FEATURED WRiTER
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Kathryn Jean Keller
is a playwright, director, actor and itinerant theater artist based in Seattle. She co-founded Café Delirium, a collective of anti-racist queers responding to public affairs with original site-specific theater. Keller serves the The 14/48 Projects, “producers of the World’s Quickest Theater Festival & other feats of impossible theater, spanning the globe.” She holds a BFA in theater and a PhD in American Studies. Keller has studied theater with Eduardo Machado, Jill Dolan, Sue-Ellen Case, Andrea Stolowitz, Elizabeth Heffron and Miriam Tobin.
Keller’s New Play Exchange page
Keller’s first full-length play, FAKE is set in the 1950s and explores the mysterious career of Harriet Softli, a woman visibly comfortable in her Boston marriage, but secretly counterfeiting fine art. What can modern audiences learn about authenticity from a mid-twentieth century forgery artist who breaks all the rules when it comes to faking it?
Daughters of Saturn, also a full-length play, is Keller’s modern interpretation of Demeter’s lament and is informed by the host of grieving mothers in our world. Daughters workshopped at Freehold Theater’s 2019 New Play Lab, directed by David Hsieh, and received further development under the auspices of the Next Wave Playwrights Project.
Keller is currently developing a third full-length work entitled Toil & Trouble, the Missing Chapter: Lady Macbeth’s Side of the Story, which received an early-stage workshop at SCRiB LAB.
She is also writing a vignette play, The Nacogdoches Cycle, set in her native Texas, at an especially storied place where boundaries have multiple dimensions and various reciprocations. A Caddo Indian settlement, founded by the Nacogdoche around 800 A.D., Nacogdoches has since hosted nine flags after the 1716 Spanish settlement. These nine flags include among others, Spain, France, Mexico, Lone Star, Confederate, and the United States. The people of Nacogdoches, then are especially fluent in a vast array of dialects, histories and traditions. As Northern Caribbeans, cooking up a mean gumbo is a must. As The South’s western most outpost, iced tea is always sweet. And as the eastern threshold to the Lone Star State, the vibe is, well, Texan. Enter the sacred and liminal world of The Nacogdoches Cycle, and discover how your own orientations migrate far more than you thought.
The following are excerpts from Kathryn’s work.
My me maw called me Indigo – ‘cause she said the world around me - blue.
Ya’ll remember from high school how blue light is the shortest wavelength. And when the sun vibrates light away from itself, those blue waves are so short they never quite make it tuh here. And it’s the scatterin’ of those itty-bitty waves, that makes the whole world blue, around the edges. That’s how it works. Literally, then, blue is the light that got itself lost.
And that would be me – Indigo.
Started my family real young. Named my baby Juniper. And that girl is conspicuously true to her name. Tall. Glorious. And strong – you know what I’m sayin’? Always making everything around her more beautiful. That’s how she does.
HUSBAND on the other hand, “Not so much.”
Hence, my life, “The Single Mom Show,” 20 years runnin’ – ‘cause that’s how it works. And uh, we do make it work, me and Junie. Nowadays, she’s up to Rhode Island in art school - just thriving. So yeah, we got us a lotta love. And you know, all the thangs.
Except, y’all - for ROMANCE.
Until one bright day, I step in the elevator and meet this Appalachian gal just moved into Nacogdoches. Her name is Iris – and I like to tell you, I am - bewitched. Ya’ll know a garden iris flaunts a yellow streak from inside. That ole streak is just an arrow, so bees can find the hidden sweetness, right?
Well, Iris is just like that. Crown of lush, inky hair - with a shock of sliver – electric, ya’ll.
I skip my floor on the elevator; and I follow Iris to a hidden party. And by the end of that night, ya’all, I have – well – I have licked - all her sweet parts. Mm, I could inhale her sweetness until the end of time.
Except. After over-achievin’ at single motherhood, my party experience is limited, and I misjudge the party treats. Iris over there hollering, “You-ins, call 911, for fuck’s sake” but the hostess is afraid to call; and nobody has Narcan. Then, a. genius, waving her baggie with 2 mollies in it, pipes up, “Oh, I know.” Sounding just like that, I swear to god. “We can rev her back up with this, ya’all.” After all that shit, she gone feed me speed, ya’all. Speed. And then - I do go all the way down. ‘Cause that’s how it works.
People say your soul leaves your body, but you got to know that’s not it. No, ma’am – it’s the other way around. Your body leaves your soul, and you can feel it – your heart – fixin’ to leave.
And that’s how I got myself here, in this little ole BARDO.
I do wonder what coulda been for me and Iris, not gonna lie to yuh. But what am I gone do? Here I am. But also, you see, spending that time with Iris - turns out to be the very sweetest thang for me. So, Ima be good. You see what I’m sayin’? I’m good.
But Iris is struggling - ripped open on the 911 thing. Whispering “homicide,” for heaven’s sakes. Very dramatic and frankly, will not help her – or my Junie – with what comes next.
Iris is suffering. And it is too much.
So, I got an ask for ya’all and it’s real important so listen up. Do ya’ll think you could help me comfort Iris??
You tell her she gave me SO much joy. And it is enough.
Will you help me with that?
INDIGO
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WEDDIN’ DAY
Daddy paid for my entire weddin’ party to have hair and face do-ups at Salon-Gone-Pretty. Three ladies, but a course, Josie is reserved for me because I’m the bride. Duh.
I been planning my weddin’ since I’m old enough for a Pinterest page, so this is all a dream come true. Found me a gorgeous gown at ASOS for $ 295, but picked it up on sale for 150 bucks, which is crazy good. My cousins have a actual barn outside Nacogdoches; so I’m doin’ a elegant rustic affair, you know? My dress is sexy romantic boho with ivory illow lace, which I think it’s so sweet and fashion-forward. My bridesmaids wear satin spaghetti-strap slip dresses in a luscious rust - tyin’ in the barn theme. Salon-Gone-Pretty knows just how to bring out the fresh color of my bridesmaids’ lips and cheeks, makin’ em so pretty an’ modern, you know?
At first, the gals complain the dresses are “blah brown.” But when we get into the barn all done up with twinkle lights and such – it is a golden hour paradise and THEN they grasp my vision. Those gals just glow in they silky rust satin. Josie gives me a sweet boho messy up-do and barely-there sun-kissed face, which I love. (It takes twice as long to do a sun-kissed “barely there” look – thas just a beauty rule.)
The whole day is per-fection - right until we exchange vows. As I say, “Ah do,” a barn swallow flies up into the ceiling fan and flops dead. On the ground. Right front.
Then its wing - gently floats - down from the rafters and lands right next to that poor dead bird. The chilrin all scream; bridesmaids in they spaghetti-straps all scream; everone shrieks and cries for that dead bird. I do worry about a bad omen; but try to enjoy my special day anyways.
When it’s time for the toast, the best man is like - o gosh, a distillery or somethin’ - I can’t even guess how much vodka. He starts sloppy – “love you, man” bro-culture stuff. Next, he goes all soft and starts cryin’, and of all the thangs, says that MAH mother - is the LOVE of his lahfe.
I look at her like, “Mama! How can this sad 20-somethin’ thank you are the love of his life?!” She refuses to look at me. And that is how I know.
My mama - married to the father of her three chilrin and shagging my husband’s best man! Turns out it has been a thang for over a year. And thass how mama ruins my weddin’. Not a dead bird with a sliced-off wang. Not the best man bein’ drunk. MAH MAMMA.
And I will kill her.
I drag mama outside – Ima go fist to cuffs, you know. But then, dear sweet Josie takes me aside and whispers, “LuAnn, you ain’t gotta worry about a thang. I gotchu.” At first, I did not understand. But then, I discover - that vengeance is sweet.
In her next color treatment, Josie fries the hair clean off mamma’s head. Josie is all like “I am so sorry, Mrs. Trevisani, I cannot imagine what happened. I feel just turrible.” Let me tell you, that gal is a keeper!
Course, I give Josie a very nice tip and pay for ointment she has to put on mama’s head – ointment that does not help, but still has to do it. No, mama’s scalp is ravaged, burnt to the ground. Hair falling out like a cancer lady. Fact is, mamma IS a narcistic cancer. So, thas the poetic justice of it.
Josie, bless your sweet ole’ heart. Ah am avenged.
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PREACHER’S WIFE
Deep in the woods where three pine trees grow as one, tangled vines snake over a crumbling church where my husband once preached. One day, my husband returned from a father-and-son trout fishing trip bawling about a boating accident. The village men gathered up rifles and lanterns and formed three search parties. They stamped and snorted in vain for three long nights and three long days while the women held vigil.
Heartbroken, we forced ourselves to attend the Deacon’s annual dinner; and together we all prayed for our poor child’s soul. But the devil is in the details; and I knew this was no accident. Walking home to the parsonage after dinner, I fingered my husband’s fishing knife as I laid out the details that do not add up to a boating mishap. When he could not explain why the trout bait remained in the shed unused, urgent cries of innocence exploded like one more pious sermon.
Operating on the universal truth that enough is enough, I brandished his fishing knife and gouged out my husband’s eye.
He yelped and shrieked as I quietly observed the bloody, gelatinous orb quiver in my hand. Was it the frenzied howls? Or the splatter of bloody mucous that drew out her predator instinct? Regardless, an owl with a 6-foot wingspan dove at my husband as if defending her brood. In one stroke, she zipped out his other eye and then finished him off with a single slice across the throat.
Watching my husband bleed, I knew the town’s support for their bereft preacher would not extend to his wife, a childless mother. So, I fled to a distant island where I lived on flounder, snapper, and bull redfish - but never trout. I grew eggplant, cucumbers, okra, basil, and green beans; and for cash, I weaved baskets. But my loss weighed on me; and I swam out to sea, leaving my world behind.
I dreamed of finding my chile in the afterworld; but instead, I am stuck here. When men hunt in the forest, I sometimes mimic a baby’s cry to attract their attention. Then my lover with her 6-foot wingspan, neatly guts our prey, leaving the carcass to feed the forest fauna. Minks and weasels, possums, skunks, raccoons, feral cats, and even wild turkeys gratefully feast on the kill.
The bloodlust does salve my aching heart. Still, I yearn each day for my lost son.
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