Maegan Clearwood
Dramaturg/Writer/Educator
FREELANCE DRAMATURGY
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Lobby Display (see images left)
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Gallery of Lizzie Borden contemporaries whose acts of gender subversion landed them in prison.
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LIZZIE
Pinky Swear Productions | Winter 2017
Directed by Marie Sproul
"Given the temper of the times, it's a comfort to know that the theatre remains a place where we can commune in our rage, and live vicariously through villains we love, but whom we'd rather not meet. Lizzie should be a great way to celebrate resistance, of the familial or political kind." -- Broadway World
"“In Rorschach Theatre’s locally-grown triumph A Bid to Save the World, audiences peer into the mental fragments of a young woman as she confronts both the devastating death of her brother and the personification of Death itself… A Bid to Save the World goes beyond mere greatness. Here Rorschach Theater has done what it does best: make an impossible story come to life in front of an audience. And, trust me, you want to be in that audience.” – DC Theatre Scene
A Bid to Save the World
Rorschach Theatre | Winter 2016
By Erin Bregman
Directed by Lee Liebskiend
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"A Bid to Save the World pulls its grieving protagonist into the Underworld—but Bregman takes this narrative many strange, unique, and terrifying steps further. Around an age-old tale, Bregman integrates a variety of other death motifs and ideas, both familiar and astoundingly original. In Sister’s journey, we enter the realms of science fiction and fairy tale, encountering magic spells and songs along the way. The orange as an omen of death—a distinctly modern, American concept, at least since The Godfather—even finds its way into this world. A Bid to Save the World presents a new mythology by taking inspiration from myriad sources, old and new."
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"Everyone at some point or another has had to leave a place, an experience, certain sounds of his or her life in the past. Sometimes we don’t have a choice. Footsteps, one of the metaphors the play offers, are a comforting image for those times. They speak to what you did, and recall who you met, heard, talked to and passed by in those moments. They leave room for meeting again as you move forward." -- DC Metro Theatre Arts
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Program Note
- "As citizens of our nation's capitol, we cling to mythologies. We pass stories about blood-stained stairways and ghost-laden government buildings along from generation to generation, inspiring films and novels, even late-night ghost walks for tourists. But why? Why do we continue forging supernatural connections between person and place, even when science discounts our theories? Perhaps, as STATIC demonstrates, these legends, however small, have the power to speak difficult truths. Ghosts, real or imagined, are a connection with the past, a reminder of what binds humanity across time and space. This notion is a healthy reminder—especially for a city so obsessed with status and material wealth—that it is not the things we accumulate that truly matter. Objects are useful metaphors as we navigate the pain and heartbreak of everyday life—but it is our human connections that ultimately stand the test of time."
STATIC
Source Festival | Summer 2016
By Tom Horan
Directed by Bridget Grace Sheaff
"The unfolding relationship between Whitney and Max becomes a love story stripped of the blinders that love typically insists on. The magnificent metaphor that Adams builds in World Builders will resonate for anyone who has a personal world of enormous importance to them and who does not want that world infringed on in order to comply with what is expected in order to be attached to another person. The fundamental question the play asks is this: If we each have a world and we cannot be ourselves without it and we cannot let someone else into it, how do we negotiate living and loving with someone else who also has their own world?" --DC Metro Theatre Arts
World Builders
Forum Theatre | Fall 2016
By Joanna
Directed by Amber Page McGinnis
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"What makes Adams’ play so honest is not its adherence to modern psychiatry’s definition of SPD; rather, it is the nuance of her characters—both of whom adhere to and contradict standard notions definitions of SPD throughout the play—and the questions that their journey within the world of mental health reveal. The idea of a “disordered” personality in and of itself raises enormous questions: What constitutes a personality? Who defines “normal” and “abnormal,” and who has the right to deem whether a “disordered” personality needs treatment?"
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