Trista Baldwin

Trista Baldwin is the recipient of two Jerome Fellowships (04-05 and 05-06) and a 2006-2007  McKnight Advancement Grant.  Commissions include WADE THE BIRD (The Guthrie), published by Playscripts), TERRA AUSTRALIS INCOGNITO (The Production Company) and STU AND RAY (New Georges). Her work has also been developed and produced by companies including The Lark, New Georges, The Empty Space, Hypothetical Theatre Company,  La Mama, HERE, Urban Stages, Synchronicity, Eternal Spiral Project, The Red Eye, Chopin Theatre, Circle X  (LA), Stark Raving, Actors Theatre Of Phoenix,  National New Play Network and HB Playwrights Foundation.

Recent projects include the Off-Broadway premiere of SAND at Womens Project,  FORGETTING (developed with Workhaus Collective; Playlabs; LIU New Play Fest,)  AMERICAN SEXY (Ruth Easton Lab; New Theatre Group) and CLIMBING TREES, a screenplay (Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival 2009, director Paul Moehring).

Upcoming projects include "DOE 2.0" a bi-lingual, bi-cultural collaboration with Shirotama Hitsujuya.  (www.yubiwahotel.com), based on the play DOE, directed by Shirotama in the Tokyo International Festival. 

A native of the woods of Washington State, and sometime-New Yorker, she currently makes her home in Minneapolis, where she is a founding member of the Workhaus Collective (www.workhauscollective.org), a Core Writer of The Playwrights Center, and mother of 3 year old Ila.  Trista teaches playwriting, screenwriting and dramatic lit at St. Cloud State University.

Trista's work is published through Playscripts and Heinnemann.  

 

Search for published plays by Trista Baldwin...

D O E

Download Script Sample
Cast: 2 F, 1 M
Description

Jan wakes up in a hotel room to find a woman naked and sound asleep beside her. How did she get there? Who is this woman with her? In a series of scenes left unmarked by time, Jan yearns for, fears, and fights with this woman who seems a lover, a friend, an apathetic stranger. When her husband appears, Jan veers through a series of violent scenarios as she pushes for her own independence. A story of our potential for plurality, of the mutability of identity and sexuality, D O E is told in poetic rhythm and intricate images of sex and death.

Forgetting

Download Script Sample
Cast: 1M, 3F
Description

Workshop, October 10 – 14, 2008
No public presentation

Three women who have lost their brothers weave through a city on the brink of violence. (Slated for production by Workhaus Theatre at The Playwrights’ Center, November 2008.)

October 10 – 14, 2008
No public presentation

Three women who have lost their brothers weave through a city on the brink of violence. (Slated for production by Workhaus Theatre at The Playwrights’ Center, November 2008.)

Falling Up

Download Script Sample
Cast: 1 tall M, 1 short F
Description

A comedic love story with a few bruises. Part of Perishable Theater Company's International Women's Theater Festival, 2006.

Patty Red Pants

Download Script Sample
Cast: 2 F, 1 M
Description

As a suspect is arrested in an eleven-year old murder case, two old friends run into each other by chance. The encounter raises unsetting questions about their youth, a time when their lust for life bloomed in the shadow of the death of their girlhood peer. What happened eleven years ago? A boldly lyrical and darkly comedic post Little-Red-Riding Hood tale of sexual awakening.

Sand

Download Script Sample
Cast: For 1 F and 2 M actors.
Description

A young American soldier goes off to a war in the Middle East, on what he believes will be a short detour on his route to college, made possible by the U.S. Army. Instead he finds himself in the midst of a complex occupation. His personal history of violence and the history of violence in the country that he is fighting for and against collide as his life and the lives of his fellow soldiers are irrevocably changed.

American Sexy

Download Script Sample
Cast: For 1 F and 2 M actors.
Description

American Sexy explores how our overly-sexed, wired and commercialized society affects four ordinary college students as they struggle with their emotional needs and sense of self. The play focuses on how gender roles are changing and how women's sense of power and self worth is changing. At once an observation, an indictment and a call to save our youth.

March 27, 2009
Public reading, March 27 at 3:30 p.m.

American Sexy explores how our wired, sexualized and commercialized society affects four ordinary college students as they struggle with their emotional needs and sense of self. The play focuses on how women's sense of power and self worth is changing, for better and for worse, in a world of easy-access porn, exhibitionism and voyeurism.

DOE 2.0

Cast: For 1 F and 2 M actors.
Description

DOE 2.0 reveals a shared inner life, in mutable identities, across languages, across lovers, crossing nations...

Shirotama Hitsujiya, Artistic Director of Tokyo's Yubiwa Hotel, joins with Workhaus Collective playwright Trista Baldwin and a cast of English and Japanese speaking performers to create DOE 2.0, a new performance piece based on Baldwin's DOE, the first play presented by Workhaus Collective.

This is the first presentation, script in hand, of our inaugural workshop to create this dual-language piece. Our work will continue in Japan in December. We hope you can join us here in Minneapolis, on the 21st. Enjoy some wine, and discuss.

Reservations: 612-605-6537

Illustration by Tsubasa Takahashi.