the intersection of the intimate and the political - meditating on bodies, gender, language and memory. 

Her Play, ‘’Peeling Oranges’’ (developed as Playwright in Residence at the Shakespeare Academy Stratford and through the Bechdel Group) is the recipient of the Heidelberger Stückemarkt 2021...
Patty Kim Hamilton is a poet-playwright, dramaturg, director and performance artist. Her work exists at the intersection of the intimate and the political - meditating on bodies, gender, language and memory. 

Her Play, ‘’Peeling Oranges’’ (developed as Playwright in Residence at the Shakespeare Academy Stratford and through the Bechdel Group) is the recipient of the Heidelberger Stückemarkt 2021 Radio Play Prize (produced through the SWR2), the Jane Chambers Award for Feminist Playwriting, the Else Lasker Schüler 2nd Prize, amongst other nominations and mentions (Special Mention Autorentheatertage Deutsches Theater Berlin, published in Bella Triste Literary Magazine, Semi-Finalist Bay Area Playwrights Award, Semi-Finalist Blue Ink Playwriting Award, Semi-Finalist Ojai Seven Devils Playwrights Festival).

Her Play ‘Sex Play’/ 'Re: Jane Doe' had a world premiere at the Schauspielhaus Graz (Austria) and will have a second production at Theater Bielefeld (Germany). This play was invited to the European Theater Convention and given funding for translation, and was developed at HfMT (Hamburg) and through the Wildwuchs Festival (Theaterdiskounter Berlin).

She is currently under commission for a play which will premier February 2023 at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse in Berlin.

She has had a research residency at HELLERAU: Europäisches Zentrum für Kunst funded through the Fonds Darstellende Künste and has assisted at Netflix and with Gob Squad. Her play 'when it hurts // this body is just a house' was a semi-finalist for the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference in 2020 and was part of Cimientos Playwrights Workshop 2021 at IATI Theatre NY.   In 2018 she produced and choreographed the immersive performance installation 'the crane wives', which premiered at SOMOS Art House, while concurrently running the drag-adjacent, feminist performance collective JUICY!


She is a graduate of Stanford University where she received a Bachelors in Theater and Performance Studies with Honors and the Sherifa Omade Edoga Prize for Work Addressing Social Issues and a graduate of the Diploma/Conservatory Masters at the University of the Arts Berlin. In Germany she is represented by Suhrkamp. Updates can be found at instagram.com/grumpy.love

If you are interested in using any of the texts for readings/productions please contact patty . k . hamilton @ gmail.com (written all together).

Plays

  • Re: Jane Doe by Patty Kim Hamilton
    Cast: 
    5–100
    ·
    Genre: drama, experimental
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    Keyword: consent, intimacy + 5 more
    Genre: drama, experimental
    Keyword: consent, intimacy, boundaries, language, conversation, discourse, Sex
    Re: Jane Doe is a play about intimacy, consent, and our language around boundaries, assault, and healing. Examining the current state of discourse after #metoo, the text uses personal stories from a myriad of characters to highlight the universal experiences of negotiating needs and desires. One through-line (Jane Doe and John Doe) follows a woman after an assault, as she tries to communicate, experience and...
    Re: Jane Doe is a play about intimacy, consent, and our language around boundaries, assault, and healing. Examining the current state of discourse after #metoo, the text uses personal stories from a myriad of characters to highlight the universal experiences of negotiating needs and desires. One through-line (Jane Doe and John Doe) follows a woman after an assault, as she tries to communicate, experience and process her closest relationships and her own relationship to herself.
  • Peeling Oranges by Patty Kim Hamilton
    Recommendations: 3
    ·
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: drama, experimental
    ·
    Keyword: korean american, Sisters + 7 more
    Genre: drama, experimental
    Keyword: korean american, Sisters, daughters motherhood, womanhood, Immigrants, memory, queerness, ghosts, culture and madness
    Jae returns home to the small town of Sisters, Oregon, to find her Mother (Umma) and sister (Luna), each preoccupied with their own emotional worlds. As relationships and mental health begin to unravel, the family is forced to confront their memories and ghosts in an attempt to reconstruct their past. Truth and fiction become blurred as it becomes clear that no one’s memory is fully trustworthy. When a new...
    Jae returns home to the small town of Sisters, Oregon, to find her Mother (Umma) and sister (Luna), each preoccupied with their own emotional worlds. As relationships and mental health begin to unravel, the family is forced to confront their memories and ghosts in an attempt to reconstruct their past. Truth and fiction become blurred as it becomes clear that no one’s memory is fully trustworthy. When a new resident of the town enters Jae’s life, assumptions and fears become uncovered. A reflection on memory, daughter-sister-motherhood and Korean-American women, this play questions the blurriness between culture, love, abuse, and madness.
  • when it hurts // this body is just a house by Patty Kim Hamilton
    Cast: 
    2–6
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 4 more
    ·
    Keyword: gender, finding oneself + 5 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, experimental, fantasy, movement/physical, romantic comedy
    Keyword: gender, finding oneself, coming of age, mental illness, dependence, Relationships, breakup
    when it hurts // this body is just a house is about two children in an adult relationship. It is about falling in and out of love, the childlike experience that is intimacy, and the pain that can accompany this sort of experience. It is a reflection on gender queerness, loneliness, mental illness and drug abuse. It is a meditation on dependence, distance and care. Throughout the course of the play we see the...
    when it hurts // this body is just a house is about two children in an adult relationship. It is about falling in and out of love, the childlike experience that is intimacy, and the pain that can accompany this sort of experience. It is a reflection on gender queerness, loneliness, mental illness and drug abuse. It is a meditation on dependence, distance and care. Throughout the course of the play we see the fragmented memories of the growth and unraveling of Shoelace and K's relationship, playing in and around the tree that is their home and their world.

Recommended by Patty Kim Hamilton

  • Alond(R)a by Gina Femia
    21 Jan. 2021
    “ I've been reflecting on all the plays I've read over the past year, and this is one of only a small handful which stuck in my mind. The tone, celebratory and raw, powerful and running out of it's cage - other's have already said it better in their recommendations but I would so love to see this someday. Thank you for this play. ”
  • Bondage by Star Finch
    21 Jan. 2021
    “ I read this play a year ago and it still haunts me (in the most beautiful way) - the rare freshness of the voices, the truly surreal twists of the story, the characters which stayed with me in their indiosyncratic and strange realness. A play examining power and the 'feminine' experience, coming of age and race - one that should be read by anyone interested in understanding the pulse of new work now. ”