Gina Young

Gina Young

Gina Young (she/they) is a playwright, director and deviser whose work often merges movement, music, and contemporary queer themes.

In Los Angeles, her work has been presented by The Hammer Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), REDCAT, Highways, Los Angeles Performance Practice/LAX Festival, USC’s Visions & Voices Series and the Feminist Center for Creative Work. She is a winner of...
Gina Young (she/they) is a playwright, director and deviser whose work often merges movement, music, and contemporary queer themes.

In Los Angeles, her work has been presented by The Hammer Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), REDCAT, Highways, Los Angeles Performance Practice/LAX Festival, USC’s Visions & Voices Series and the Feminist Center for Creative Work. She is a winner of the HUMANITAS/PLAY LA Prize, a Finalist for Center Theatre Group’s Richard E. Sherwood Award, a 2018 Directors Lab West selectee, and a winner of the Jane Chambers Award for Playwriting for her play Femmes: A Tragedy, which is published by NoPassport Press.

Gina is the creator of SORORITY, a performance salon bringing together women, trans, nonbinary, and queer artists for informal showings of new short works. SORORITY has become a hub for new queer and feminist performance in Los Angeles and beyond. Young is also the creator of Feminist Acting Class, a revolutionary experiment in actor training.

Gina's first short screenplay, ROOM TONE, starring Roberta Colindrez of Broadway's Fun Home and directed by Whitney White, was an official selection and winner at numerous film festivals worldwide.

Gina studied Drama at NYU/Tisch. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Ring of Keys, and The Kilroys.

Plays

  • This Is Why I Don't Come Home by Gina Young
    Cast: 
    5–10
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 3 more
    ·
    Keyword: family, Italian American + 8 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, experimental, political
    Keyword: family, Italian American, LGBTQ, Lesbian, Catholic, queer, nonbinary, comedy, drama, kitchen sink
    This Is Why I don't Come Home is the story of a prodigal daughter who returns home to her Italian-American family in New Jersey to find out she's not the only one who is queer. It examines loving across difference and the state of the queer community a decade after the legalization of gay marriage.
  • Femmes: A Tragedy by Gina Young
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 3 more
    ·
    Keyword: Lesbian, queer + 8 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, movement/physical, tragedy
    Keyword: Lesbian, queer, LGBTQ, nonbinary, Transgender, feminism, burlesque, women, social media, women's rights
    "...slyly riotous and dazzlingly reconceived..." -- The Hollywood Reporter

    Femmes: A Tragedy is a contemporary comedy about queer femme identity. Partially inspired by Clare Boothe Luce’s 1936 play, The Women, Femmes is the story of a painful public breakup set against the backdrop of modern urban lesbian (sub)culture(s).

    When the curator of a burlesque show is dumped by...
    "...slyly riotous and dazzlingly reconceived..." -- The Hollywood Reporter

    Femmes: A Tragedy is a contemporary comedy about queer femme identity. Partially inspired by Clare Boothe Luce’s 1936 play, The Women, Femmes is the story of a painful public breakup set against the backdrop of modern urban lesbian (sub)culture(s).

    When the curator of a burlesque show is dumped by her girlfriend for a hot bartender named Callie, her friends-- an activist, an academic and a party promoter-- are thrown into gossip and competition despite their best feminist intentions. With an iPhone app as a catalyst, the gossip spreads from friends to social media to the community at large, along the way satirizing and celebrating the diverse history of queer femme identity and questioning the ways butch/femme relationships do or don't replicate heterosexual stereotypes. Ultimately, everything leads to a showdown between Marigold and Callie— at a burlesque show in which each character performs burlesque routines deconstructing modern femininity.

    Two acts, 8 actors.

    Femmes: A Tragedy won the Jane Chambers Award for Playwriting and was presented at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference with feminist performance icon Holly Hughes in a starring role.
  • sSISTERSs by Gina Young
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    6–10
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama + 4 more
    ·
    Keyword: witch, witchcraft + 7 more
    Genre: comedy, drama, experimental, fantasy, musical, tragedy
    Keyword: witch, witchcraft, Sisters, feminism, History, LGBTQ, Transgender, women, music
    Trapped in the drawing room of an old Victorian house, three sisters who may or may not be witches embody famous triads in a psychedelic, stream-of-consciousness trip through time. From Chekhov’s Masha, Irina, and Olga to the three main Native American crops (squash, maize, and beans) to the Catholic Holy Trinity to the waves of American feminism, the sisters take on shifting ideas of sisterhood through time....
    Trapped in the drawing room of an old Victorian house, three sisters who may or may not be witches embody famous triads in a psychedelic, stream-of-consciousness trip through time. From Chekhov’s Masha, Irina, and Olga to the three main Native American crops (squash, maize, and beans) to the Catholic Holy Trinity to the waves of American feminism, the sisters take on shifting ideas of sisterhood through time. With a live band, haunting three-part harmonies, and a throwback to the secret witchy rituals of girlhood, sSISTERSs explores memory, family, mortality, contemporary queer identity, and the struggles of being a woman artist.
  • Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo by Gina Young
    Cast: 
    10–16
    ·
    Genre: comedy, experimental + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: Lesbian, queer + 7 more
    Genre: comedy, experimental, parody/spoof
    Keyword: Lesbian, queer, LGBTQ, feminist, bullying, coming out, dance, 1990s, girls
    Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo is a joyful, dance-filled romp through the bedrooms and classrooms of a group of girls growing up in the 1990s. An experimental work told in a mostly nonlinear series of flashbacks, vignettes and dance routines, Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo follows three writers from diverse ethnic backgrounds collaborating on a play about the years BEFORE their coming out stories began. Meanwhile...
    Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo is a joyful, dance-filled romp through the bedrooms and classrooms of a group of girls growing up in the 1990s. An experimental work told in a mostly nonlinear series of flashbacks, vignettes and dance routines, Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo follows three writers from diverse ethnic backgrounds collaborating on a play about the years BEFORE their coming out stories began. Meanwhile, in a world that is part flashback, part play-within-a-play, five friends rehearse dance routines for a talent show they might not have any chance of winning. With a title inspired by Judy Blume’s beloved children's novel but a tone most definitely aimed at thinking adults, this full-length comedic theatre piece explores the subtle forms of homophobic bullying that all of us— queer AND straight— experienced growing up. Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo is both nostalgic and extremely contemporary in its take on elementary school bullying.

    "...hilarious and moving..." - Autostraddle
    http://www.autostraddle.com/tales-of-a-fourth-grade-lesbo-tells-it-like-it-was-151378/

    "Gina Young's script had the entire audience by the metaphorical balls; Young is able to manipulate language with perfect comedic timing to provide endless laughs."
    - New England Theatre Geek

    Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo was a 2012 Asuncion Playwrights Project Semi-Finalist.