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 was developed in a reading with PlayPenn and which will receive its first full production with Princeton University...
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 was developed in a reading with PlayPenn and which will receive its first full production with Princeton University's Lewis Center for the Arts in 2021. 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
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    5–10
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    Genre: adaptation, biography + 4 more
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    Keyword: mythology, Celtic + 1 more
    Genre: adaptation, biography, docudrama/historic, drama, fable/folktale, period
    Keyword: mythology, Celtic, 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 Welsh myths called the Mabinogion. As she translates, she encounters the story of a woman conjured from flowers – a woman forced to become a wife, who is then metamorphosed into an owl as punishment for her infidelity. In...
    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 Welsh myths called the Mabinogion. As she translates, she encounters the story of a woman conjured from flowers – a woman forced to become a wife, who is then metamorphosed into an owl as punishment for her infidelity. In translating the story of the Woman of Flowers, 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
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    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.
  • Ikea Play by Emma Watkins
    Cast: 
    3
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    Genre: comedy, holiday
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    Keyword: coming home, quest + 3 more
    Genre: comedy, holiday
    Keyword: coming home, quest, New Jersey, magical realism, rabbit
    A ten-minute play about rabbit lost in Ikea, Christmas at a drive-in, and finding home in unexpected places.