If the theater is a cultural and social crossroad in our society -- a place where disparate ideas and values meet, collide and diverge again, -- then Bianca's plays are violent intersections that force audiences to face their own complex love affair with misery. She writes plays to create understanding between people of all cultural backgrounds by asking them to wrestle with the traumatic things in life that can simultaneously pull us apart and hold us together as humans. " Because, let’s face it, no matter your cultural or sociopolitical background, shit happens and that fact makes pain a great equalizer." Her work examines what happens when characters meet at these perilous crossroads in their lives.
Bianca's plays are lyrical investigations of found stories out of today’s headlines or the pages of history that focus on the conundrum of whether the stress and pain we inflict upon ourselves and others is actually purifying or destroying the fabric of humanity. She is particularly interested in how trauma affects us on an individual level but, also ripples outward to loved ones and the larger community. She is equally fascinated by how each person must choose to either allow their adversity to consume them or rise above the trauma. Bianca often examines the different adaptive and maladaptive ways in which people choose to cope. She has been inspired by both modern and historical events. She approaches each piece with an investigative journalistic eye mixing research with her own brand of lyricism and poetic language, while also attempting to go beyond the politics and facts of the original tale, to connect an audience with the personal story behind what inspired her.
As a female playwright of color, she is drawn to stories that question the roles of women, ethnicity, and family in modern society, that deal with the search for self in the collective identity and which explore underlying connective threads of mankind. Bianca weaves hot button social issues into her work because growing up in the politically active San Francisco Bay Area instilled a drive to create art that “holds as it ‘twere a mirror up to nature”. She hopes that through watching a dynamic dramatization of these issues unfold before their eyes, she will engage the audience in a visceral manner that convicts them to do something about it. You can see the fingerprints of her approach in her full length plays, At The Rivers End, Battle Cry, Rust On Bone, Black. Irish., Just Porgy, Rise Phoenix Rise and Summer Nights & Fireflies.
Awards and honors include KCACTF Lorraine Hansberry (2nd place), Rosa Parks Award (2nd place), Kennedy Center/Eugene O’Neill New Play Conference fellow, Jane Chambers Student Playwright Award/Athe (2nd Place), Scott McPherson Playwright Award, The Playwright Center Core Apprentice (2014), Playwright Foundation BAPF (finalist), Eugene O’Neill NPC (semi-finalist), TRI Research Fellowship at Ohio State University, Nashville Rep/Ingram New Works Lab Playwright-in-residence , Warner Brothers TV Writers Workshop, and T. S. Eliot Acting Fellowship. Click HERE for a copy of Bianca's Artistic Statement.
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Just Porgy
Rust On Bone Tiny Bundle Of Twigs SuperNova Battle Cry At The River’s End Black. Irish. Fingerlickinkitchen.com Mother Told Me Primate In Loo Summer Nights & Fireflies |
TRI Fellowship
Workshop Production Staged Reading Staged Reading Staged Reading Fast & Furious Festival Concert Reading Reading/Awards Staged Reading Staged Reading Web Series Production Old Vic New Voices Old Vic New Voices Big Box Festival Arena Festival LAAREP Play Festival/Layon Gray Theater Co. |
Ohio State University Research Fellow
Nashville Rep/Ingram New Play Project Seabury Quinn Jr. Playwright Festival Gulfshore Playhouse New Works Festival MTC Creative Studio, NYC Dir: Chuck Smith Available Light Theater, Columbus OH Jane Chamber Student Award 2nd Place Stage Left Theater, Spokane WA KCACTF Region 2 Lewis & Clarke College New play festival MN Shorts Festival (finalist) Tides Theater, San Francisco Marrietta College, Marietta, OH Kennedy Center ACTF Awards * Lorraine Hansberry Award -2nd place* Rosa Parks Award – 2nd Place* Jane Chamber Student Award 2nd Place Playwright Foundation BAPF (finalist) Eugene O'Neill NPC (semi-finalist) Seabury Quinn Jr. Festival Rita Goldberg Theater, NYC Online blog/cooking show Golden Delilah Theater Co, London UK Old Vic Theater, London UK Joseph Papp Public Theater, NY Cleveland Public Theater Karamu House, Cleveland Whitemore Lindley Theater, LA |
FULL LENGTH PLAY SYNOPSIS (Click HERE to inquire about copies of her full length work)
BATTLE CRY
Battle Cry, was inspired by the life and travails of an unsung hero in the Black Civil Rights Movement named Claudette Colvin. At 15, Claudette refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus 9 months prior to Rosa Parks’ arrest. Battle Cry tells the personal story of a naïve but passionate 15-year-old girl whose impact on the world has been left out of history books. The play looks at issues of class, ethnicity, and behind the scenes politics in the fight for Civil Rights in America while also highlighting Claudette’s personal courage in the face of injustice.
AT THE RIVER'S END
At The River’s End is a dark ride through the mind of Former POW Army Captain Brielle Davenport who returns home a war hero with severe brain damage. At the River’s End explores the plight of modern women struggling to redefine femininity, motherhood and familial loyalty in the context of the contemporary military. The play also questions the difference between being alive and living.
SUMMER NIGHTS AND FIREFLIES
Summer Nights and Fireflies, follows Zandra Richards, the current owner of a struggling small eastern Texas bar that has been in her family for generations. She is plagued by the ghost of her long dead mother and tasked with keeping her younger brother Tyrone out of the cross hairs of a shotgun-wielding neighbor, all the while trying balance her own love life, business, and healing her own wounds from a lifetime of abuse. The play explores issues of modern femininity, the cycle of violence, and the power of self love.
RUST ON BONE & RISE PHOENIX RISE
Rust On Bone and Rise, Phoenix Rise, are a set of companion plays that explore the subject of Military Sexual Trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Rust On Bone follows, psychologist Dr. Devra Mendoza. She becomes trapped by a stranger in her office and must use all of her training to maneuver her way through a game of cat and mouse with life and death consequences. Rust on Bone, looks at the personal cost of war, societal stigmas of therapy, and the ripple effects of trauma and mental illness.
Rise, Phoenix Rise focuses on one woman’s journey with recovery from mental illness and physical & sexual trauma. We follow the trials of a newly discharged veteran who fought in Operation Iraqi Freedom after a failed suicide attempt forces her to check into a military women’s treatment facility to deal with her invisible wounds of war or lose custody of her daughter. (Work in progress)
BLACK. IRISH.
Black. Irish. uses dance, monologue, and Irish & African American spirituals to explore one woman's journey of self discovery. It follows Bronagh, the daughter of an Irish mother and African American Father, on her bus ride in Ireland to meet the only person who can tell her why her parents died on the streets of a small Irish town when she was five.
JUST PORGY
Just Porgy, focuses on the behind the scene struggles of the actors and creative teams who dealt with issues of racism and segregation both on and offstage during the 1952 state department funded tour of Porgy & Bess to Europe. I received the TRI Fellowship from The Ohio State University’s Lawrence & Lee Library to develop this piece spring 2014. ( Work in progress)
COLORED DAY
Colored Day, which takes place in mid 1930s Huntington, West Virginia where the famed Camden Amusement Park only allowed admittance to “Negroes and Coloreds” one single day out of the year, which was aptly named “Colored Day.” We follow how one 8 year old girl’s struggle to overcome social injustice inspires a local business tycoon to trick Camden Park into having it’s first integrated park day 30 years before the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (Work in progress)
SHORT PLAY AND MONOLOGUE WORK SAMPLES
NO MAN’S AN ISLAND
Short Play - Drama/Lyrical
Two Female Women. 1 African (Congo or Rwanda) 1 American (East Coast)
POUND OF FLESH
Short Play - Comedy/Realism
Two Actors. 1 Female 1 Male/Female
IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT
Short Play - Drama/ Lyrical
Three Actors 2 Female 1 Male
THE WORST VILLIAN
Monologue - Dramatic
Male (African Dialect - Rwanda, Uganda, Congo)
GIRLIE THANGS
Short Play - Comedic/Realism
2 Actors 1 Female 1 Male
TAKE FLIGHT
Short Play - Comedic/ Realism.
3 Female Actors
COLOR ME BLUE
Short Play - Dramatic/Lyrical
2 Female Actors
TAKE YO SHIT
Monologue - Comedic/Dramatic
Male or Female
LOVE THY NEIGHBOR
Monologue - Dramatic/Lyrical
Male or Female
JUST ONE SMILE
Short Play - Comedic/Realism
Two Actors. 1 Male 1 Female
LIFE EXPLORER
Monologue - Dark Comedic
Male
LOVE FOR SALE
Monologue - Dramatic
Female