Artistic Statement
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Emma Durbin
Artistic Statement
As an early-career genderqueer playwright, my work centers women and people who are experiencing gender marginalization, and the bonds we form in search of survival, community, and joy. I write characters who yearn for love and communion, with a diversity of bodies, ages, and racial experiences. My plays ask what do we crave from each other? What do we owe ourselves? And how, in all these marginalized identities, are we showing up for one another in our spaces?
When I write, I reach into the space between reality and fantasy, poetry, and naturalism, crafting intimate stories about queerness, care, and belonging. My play landscape, which closed out Mirrorbox Theatre’s 2020 season of virtual new play readings and was developed during my final year in DePaul University’s playwriting program, is a group ensemble play about masculinity’s effect on rock climbing and the sapphic transit that takes place when the queer and mostly-femme characters are alone for the first time. My plays weave in and out of different timelines, with landscape melding experiences in 2019 and 1908, and Of Our Own recounting a character’s repressed sexual trauma through their poetry. I write to imagine a better future through the lens of our past.
My dedication to community and radical caretaking comes through in my work. The writing process for landscape began with my desire to make space for a diverse group of queer and femme folks in climbing culture through an artistic process. By collaborating with Chicago activist and organizer, Regina Victor, who has directed multiple readings of this play, I have been able to fully realize the intersectional elements of the story, while building the gender-fluid and exploratory space that has been crucial to the play’s development.
With a focus on agency and empowerment, I write the revolutions that I want to make irresistible. In landscape, the characters embark on a personal and collective journey to become their most authentic selves, while fighting for a more just and compassionate world. In a newer work, Witchcraft, Bitchcraft, two teenage girls use magic to demand witness to their rage as they claim their space in the world.
When I write, I reach into the space between reality and fantasy, poetry, and naturalism, crafting intimate stories about queerness, care, and belonging. My play landscape, which closed out Mirrorbox Theatre’s 2020 season of virtual new play readings and was developed during my final year in DePaul University’s playwriting program, is a group ensemble play about masculinity’s effect on rock climbing and the sapphic transit that takes place when the queer and mostly-femme characters are alone for the first time. My plays weave in and out of different timelines, with landscape melding experiences in 2019 and 1908, and Of Our Own recounting a character’s repressed sexual trauma through their poetry. I write to imagine a better future through the lens of our past.
My dedication to community and radical caretaking comes through in my work. The writing process for landscape began with my desire to make space for a diverse group of queer and femme folks in climbing culture through an artistic process. By collaborating with Chicago activist and organizer, Regina Victor, who has directed multiple readings of this play, I have been able to fully realize the intersectional elements of the story, while building the gender-fluid and exploratory space that has been crucial to the play’s development.
With a focus on agency and empowerment, I write the revolutions that I want to make irresistible. In landscape, the characters embark on a personal and collective journey to become their most authentic selves, while fighting for a more just and compassionate world. In a newer work, Witchcraft, Bitchcraft, two teenage girls use magic to demand witness to their rage as they claim their space in the world.