STRAIGHT PLAY (a queer beach blanket musical) is a queer meta-musical following a group of artists in 2021 who attempt to create a musical set in the Technicolor 1960s. As they push against the confines of the form and try to give their work a more contemporary sensibility on gender, sexuality and race, slippages between the worlds appear. They step into each other’s roles, swap groovy archetypes from beach blanket musicals of the past, and generally find themselves unraveling in time in a way that raises the question, what kind of future would we be envisioning if we had seen ourselves in the art of the past?

Writer/Director – Gina Young

Guitar – Vanessa Wheeler

Bass – Andy Alseri

Saxophone – Taylor Blake

Actors and Singers: Molly Kirschenbaum, Kristen Laffey, Parker Lemal-Brown, Angelica Rowell, and Lauren Wilkins.

Gina Young (she/they) is a writer, director and deviser interested in queering content and form. Their most recent work is ROOM TONE, a pandemic play commissioned by We the Women that is making the film festival circuit starring Roberta Colindrez, directed by Whitney White. She also recently premiered BASELINE, a new digital series on the Serif platform. Prior stage works include BUTCH BALLET, sSISTERSs, and Femmes: A Tragedy, which is published by NoPassport Press. Gina’s plays, musicals, salons and curations have been presented by The Hammer Museum, REDCAT, Highways, Los Angeles Performance Practice, Grand Park’s Our LA Voices, USC’s Visions & Voices Series and the Feminist Center for Creative Work. She has also toured nationally and internationally with experimental music/theatre work. Young is the creator of SORORITY, a platform for women, trans and queer performing artists, and Feminist Acting Class, a radical experiment in actor training. She is a winner of the Jane Chambers Award for Playwriting, a two-time finalist for Center Theatre Group’s Sherwood Award, and a winner of the Humanitas/PLAY LA Prize. They are a member of The Dramatists Guild, The Ring of Keys, and The Kilroys. www.ginayoung.com IG: @ginagenius