Plays Written by Diane Exavier
BERNARDA’S DAUGHTERS
GOOD BLOOD
HOTFIREPOETICS
A BIG HOUSE
THE ANALOG PLAY
Synopses:
BERNARDA’S DAUGHTERS
6W: It’s summer in Flatbush and the Abellard sisters are in the heat of mourning their father,
their neighborhood, their lives. Flames in the forms of desire, longing, and family secrets slowly
burn in their mother’s house, where it seems there is no one to cool it in this play inspired by
Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba with poetic and literary cues from Kamau
Braithwaite, Louise Glück, Mary Ruefle, Toni Morrison, and more.
HOTFIREPOETICS
2W, 1M: A winter whiter than most forces a man to venture to the land of the dead to bring back
his wife, whose spirit has other plans all while the next-door neighbor watches in this ghost
story/elegy/spiral into the erotics of grief.
A BIG HOUSE
6-10W: A woman finds herself on a deserted island and is tasked with building a home,
welcoming a few visitors to help her along the way. In a hybrid of poetry and drama, this woman
fractures and tries to make herself whole again.
THE ANALOG PLAY
2W, 2M, 1P: In an exploration of intimacy during a sweltering digital age, a mother, daughter,
and their respective partners negotiate the time, spaces, and terms of what may or may not be
lasting connections in a brave-new-hot world that might just really be the same-old-lukewarm
thing.
GOOD BLOOD
2W, 3M: The story of a Haitian family living in Brooklyn and their return to Haiti as they work
to cure their history in the hopes of securing a future. From the journey of immigrants to the
spread of a global epidemic, language, time, and an ocean are crossed in an investigation of the
contracts we make, the conditions we live under, and what it means to reach for a love that might
outlive you. Good Blood is the first of The Red and River Plays trilogy. 2017 Kilroys List
Honorable Mention.
Bio:
Diane Exavier is a writer, theatermaker and educator working at the intersection of performance and poetry. Her work has been presented in collaboration with The New Group, New York Historical Society, BRIC Arts, The Bushwick Starr, Westmont College, Sibiu’s International Theater Festival in Romania, University of California: Northridge, Bowery Poetry Club, Dixon Place, Independent Curators International, and more. Diane concerns herself with what she recognizes as the 4 L’s: love, loss, legacy, and land. Her writing can be found in such places as Staatstheater Hannover Magazine, The Atlas Review, and The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. Her play Good Blood received a 2017 Kilroys List Honorable Mention. Her book-length lyric, The Math of Saint Felix was recently published by The 3rd Thing Press. A 2021 Jerome Foundation Finalist and Sloan Foundation Commission recipient, Diane holds an MFA in Writing for Performance from Brown University. She lives and works in Brooklyn.