Emma Watkins

Emma Watkins

Emma Watkins is a playwright, scholar, and performer, specializing in theatrical (re)inventions of myth and folklore. With the support of a Fulbright Award, Emma spent the past year in Wales, studying performance adaptations of traditional Welsh stories. While there, she wrote UNBECOMING, which will be developed in upcoming collaborations with PlayPenn, Savannah College of Arts and Design, and Princeton...
Emma Watkins is a playwright, scholar, and performer, specializing in theatrical (re)inventions of myth and folklore. With the support of a Fulbright Award, Emma spent the past year in Wales, studying performance adaptations of traditional Welsh stories. While there, she wrote UNBECOMING, which will be developed in upcoming collaborations with PlayPenn, Savannah College of Arts and Design, and Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts. Her plays have also been shared at McCarter Theatre Lab’s 'In the Writer’s Voice' and Chapter Arts Centre (UK). Emma is currently the Literary Apprentice at McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ.

Plays

  • Unbecoming by Emma Watkins
    Cast: 
    5–8
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, biography + 4 more
    ·
    Keyword: mythology, Celtic + 1 more
    Genre: adaptation, biography, docudrama/historic, drama, fable/folktale, period
    Keyword: mythology, Celtic, Metamorphosis
    Unbecoming is a play about motherhood, mining, and metamorphosis.
    Charlotte Guest is a Victorian housewife and the mother of seven. Much to her husband’s dismay, she also aspires to be the first to translate into English an ancient collection of Celtic myths called the Mabinogion. In this endeavor, Charlotte encounters the story of a woman conjured from flowers to become a bride. But when the...
    Unbecoming is a play about motherhood, mining, and metamorphosis.
    Charlotte Guest is a Victorian housewife and the mother of seven. Much to her husband’s dismay, she also aspires to be the first to translate into English an ancient collection of Celtic myths called the Mabinogion. In this endeavor, Charlotte encounters the story of a woman conjured from flowers to become a bride. But when the strictures of motherhood come into conflict with Charlotte’s writing, she considers abandoning her translation. While giving birth to her eighth child, Charlotte tumbles into a fevered dream. There, she watches the Woman of Flowers retell the Mabinogion. After learning the truth behind the myth, Charlotte must confront the feminine role that she both endures and perpetuates.
  • Trailing Rhiannon by Emma Watkins
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, fable/folktale + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: mythology, feminist adaptation + 1 more
    Genre: adaptation, fable/folktale, musical, period
    Keyword: mythology, feminist adaptation, Celtic
    TRAILING RHIANNON interweaves Celtic folksong and storytelling techniques to tell the story of a resilient Welsh heroine. Falsely accused of eating her own child, Rhiannon is forced to stand outside her home, stopping passersby to tell them the gruesome tale of a crime she did not commit. The story she shares follows the trail of her life: from the Otherworld to this one, past jealous princes and stones that...
    TRAILING RHIANNON interweaves Celtic folksong and storytelling techniques to tell the story of a resilient Welsh heroine. Falsely accused of eating her own child, Rhiannon is forced to stand outside her home, stopping passersby to tell them the gruesome tale of a crime she did not commit. The story she shares follows the trail of her life: from the Otherworld to this one, past jealous princes and stones that speak, surveyed by birds that dart across the sky with letters in their beaks. In the search for her story’s ending, Rhiannon discovers something all the more elusive – the proof of her innocence.