Gage Tarlton

Gage Tarlton

Gage Tarlton is a playwright and multimedia artist from North Carolina, currently living in Brooklyn, NY. His writing interrogates content and form through complex stories about queerness, sex, and internet culture.

His work has been developed with Arterial Projects, La MaMa ETC, Victory Gardens Theater, The Kennedy Center, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Queen City New Play Initiative, and Barter...
Gage Tarlton is a playwright and multimedia artist from North Carolina, currently living in Brooklyn, NY. His writing interrogates content and form through complex stories about queerness, sex, and internet culture.

His work has been developed with Arterial Projects, La MaMa ETC, Victory Gardens Theater, The Kennedy Center, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Queen City New Play Initiative, and Barter Theatre. His transmedia play xXPonyBoyDerekXX, executive produced by John Cameron Mitchell, ran on OnlyFans/X in 2023. He has been a finalist for the UCross + The Blank Theatre’s Future of Playwriting Prize (2022), a Kennedy Center Playwriting Fellow (2019), a finalist (2023) and two-time semifinalist (2024, 2020) for The O’Neill’s National Playwrights Conference, and semifinalist for the New Dramatists' Princess Grace Award (2023), amongst other achievements.

He received a B.A. in Dramatic Arts from UNC-Chapel Hill and is a member of the Dramatists Guild. Represented by Farrah Cukor at United Talent Agency.

Plays

  • PRETTY PERFECT LIVES
    In 2032, a relationship is put to the ultimate test when Gen Z lifestyle influencer couple Tiffany&Tucker enter various augmented realities after being selected to join the Internet Reality Simulation-Project (IRS-P). A speculative fiction play about identity, obsession, internet addiction, and the dangers of turning life into content.
  • exercise your demons
    Max wants to be healthy. Brooks is his personal trainer. Russell is a gym rat. Wiley is an OnlyFans creator. Looming among them is The Demon, an amalgamation of their greatest desire and fear—and there’s much more than exercise at stake when these men meet up at their local gym. In the aftermath of suicide, a group of artists must grapple with grief, sex, identity, body image, performance, and the demons that live inside all of us.
  • sons that wear dresses and mothers that love sweet potatoes
    When Malcolm returns home to Durham, NC for Thanksgiving, he quickly discovers that his mother, Lillian, is moving out of their bookshop home, the home where he and his sister, Chandra, were raised. In its place, new apartments are being built. Across the street, twenty-somethings Toby and Shay exercise on treadmills at Planet Fitness. They're not real buddies - just gym buddies.
  • POLLEN
    It’s been nearly a year since Jacob’s brother died. Even less since Shiloh’s brother died. Jacob channels his grief into drag. Shiloh avoids her grief by posting on Reddit. Jacob’s mother, Ruth, wastes her days mindlessly scrolling on the internet. Michael is an optometrist who meets Jacob on Grindr, but he’s got a secret. A heartwarming play about grief, connection, drag queens, subreddits, and finding your way (back) home.
  • V H S
    *in development*
  • BABY TALK
    *In development*

    When Sammy starts seeing a new artificial intelligence therapist named SOLACE, he hopes that it will help him finally confront and defeat his intrusive thoughts. But when his casual hook-up starts dating his roommate and his employer with a baby kink fires him, he can't stop himself from falling down a dangerous dreamlike rabbit hole that forces him to reevaluate his life....
    *In development*

    When Sammy starts seeing a new artificial intelligence therapist named SOLACE, he hopes that it will help him finally confront and defeat his intrusive thoughts. But when his casual hook-up starts dating his roommate and his employer with a baby kink fires him, he can't stop himself from falling down a dangerous dreamlike rabbit hole that forces him to reevaluate his life. A play about service work, shifting power dynamics, and suicidal ideation in the age of OnlyFans, AI, and therapy-speak.