Callan Stout

Zetta Rubina has felt certain for a long time that her lower left leg shouldn’t be there. As she looks into the options for the treatment of Body Integrity Identity Disorder, she must grapple with the ethics of the medical community, the fear and disgust of her mother, and the confusion and hurt of her husband. It becomes clearer and clearer that Zetta Rubina has no choice but to amputate herself, which she finally does with the help of her husband.

***open to further development***

Dr. Maeve Thornton, an anthropologist, was granted access to study the newly discovered remains of a young boy from the 1st century BCE preserved in the peat bogs of Jutland. This is a huge opportunity for her, and her upcoming tenure review could depend on it. As Dr. Thornton runs more and more tests, the results are simply not forming a cohesive picture of this young boy.

Her colleague, Dr. Josh Fruges, an archaeobotanist, has already completed his studies of the boy’s stomach contents and he’s threatening to publish his work, before Dr. Thornton. But Dr. Thornton is reluctant. She suspects the Jutland Boy has a secret. Despite the body’s presumably male clothing, skeletal and genetic research seems to indicate the remains are in fact female. Dr. Thornton contends she must triple verify her research, so her conclusions are airtight before publishing to protect herself from the all too familiar misogynistic backlash from these types of revelations.

While Dr. Thornton is trying to unravel the discrepancies between the Jutland Boy’s social identifiers and bone structure, Dr. Fruges publishes anyway, stealing her opportunity to be the first to publish research on this body. With mounting pressure to publish before her tenure review, Dr. Thornton presents a preview of her work to her students, only to find that not even her own lecture hall is safe from hatred.

The play shifts back and forth between Dr. Thornton and the life of the Jutland Girl, Deirdre, tracing both their struggles of being women in their time. Deirdre is an Iron Age teenager with the fierce ambition of becoming an itinerant bard. As she travels through villages during the final decades of the Celtic world, she decides to disguise herself as a boy, as protection from the westward march of the Roman army.

***looking for further development***

Set a generation in the future, QUICK follows three women traveling to Canada to get abortions that are illegal in the USA. It’s about the lengths people will go to have a better future and the damage done when women don’t have the right of bodily autonomy and self-determination.

***please reach out to use this play royalty free for pro-choice actions or fundraisers. I will also make myself available at your request. ***

***open to further development***

Gerda is trying to sell encyclopedias in order to stay in America. But she keeps getting sidetracked as she tries to save a world of other women around her. As the play loops and unravels in repeating patterns of PTSD, Gerda cannot escape her own traumatic past. you do not look challenges the audience to see female trauma that is too often purposefully overlooked.

***looking for further development***

Girl Becomes Bone is about religion. In the future. In outer space. It’s a human play about the unknown. It’s also about trust, love and believing with every fiber of your existence. Set on a distant future planet where Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem’s Duino Elegies are the seminal religious text, a young woman – also named Rainer - commits to the ultimate expression of faith; to return to a dead Earth and audio record reflections on the Elegies while self-mummifying. Rainer’s mother’s own failed attempt twenty-six years prior left her feeling abandoned and betrayed. Will Rainer’s own faithless journey bring her peace or will she too disintegrate into Earth’s dust?

***open to further development***

12 year old Mairyn and her younger sister are striving for normalcy while their parents are away. But they’re not really alone. Mama’s only in the hospital for a short while. Papa’s coming home soon from work on a cruise ship. And their deceased grandfather’s magic still protects the family property. As long as they still live there, they’re safe and anything seems possible, even holding her disintegrating family together. But the family home was damaged in an epic storm, their FEMA trailer is being taking away, and child services just came knocking.

***open to further development***

Nate and Devin are best friends and serious recreational surfers at Venice beach. Every year on the anniversary of Nate’s high school girlfriend, Katie’s drowning, he suffers from the same recurring dream: he can’t pull her out of the ocean. On the morning of the 10th anniversary of her death a mysterious young woman – Koa – appears on their door step as if she emerged from the waves and forces herself into their lives. She’s a free spirit who’s surfed the whole world, drifting from the soft curls of Hawaii where you surf with the sun to the frigid waters of Scotland where you surf with magical creatures.
There’s something different about her and she seems more than reluctant to move on when Nate hangs her coat in the closet and she can’t find it. Nate is inexplicably drawn in by the very scent of her, but is too stubborn to let her in and Koa wins Devin’s heart easily.
Koa talks them into a local surfing competition, something they haven’t done since Katie’s death. During the competition, a fist fight with Nate over a wave sends Devin into a coma. While Devin lies in the hospital, Koa dreams of failing to rescue Devin from the ocean, and is scared she would make it back from the waves if she were to try again. After Nate refuses to save Devin from the waves of Koa’s dreams, she forces him to forgive himself for his girlfriend’s death in order for him to help her save Devin, and disappears back into the waves.

Em and Jay meet on the pier they used to take their dog run off-leash. Now, they’ve both married other people and happy in their new lives. In between reminiscing about the good days with Pookie, the pain they caused each other starts to creep through. As they bury their beloved pet, maybe they can also put to rest the anguish they caused each other.

Based on the poem 'a whistle' by e.e. cummings, this short play explores the dark world of the innocence of children, and how quickly they are gone.

Kirsten and Mark start making memories together as Kristen’s mother slowly loses hers. The Undiscovered Dimensions and Immutable Certainties of Worms, charts the early milestones of a blossoming relationship with scenes in reverse chronological order, so with each new joy we also experience the unsettling experience of not remembering how we got to this point. A poignant play about how we keep living, while the ones we love gradually stop remembering us.

In this adaptation of Kipling's famous stories, the beat of a drum and the cry of a wolf give way to the sounds of the ferocious tiger Shere Khan, hunting his latest prey. But as the wolf pack gathers, they discover that he is hunting a human child, and they quickly rescue the infant Mowgli from the tiger’s teeth. Mother and Father Wolf adopt the small man-cub, and with the protection of Bagheera, the panther, and the teachings of Baloo the bear, Mowgli lives peacefully with the wolves. But as he outwits a band of jesting monkeys, escapes from a hypnotic python and learns the Laws of the Jungle, he will not be able to escape his inevitable showdown with Shere Khan.

Mom moves her kids to a new home on the slopes of a beautiful...active volcano. That doesn't bother her brood, who ride their bikes through the woods, make friends with the neighbor kid and get adopted by a cat who thinks they could use some help growing up—and is sure to let us know. But when a mountain lion on the loose drives them inside, a well-intentioned but ill-fated batch of brownies may spell trouble with a capital BIGFOOT!