writing
Produced work
Poster by Stella Barnabe
Subterranean Memories
Alina worked with director Irina Kruzhilina to develop a script for this devised, site-specific performance about disappearance and memory. Set in a post-apocalyptic basement, the residents have to perform rituals of memories they no longer understand to a ghost god in exchange for their protection.
Photos by Maria Barinova
Artwork by Carly Vorndran
Black Trashbag Magic
Black Trashbag Magic is a coming-of-age story based on my own adolescence. It comes from a place of looking back on the experiences I had before I became the fully-formed queer woman I am now, and reinterpretting those events with an analytical lens. I especially wanted to explore how trauma affects the way we remember and view past experiences-- even ones not directly related to the trauma.
Tucson Fringe Festival 2019
Directed by Alina Burke
Cast: Kyleigh Sacco, Christine Arbor, and Danny Fap
Photos by Carrie Anne Armes
Artwork by Carly Vorndran
What, Will You?
What, Will You? is a super gay adaptation of Twelfth Night set on a college campus. The idea of a modern queer version of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night came to me when I read it for the first time after coming out. I couldn’t get over how good Viola is at wooing Olivia-- how of all the characters in the play, they by far have the most chemistry. As an identical twin, I also wanted to add some of the issues my sister and I faced while being separated from each other for the first time during undergrad. It’s surprisingly difficult to go your entire life being one of a set and then suddenly be in a place where no one knows you're a twin. It’s somehow both liberating and lonely at the same time. My goal for What, Will You?, was to make it an accurate flip on the traditional story while introducing these new concepts.
Tucson Fringe Festival 2020
Directed by Alina Burke
Cast: Katie Burke, Kyleigh Sacco, Zachary Nicholson, Abigail Dunscomb, Neruda Hogrelius, Alina Burke, and Will Jacobs
Photos by Abby Gore
Droplet
Artwork by Moira Zhang
other work
Eternity & Infinity
When the pandemic left me with some extra time on my hands, I started to do extensive research in order to write a play based on Emily Dickinson’s romantic relationship with her sister-in-law/likely-lover, Susan Gilbert Dickinson. I devoured their letters, which are so amorous, so theatrical, that they did not require any added dramatization. My resulting play, Eternity and Infinity, uses real letters and poems that Emily sent to Susan and fleshes out the events that defined their relationship.
Eternity and Infinity alternates between depicting young Emily and Susan meeting, falling in love, and being torn apart by Susan’s betrothal to Emily’s brother, Austin, and depicting an older Susan, struggling to preserve Emily’s legacy after her death. The main narrative of their younger days is riddled with flashes of what is to come -- an affair, a publication scandal, and many lovelorn letters sent across a hedge. Emily and Susan are caught between their desire for each other and the fact that Emily, being a woman of means, can dream about a life without marriage, while Susan cannot. When Susan does marry, she and Emily struggle with whether to continue their relationship.
The play explores 19th century sexism, classism, and homophobia through a modern lens. My intent is to expose many untold truths about this renowned poet and provide audiences with a new perspective on queerness throughout history. One only has to dig a little deeper to find the queer love stories that the heterosexual norm has tried to cover up for centuries.
Ratgirl
Ratgirl is a modern fairy tale about a rat who survives by collecting what she needs from trash. The world around her is dying and the rulers of that world don't want her to live even her meager existence. How can she break through the structures that oppress her while struggling just to survive?
Ameliorated
Ameliorated uses the mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart to explore the lengths humans will go to in order to find answers to unanswerable questions.
It is about Laila, a woman who is obsessed with the disappearance of Amelia Earhart as a coping mechanism for a disappearance that happened in her own life.
The world of Ameliorated switches between Laila’s real world, Amelia Earhart in the sky on her final flight, and Amelia Earhart within Laila’s imagination. Laila’s connection to Amelia in all of these worlds exemplifies a wider human desire to know everything and the play grapples with how to live when there are no explanations.
The Antiheroines
Richard, an English professor who consistently marries his students, is visited by the ghosts of the most hated female characters in literature.