L M Feldman

Airo and Bo are partners both in romance and in their duo circus act, so when they break up, moving on is not just a matter of listening to sad songs (while navigating a shared Spotify account), but also learning to use their bodies in a completely different way... something their friend Jamie, who's just had shoulder surgery, is facing too. The challenge? Their bodies are middle-aged and not keen on learning new tricks — and circus is completely underfunded and under-resourced in America. How do you start over in your middle years when there is no safety net to bounce back from?

An audaciously theatrical & acrobatic shakedown that explodes human time, S P A C E intertwines imagined scenes with Congressional transcripts, feats of endurance with the historical record, to interrogate the story of the Mercury 13 female pilots and their ancestors (Bessie Coleman, Hazel Ying Lee) and descendants (Mae Jemison, Sally Ride) – over the course of a national Civil Rights Space Race that has spanned our past century. The play asks: How do you navigate the system (as women, as queers, as immigrants, as folx of color) to actually get off the ground in this country? It asks: What can we learn from the (failed) social movements that preceded us? And it asks: If given the chance to start the world over – to co-create the system anew – how might we actually DO IT?

Okay so this is a story about a gender-nonconforming 18th-century herb woman who’s trying to carve out a larger sense of space… and ends up on a journey around the world. Her name was Jeanne Baret, and nearly everything we know about her life comes from the journals of the men who knew her. An epic tale of historical fiction about our country's present moment, THRIVE blends the style and language of our past and present in order to interrogate the nature of "discovery" and its legacy, of (mis)categorizing the world, of species & survival, of power & access, of gender & identity, and of the subjective nature of both history & self. Funny, gripping, poignant, and wild, THRIVE wrestles with the loss of Jeanne's perspective and tries to imagine possibilities of what it may have been. And as Jeanne journeys and changes, so too does her casting – in this ensemble-driven quest of self-determination. Meanwhile, we watch Jeanne and her companion Commerson on their adventure – from meeting to parting – across lands & seas & 6,000 plants – in a voyage that is part love story, part Latin taxonomy, part feminist wrestling with historiography, and part surrender into awe itself and the universal need to flourish.

Perilous & luminous, ANOTHER KIND OF SILENCE tells the story of Evan & Chap – two already-partnered women who cross paths in modern-day Greece and find themselves falling in love. Through a landscape lush with language, myth, humor, and intimacy, we watch as their respective partnerships navigate the elusiveness of desire, the failures of communication, the challenges of long-term commitment, and the mysteries of a changing self. Bilingual and bicultural, ANOTHER KIND OF SILENCE unfolds simultaneously in English & American Sign Language, as the four characters and their four souls (a Greek Chorus) collectively traverse one of the hardest chapters in committed relationships.

For a moment: let’s set aside what got erased from history,
and take a hard look at what never got written.
SCRIBE imagines the poet Milton’s relationship with his three kept-barely-literate daughters, while he was blind & outcast & composing Paradise Lost and they were transcribing & homemaking & coming of age. Poetic and playful, fantastical and unflinching, SCRIBE probes the relationship between genius, privilege, and labor, and mourns the enormity of unmade art by the voices we’ll never get to hear. With humor, eloquence, and high theatricality, this new play set during 17th-century England’s social volatility—and ours, too, now—tells the story of three children growing up in the shadow of the canon, of society, and of its cultural and historical legacies.

A large ensemble play about young adults trying to find themselves and their limits in a full-time professional circus school. LIMBER shines a loving light on this marginalized and misunderstood art form with a diverse community, a virtuosic language, a complex relationship to bodies & frailty, and a profound anciently-rooted devotion to the pursuit of the impossible. Time, space, and group dynamics are athletic in this play -- bending & leaping & crashing against each other -- in a story that starts in the middle, jumps to the end, and ends at the start. Funny, fast, fierce, and loving, LIMBER asks: What’s gained and what's lost when you decide to take your passion, your artistry, and your body, and turn it into your profession? How does a tightly knit cohort of arts students evolve over the course of a conservatory training program? How do the arts empower us, and where do they fail us? How do we heal? How do we trust? Should we keep pursuing what we love, even when it means clawing your way upstream? And if we knew what our future lives would look like in middle age, would we still follow our hearts as young adults?

A PEOPLE is a theatrical mosaic of eras and lands; generations and deserts; hats and books; clarinets and bread; people lost and people searching; angry young women; sad old men; angels; history; memory; and imagination. A PEOPLE gathers a versatile ensemble of 10 performers, taking on a spectrum of Old and New World perspectives – across time, space, age, and gender – in a kaleidoscopic celebration of humanity that explores and explodes the history and present of the Jewish diaspora. A participatory theatrical experience as intimate as it is epic, A PEOPLE spins a luminous and tenuous tale of (dis)connection and (be)longing, all while wrestling with the question: What is my relationship to those who came before me? And are we – or is anyone – still a people?

Faced with a painful chapter in her life and fighting the inertia of depression, Emm decides to enter the world of competitive rock-climbing. Her quest through the rugged and humorous terrain of physical training and personal relationships charts the journey of a young woman suspended between muscularity and vulnerability, falling and climbing, parents and children, and the ardor and grace of being human.

It's 1940, and Daniel is nearly 12. Paloma is almost 11. Daniel loves music and winter. Paloma loves birds and the sea. Daniel is trying to find his family. Paloma is trying to understand hers. And Daniel (alone and in a wool coat) just arrived in Cuba, Paloma’s home.

Adapted from the gorgeous book TROPICAL SECRETS: HOLOCAUST REFUGEES IN CUBA by Margarita Engle, this tender, poetic, shimmering world premiere follows two children on the verge of adolescence, buoyed by friendship, as they try to save themselves and others in an unjust, dangerous, adult-run world that’s failing them.

Commissioned by the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte to speak to our current world of borders and violence and family separation, TROPICAL SECRETS is a dark and beautiful theatrical quest for audiences ages 8 & up about the families we lose and the families we make, about how the world changes us and how we change the world, and about oranges and drums and becoming someone new.

A young woman goes on a journey.
Actually, several women go on their journeys.
Actually, everyone is sort of going on a journey.
In search of something big.
(Like, healing. Revenge. Safety. Autonomy. A clean slate. The Divine. And clarity regarding swans.)
In this fever-dream play of origin stories, the ancient canon, and the myth of Leda & the Swan, a searching, unruly ensemble of women, girls, men, and boys all journey, lay eggs, question, turn into eggs, suffer, hatch from eggs, and rebel -- to the awe and dismay of their Playwright -- who is struggling to make sense of them, the world, and her own story, all of it spinning wildly out of control.
A play about eggs ‘n’ swans ‘n’ gods ‘n’ humanfolk, THE EGG-LAYERS is a wild raw angry feminist ensemble play filled with movement, myth, transformation, humor, and theatrical dynamism. It’s asking questions about how to live in a dark and violent world with openness and connection. About what to do with the narratives we inherit. About being shaped by inherited trauma. About how to heal. About how to trust. And about how to create yourself anew.