Lucas Baisch

Lucas Baisch

Lucas Baisch [ he / him ] is a Guatemalan-Mexican-American playwright and artist from San Francisco. His plays have been read and developed at the Goodman Theatre, The Playwrights' Center, The NNPN/Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights' Workshop, The Bushwick Starr, Cutting Ball Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, The Neo-Futurists, Chicago Dramatists, Links Hall, SF Playground, etc.
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Lucas Baisch [ he / him ] is a Guatemalan-Mexican-American playwright and artist from San Francisco. His plays have been read and developed at the Goodman Theatre, The Playwrights' Center, The NNPN/Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights' Workshop, The Bushwick Starr, Cutting Ball Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, The Neo-Futurists, Chicago Dramatists, Links Hall, SF Playground, etc.

Full-length plays include: REFRIGERATOR (First Floor Theater), On the Y-Axis (The Bushwick Starr Reading Series), Dry Swallow (Brown University), 404 Not Found (2022 O'Neill Finalist), import speech_memory (Cutting Ball’s Variety Pack Festival), The Scavengers (DePaul University), A Measure of Normalcy (Gloucester Stage Company), and co-writing on The Arrow Cleans House (The Neo-Futurists).

Lucas is a recipient of a 2020 Steinberg Playwright Award, the Kennedy Center's 2020 KCACTF Latinx Playwriting Award, the 2021 Chesley/Bumbalo Playwriting Award, and the 2021 Princess Grace Award in Playwriting. He is currently a 21-22 Jerome Fellow through The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis and a 21-22 Princess Grace Fellow at New Dramatists. Lucas has taught writing at Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, Macalester College, The Playwrights' Center, and through the Chicago Public Schools. His plays have been published by Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama and Yale’s Theater Magazine.

Outside of writing for theatre, his artwork has been presented at Elsewhere Museum, the Electronic Literature Organization, gallery no one, and the RISD Museum. He has held residencies through ACRE, Elsewhere Museum, Millay Arts, the Goodman Theatre's 2016-17 Playwrights Unit, and as a 2018 Lambda Literary Playwriting Fellow. Lucas received his MFA in Playwriting from Brown University, where he studied under Lisa D'Amour and Julia Jarcho.

Plays

  • 404 Not Found by Lucas Baisch
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    3
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    Genre: drama, horror
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    Keyword: LGBTQ, horror + 7 more
    Genre: drama, horror
    Keyword: LGBTQ, horror, time travel, surveillance, border, Latino, Latine, Latinx, queer
    We find ourselves on the outskirts – at the back of a clay building which signals "stay away, stay awake." Slack and Ro and Cameo divulge into monologue, tracing three pasts, a present, while portending some nightmare future. A lyrical project netted in kidnap, virtual utopias, upended borders, and Freddy Krueger cosplay.
  • Dry Swallow by Lucas Baisch
    Recommendations: 4
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    Cast: 
    7
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    Genre: dark comedy, experimental + 1 more
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    Keyword: LGBTQ, Latino + 2 more
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental, tragedy
    Keyword: LGBTQ, Latino, Latine, Latinx
    Sitting within the confines of a shipping container, people are rendered commodity and turf is marked for value. Chula and Pal create competition on a Boyle Heights street corner. Nasir and Porter offer medicinal intake as artistic practice. Sik and Dori turn to drastic measures in order to save their family. Dry Swallow explores surrogacy, consumption, and substance abuse, while provoking the question: who’s...
    Sitting within the confines of a shipping container, people are rendered commodity and turf is marked for value. Chula and Pal create competition on a Boyle Heights street corner. Nasir and Porter offer medicinal intake as artistic practice. Sik and Dori turn to drastic measures in order to save their family. Dry Swallow explores surrogacy, consumption, and substance abuse, while provoking the question: who’s allowed a healthy life?

    Available for purchase through Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Press.
  • On the Y-Axis by Lucas Baisch
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: dark comedy, experimental + 1 more
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    Keyword: technology, LGBTQ + 3 more
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental, horror
    Keyword: technology, LGBTQ, Latino, Latine, Latinx
    Last fall, a PG&E power line explodes. A shed catches flame. A tree. A neighborhood. Today, a hard drive tumbles its way out of a hole – out of the home of a burnt corpse – and data item turns into cataclysm. Part climate anxiety, part Book of Revelation, part digital archive: On the Y-Axis presents “play” as a poison to the host body.

    Available for purchase through Yale's Theater...
    Last fall, a PG&E power line explodes. A shed catches flame. A tree. A neighborhood. Today, a hard drive tumbles its way out of a hole – out of the home of a burnt corpse – and data item turns into cataclysm. Part climate anxiety, part Book of Revelation, part digital archive: On the Y-Axis presents “play” as a poison to the host body.

    Available for purchase through Yale's Theater Magazine, Duke University Press.
  • import speech_memory by Lucas Baisch
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    6
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    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 1 more
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    Keyword: technology, LGBTQ + 5 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, experimental
    Keyword: technology, LGBTQ, Latino, Latine, Latinx, San Francisco, new media
    Mackie, Wick, and Pendejo are self-declared natives of San Francisco, victims of a growing housing crisis. Recruited by Susanna, the employee of an unnamed start-up, they’ve been promised free shelter in exchange for participation in an audio farming procedure. S.B.’s tired of renovating her living room, so she drives west to find those responsible for the theft of her speech – now, a nationally exhausted...
    Mackie, Wick, and Pendejo are self-declared natives of San Francisco, victims of a growing housing crisis. Recruited by Susanna, the employee of an unnamed start-up, they’ve been promised free shelter in exchange for participation in an audio farming procedure. S.B.’s tired of renovating her living room, so she drives west to find those responsible for the theft of her speech – now, a nationally exhausted natural-language voice assistant. What bodies are being targeted by surveillance systems? What cultural amnesia is embedded inside the idea of home? What is authentic in a world of ubiquity?
  • REFRIGERATOR by Lucas Baisch
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    5
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    Genre: dark comedy, horror + 2 more
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    Keyword: LGBTQ, speculative fiction + 5 more
    Genre: dark comedy, horror, mystery/thriller, science fiction
    Keyword: LGBTQ, speculative fiction, Latino, Latine, Latinx, technology, queer
    Eighty-two percent of the planet's population has disposed of their physical bodies and uploaded their consciousness to the IceBox. The company's last employees continue to provide transitional services for clients making the ascent. Benjamin's won the lottery and spends his final day in the office, while his coworkers battle with their own moral and socioeconomic inability to abandon their individual visions of reality.