Jordan Bird

PART OF THE BAY AREA PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL 47 COHORT, 2025-2026

FINALIST: O'Neill NPC 2023; Title Wave Play Festival 2023; Normal Avenue's NAPSeries 2023

SEMIFINALIST: Dramatist Guild Foundation’s Virtual Playwriting Workshop 2023; American Blues Theatre Blue Ink Award 2024

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diagnosed Autistic in her late-20s, birdie fears telling her new girlfriend, lin, about her disability... she just can't put her finger on why she's so afraid. it's probably about her mother, mona, who never takes her seriously, or her father, mal, who ignores her completely (he only has eyes for fox news, after all). sy helps birdie work through it all in therapy, and she's making such good progress, really coming right along. but that's in her waking life.

in her sleep, birdie's on a journey through a dark, enchanted forest, her childhood haunt turned dreamscape playground. and like any good forest, this one boasts a beast or two --- well now, you didn't expect these woods to be SAFE. did you?

when birdie stumbles upon a pretty little gingerbread house tucked nice and neat in this temple of trees, she feels the sudden peace of what she's never before known: a pretty little gingerbready safe and sugared home. she can't help but seize the opportunity to settle down... if only she weren't so very tired! so tired straight to the very bone! she'll take a little nap; yes: a little resty-roo! 3 beds against the wall? perfect! one for her. one for me.

...one for you?

and when birdie awakes, those predators i mentioned (you didn't forget them, did you? did you not hear that long, low growl?) --- well, a wolf's a wolf, even in sheep's clothing... and they're gonna teach this bird to howl.

—-semifinalist, O’Neill npc 2024 —-

therapy is hard; julianna should know - she’s been in and out for years. why’s she at it yet again? it’s this… flash. that’s the only thing to call it - not a memory, just like a… blip. she can’t get past it, no matter what she tries: she drinks. she runs. she sings karaoke. she gets sober. she gets married. nothing seems to work. her half-sister, gwyn, is young - like younger than a 16-year-old should be. it's her birthday and she’s scored a fake id! her crush is back from college! everything’s going so friggin well! she takes hunter back to her place, but that's when she starts feeling... weird. she's just not used to taking shots! that must be it. except there's this... blip that keeps blipping in her mind about that night. she puts the thoughts away - but of course julianna always knows how to worm the truth out of her little sis. and when she does - when the scenes come crashing back; when the feeling of his hands against her skin...; the smell of him...; the way she couldn't breathe... that's when julianna says she has a plan: they'll get her justice. (or they'll get revenge.)

As a sudden and intense storm descends on a cabin in the woods in northern Maine, four people are unexpectedly brought together.

---SEMIFINALIST FOR O'NEILL NPC 2025---

Tacoma, Washington, 2010, after the state passed Death With Dignity. Billie, a sober Autistic woman teetering on the edge of the wagon, is a hospice nurse with a new patient: Chuck, a woman in the final stages of ALS. As the anniversary of the death of Billie's brother, Kosmo, approaches, Nathan, Kosmo's partner, is cartwheeling through Autistic burnout, totally devoid of executive function and hope. Meanwhile, their friend, Des, demands answers about her relationship with Nathan as Chloe just happens to wander into their lives and disrupt everything.

A play about connection, detachment, and the power of having a witness to your life.

For 20 years, Julian has been haunted by the death of her twin sister, Lucy --- and for the past 10, she’s been bouncing from place to place, never staying in one city for too long, and avoiding as long as possible return trips to her small hometown in the far north. She knows what others don’t seem to grasp about the place: there’s magic there (or -something- there), and that makes it very dangerous. There’s the Chamber: a vast tunnel system beneath thick layers of sea ice, a space that opens in rhythm with rare, extraordinary tides. As the temperatures rise and these tides become more erratic and unpredictable, Julian’s own inner landscape begins to come undone --- as skilled as she’s become at riding the highs and lows of her mania and depression, she’s beginning to feel like this may be, well, -it-. Which means there’s not much time to do the one thing she’s always known she must do: rescue Lucy before it’s too late. And this time, she believes she knows how to do it. She’s practically seen it like a reflection in her mind’s eye… As she wrestles her way through her relationships with her older sister, Catherine, and her best friend, John, Julian’s situation becomes more fragile and dangerous as she finds her way to the center of the Chamber, the place where she’ll be able to fulfill what she knows must be her destiny… if someone would only show her the way.

Roni and Zeke, both actors trying to find their "big breaks", have spent the last three months as bitter enemies after a night of passion turned sour. Now that they're forced to work together after landing roles in the same play, they agree to put their differences behind them and build their stage chemistry. But they both, of course, have their own plans to seek revenge, and only time will tell who will end up on top.

In the early 1900s, Anna Catherine Wiley, an impressionist painter from Knoxville, Tennessee, rose rapidly to fame and descended just as quickly as a number of personal and professional losses culminated in a "mental breakdown" in 1929 that landed her in an institution where she would die 30 years later, having never painted again. ... Or at least that was the story as it was known to the few surviving family members, artists, and historians who still know Wiley's name. But there's more to the story than the art community knows.

Jordan Elizabeth Henry was awarded the Ohio Arts Council's Artists with Disabilities Grant for FY 2022 to develop this piece.

NOW AVAILABLE FROM NEXT STAGE PRESS!
Riley has returned to the place she was raised to bury her grandfather, who did the raising. Her sister Shae's been cleaning house, making arrangements, silently spinning out. When their grandfather's will reveals that Riley and Shae could be millionaires if Riley agrees to live in the house for a year, things get... complicated. As the sisters hash out old wounds, a secret begs to be unearthed -- a secret Shae wants buried, but Riley is ready to resurrect it.

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