Tira Palmquist

Tira Palmquist

TIRA PALMQUIST is known for plays that merge the personal, the political and the poetic. Her most produced play, Two Degrees, premiered at the Denver Center, and was subsequently produced by Tesseract Theater in St. Louis and Prime Productions at the Guthrie (among others). Her play The Way North was a Finalist for the O’Neill, an Honorable Mention for the 2019 Kilroys List, and was featured in the 2019 Ashland...
TIRA PALMQUIST is known for plays that merge the personal, the political and the poetic. Her most produced play, Two Degrees, premiered at the Denver Center, and was subsequently produced by Tesseract Theater in St. Louis and Prime Productions at the Guthrie (among others). Her play The Way North was a Finalist for the O’Neill, an Honorable Mention for the 2019 Kilroys List, and was featured in the 2019 Ashland New Plays Festival.
Recently, Tira completed several new commission projects: The Worth of Water, the 2018 Clutch Productions commission, had an equity showcase production in NYC in October, directed by Mélisa Annis. Tira’s commission for Lower Depth Theater Ensemble in Los Angeles. Safe Harbor, a play about sex trafficking, premiered in November in LA. Tira has also been commissioned to write new work for the UCI graduate acting students. Her play Hold Steady was workshopped at UCI in February 2019, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything was workshopped in February 2020, and in 2021, The Last Time We Saw Madison was performed online with the more recent first-year grad actors.
Her other plays include Ten Mile Lake (Serenbe Playhouse), Age of Bees (NYU Stella Adler Studio, MadLab Theater, Tesseract), And Then They Fell (MadLab, Brimmer Street, New York Film Academy) and This Floating World.
The Way North, which was developed at the 2018 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, was a finalist for the 2018 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the 2018 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the 2019 Blue Ink Playwriting Award. The Way North was also featured in the following festivals: The Festival of New American Plays (Phoenix Theater), the Human Rights New Works Festival (Red Mountain Theater), the Page-by-Page Festival (Pioneer Theater) and the Road Theater’s Summer New Works Festival.
Two Degrees has been featured in numerous festivals (including the 11th Annual Denver Center New Play Summit, the New American Voices festival in the UK, the Caltech 2014 Mach 33 Festival and the 2014 Great Plains Theater Conference) and had its World Premiere in the Denver Center’s 2016/17 Season. Two Degrees was also listed in the Honorable Mention list for the 2016 Kilroys. Ten Mile Lake, which premiered in 2014 at Serenbe Playhouse just outside of Atlanta, GA, was developed and workshopped in 2012 at the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, and was a finalist for the 2015 Primus Prize.
Tira teaches creative writing at the Orange County School of the Arts, and has also taught at Wesleyan University and the University of California-Irvine. She is a member of the Playwrights Union, the Anteaus Theater’s Playwrights Lab and is a member of the Dramatists Guild. Her work as a director and dramaturg includes several seasons at the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference and the New Territories Playwriting Residency.

Plays

  • Memory of Winter by Tira Palmquist
    Recommendations: 5
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    Cast: 
    5
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    Genre: drama
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    Keyword: climate activism, climate change + 4 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: climate activism, climate change, journalism, Northern Minnesota, Lake Superior, ice
    It’s winter, for now. And Billie Peterson is in Minnesota, again, for now. Though she’s not “home,” No, she’s here as a journalist, to report on a hearty band of scientists as they gather data on Lake Superior, and she’s coming to terms with the fact that not even the coldest, deepest, largest lake in North America is immune from the effects of climate change. More importantly, the lake is reminding Billie that...
    It’s winter, for now. And Billie Peterson is in Minnesota, again, for now. Though she’s not “home,” No, she’s here as a journalist, to report on a hearty band of scientists as they gather data on Lake Superior, and she’s coming to terms with the fact that not even the coldest, deepest, largest lake in North America is immune from the effects of climate change. More importantly, the lake is reminding Billie that maybe loving a place requires more from her, maybe requires more from all of us.
  • King Margaret by Tira Palmquist
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    8–12
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    Genre: adaptation, docudrama/historic + 1 more
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    Keyword: based on Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Women + 3 more
    Genre: adaptation, docudrama/historic, drama
    Keyword: based on Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Women, History, War of the Roses, Margaret of Anjou
    We all think we know the story of Margaret through Shakespeare’s history cycle. But was she really a “ruthless queen,” a “she-wolf of France?” King Margaret challenges that narrative and brings in the stories of the real Margaret, known for being quick, bright, capable, and strong-willed—her only faults being that she was fifteen, and French, and female.
  • The Body's Midnight by Tira Palmquist
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    5
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    Genre: dark comedy, drama
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    Keyword: dementia, Caregivers + 8 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama
    Keyword: dementia, Caregivers, travel, roadtrip, marriage, memory, America, wilderness, brain injury, stroke
    What does it mean to be lost in America? Anne and her husband David are about to find out. Determined to put a troubling diagnosis in the rearview mirror, they set off on the perfect American road trip with a plan, a destination, an impressive list of cool spots to stop along the way and a timeline that should put them in St. Paul just in time for the birth of their first grandchild. But what if this perfect...
    What does it mean to be lost in America? Anne and her husband David are about to find out. Determined to put a troubling diagnosis in the rearview mirror, they set off on the perfect American road trip with a plan, a destination, an impressive list of cool spots to stop along the way and a timeline that should put them in St. Paul just in time for the birth of their first grandchild. But what if this perfect plan is merely a distraction from the complicated, ridiculous, occasionally breathtaking and often far messier journey they’d hoped to avoid? Bearing witness to the beauty of things, even as they disappear, Ann and David struggle to come to terms with the unexpected and unavoidable journey of their lives.​
  • The Way North by Tira Palmquist
    Recommendations: 19
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    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: drama
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    Keyword: immigration, asylum + 7 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: immigration, asylum, duty, law, morality, refugee, Law Enforcement, Northern Minnesota, trekking
    When a lost, cold and very pregnant young woman stumbles on to her rural homestead in the Minnesota wilderness, Freddy Hanson doesn't hesitate to take her in. It's the right thing to do, and as the county's former Sheriff, Freddy has dedicated her life to protecting and serving others. But when her new guest turns out to be a Sudanese refugee making a run for the Canadian border, what it means to...
    When a lost, cold and very pregnant young woman stumbles on to her rural homestead in the Minnesota wilderness, Freddy Hanson doesn't hesitate to take her in. It's the right thing to do, and as the county's former Sheriff, Freddy has dedicated her life to protecting and serving others. But when her new guest turns out to be a Sudanese refugee making a run for the Canadian border, what it means to protect and serve becomes a more complicated, and far more dangerous, question.

  • All We Ever Wanted Was Everything by Tira Palmquist
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    8
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    Genre: dark comedy
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    Keyword: sustainability, urban gardening + 4 more
    Genre: dark comedy
    Keyword: sustainability, urban gardening, intersectionality, Co-housing, millennials, gentrification
    In a house in Inglewood, Boots and her housemates – Gael, Kense, Mo, Cruz – are fulfilling their most radical goals: growing their own food, practicing more sustainable living, carving out a life for themselves, for their future. They’ve just taken on a new housemate, Wren, even though their former housemate Finley is desperate to come back into the fold. But their whole enterprise is endangered when their...
    In a house in Inglewood, Boots and her housemates – Gael, Kense, Mo, Cruz – are fulfilling their most radical goals: growing their own food, practicing more sustainable living, carving out a life for themselves, for their future. They’ve just taken on a new housemate, Wren, even though their former housemate Finley is desperate to come back into the fold. But their whole enterprise is endangered when their property manager, Vic brings bad news about a new owner of their house, and forces beyond their control threaten both where and how they’ll live.
  • Safe Harbor by Tira Palmquist
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    6–10
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    Genre: drama
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    Keyword: sex trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation + 4 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: sex trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, runaway teen, at-risk youth, human sex trafficking, victims of assault
    What Sasha Jones wants more than anything else is to have her mother back -- or maybe just to go to the mall. Mikayla Reese wants, someday, to go to space. Or maybe a home to call her own. But they can't have those things -- not now, not ever. Still, clinging to the impossible as they find themselves in increasingly dangerous circumstances, they have to make increasingly desperate choices, or face...
    What Sasha Jones wants more than anything else is to have her mother back -- or maybe just to go to the mall. Mikayla Reese wants, someday, to go to space. Or maybe a home to call her own. But they can't have those things -- not now, not ever. Still, clinging to the impossible as they find themselves in increasingly dangerous circumstances, they have to make increasingly desperate choices, or face increasingly treacherous consequences. All they want is a safe harbor -- but the road there seems both long and difficult.
  • Hold Steady by Tira Palmquist
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    8
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    Genre: dark comedy
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    Keyword: millennials, millennials and economic anxiety + 2 more
    Genre: dark comedy
    Keyword: millennials, millennials and economic anxiety, 30-somethings, ensemble
    It's the weekend of a high school ten-year reunion, and a group of friends gathers. But it's hard to feel like there's much to celebrate when they're saddled with debt, concerned about their current choices, worried about their future. Seeing their friends reminds them who they thought they'd be, and how far they have to go to get there.
  • Two Degrees by Tira Palmquist
    Recommendations: 10
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    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: drama, political
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    Keyword: science, climate change + 6 more
    Genre: drama, political
    Keyword: science, climate change, grief, Washington DC, global warming, ice, Greenland, ice cores
    Emma Phelps is a paleoclimatologist, focusing on ice in Greenland. In drilling and studying ice core samples, she sees first hand the symptoms of our changing planet, which makes the need to act all the more crucial and urgent. In addition to her growing sense of urgency for the planet, Emma, as a recent widow, experiences grief that compounds itself with each passing month. Now she's been asked to come to...
    Emma Phelps is a paleoclimatologist, focusing on ice in Greenland. In drilling and studying ice core samples, she sees first hand the symptoms of our changing planet, which makes the need to act all the more crucial and urgent. In addition to her growing sense of urgency for the planet, Emma, as a recent widow, experiences grief that compounds itself with each passing month. Now she's been asked to come to Washington D.C. to testify in a Senate Committee regarding climate change legislation, and in this intersection of science and politics, of politics and the personal, she finds more than just a little is breaking up under the strain of change.
  • This Floating World by Tira Palmquist
    Recommendations: 5
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    Cast: 
    5
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    Genre: dark comedy
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    Keyword: luck, financial collapse + 6 more
    Genre: dark comedy
    Keyword: luck, financial collapse, privilege, magic, Southern California, disadvantaged, Suburbs, no-man's land
    When a woman of means crashes her car in a no-man’s land, she finds herself on a long, strange trip home. Wasn’t she always lucky? Didn’t she always know how to make her way in the world? But this place is bewildering, and, weirdly, there’s a creature who seems to understand her better than the humans. There, on the margins of here and there, between suburbia and wilderness, she meets a Curandera and...
    When a woman of means crashes her car in a no-man’s land, she finds herself on a long, strange trip home. Wasn’t she always lucky? Didn’t she always know how to make her way in the world? But this place is bewildering, and, weirdly, there’s a creature who seems to understand her better than the humans. There, on the margins of here and there, between suburbia and wilderness, she meets a Curandera and desperately clings to the things that seem to be slipping away from her. Or, maybe, it’s all already gone, and she just couldn’t see it.
  • Overburden by Tira Palmquist
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    4–5
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    Genre: drama, political + 1 more
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    Keyword: legacy, Inheritance + 4 more
    Genre: drama, political, tragedy
    Keyword: legacy, Inheritance, Northern Minnesota, Iron Range, violence, breaking the cycle
    After Grandpa Gunnar's funeral, Carl is convinced that there's an inheritance hidden in the boxes and detritus in Gunnar's house. To Gunnar's daughter, Nan, there's nothing of value in the house -- nothing of value in Gunnar's legacy, nothing to inherit but grief and sorrow. As they sort through the house, Carl learns how true that is.
  • And Then They Fell by Tira Palmquist
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    5
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    Genre: drama
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    Keyword: Transgender, youth + 4 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: Transgender, youth, LGBTQ, sexual assault, addiction, at-risk youth
    Jordan Matthews would be fine, if her mother could hold down a decent job, or if her mother hadn't been arrested on another DUI, or if her mother's boyfriend wasn't a skeevy bastard. But things aren't fine, Jordan's life teeters on the edge, and all the adults around her are either impotent or uninterested. So Jordan begins to wonder if it’s unusual for terrible things to happen, and...
    Jordan Matthews would be fine, if her mother could hold down a decent job, or if her mother hadn't been arrested on another DUI, or if her mother's boyfriend wasn't a skeevy bastard. But things aren't fine, Jordan's life teeters on the edge, and all the adults around her are either impotent or uninterested. So Jordan begins to wonder if it’s unusual for terrible things to happen, and never know why. For terrible things to happen, and not have anyone really care.
  • Ten Mile Lake by Tira Palmquist
    Recommendations: 4
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    Cast: 
    3
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    Genre: drama
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    Keyword: aging parents, coming home + 2 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: aging parents, coming home, veterans, absolution
    Maggie should have known it was a fool’s errand to return to Ten Mile Lake; after all, if her father had wanted her to know he was dying, he would have called her himself. It would be easy to just turn around and head back to Portland, especially since he seems to get along better with his new nurse Donny than he ever did with her. But, now that she's home, Maggie can’t seem to leave, and maybe… just maybe...
    Maggie should have known it was a fool’s errand to return to Ten Mile Lake; after all, if her father had wanted her to know he was dying, he would have called her himself. It would be easy to just turn around and head back to Portland, especially since he seems to get along better with his new nurse Donny than he ever did with her. But, now that she's home, Maggie can’t seem to leave, and maybe… just maybe she doesn’t really want to.
  • Age of Bees by Tira Palmquist
    Recommendations: 6
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    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: drama, science fiction
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    Keyword: colony collapse, bees + 2 more
    Genre: drama, science fiction
    Keyword: colony collapse, bees, coming of age, Dystopia
    The bees have gone, and the world struggles to keep up with the resulting ecological and economic changes. In the midst of this, we meet Mel, a young woman who has found sanctuary on an agricultural compound, where there's food and safety. She works alongside other girls, also orphans or castoffs. Sarah and Zed, who run the farm, hope that their next child will be a boy; Sarah is at the end of her...
    The bees have gone, and the world struggles to keep up with the resulting ecological and economic changes. In the midst of this, we meet Mel, a young woman who has found sanctuary on an agricultural compound, where there's food and safety. She works alongside other girls, also orphans or castoffs. Sarah and Zed, who run the farm, hope that their next child will be a boy; Sarah is at the end of her fertility, however, and, to her dismay, Mel stands next in line to carry children for Zed. Into this uncertain sanctuary steps Jonathan, an independent field researcher who collects samples of plants to forestall additional ecological devastation. Meeting Mel provides a glimmer of other kinds of scientific riches on this compound, and he is determined to take her with him. Zed's history of violence makes any escape a dangerous proposition. Still, there's the hope that something new can grow, that something good can come from the ruined world they struggle to make theirs.
  • The Frequency of Stars and Other Matter by Tira Palmquist
    Recommendations: 4
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    Cast: 
    6
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    Genre: drama
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    Keyword: magical realism, coming of age + 4 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: magical realism, coming of age, youth, Recovery, family, outsiders
    Benny Gutierrez is trying to grow up. While in custody for statutory rape, Benny was seriously wounded by the Sheriff's deputies. Now - free on a plea agreement, with a monetary settlement, Benny moves to Hemet, where at least he can look at the stars.

    Still, he's tons of baggage, such as his resentment toward his brother, who didn't bail him out of jail. Benny is looking for his...
    Benny Gutierrez is trying to grow up. While in custody for statutory rape, Benny was seriously wounded by the Sheriff's deputies. Now - free on a plea agreement, with a monetary settlement, Benny moves to Hemet, where at least he can look at the stars.

    Still, he's tons of baggage, such as his resentment toward his brother, who didn't bail him out of jail. Benny is looking for his place in the world - and in his need to know his fate, he unintentionally revives the ghost of Tycho Brahe, who seems just as perplexed by the universe as Benny.
  • The Worth of Water by Tira Palmquist
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    7–10
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    Genre: dark comedy
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    Keyword: dysfunctional family, mermaids + 7 more
    Genre: dark comedy
    Keyword: dysfunctional family, mermaids, mother, Sisters, finding your voice, grief, forgiveness, letting go, Red State/Blue State
    Elle is a struggling singer-songwriter in California. Rebecca is an unhappy homemaker in Wisconsin. And Ethel is bringing her daughters together for her 70th birthday to be momentary mermaids in the springs of Weeki Wachee. But as the fantasy dissipates, will they be able to swim back to shore?