Under Construction: Bisexual Sadness
BISEXUAL SADNESS is about what it sounds like. Faye is getting married to a man, and though she really truly loves him, she wishes he was a woman. She’s not a closeted lesbian. She’s just sad that she’ll have to fight harder to be part of the queer communities she’s always found home in. BISEXUAL SADNESS is about the specific loneliness of being a bisexual woman in love with a man, while staring down the barrel of a lifetime of feeling that way. It takes the meme of the “Sad Bisexual” and treats it with curiosity and respect to interrogate questions of belonging, identity, cultural migrations and kinship. It poses the question: “why do so many people seem to find bisexual women so irritating?” and dares you, the audience, to answer.
India Kotis is a playwright and anthropologist, chiefly interested in why and how the meanings of things change. She is currently a member of the BMI-Lehman Engel Libbretist’s workshop, where she is developing a Roller Derby Musical with composer Sabrina Halavi; the Women Playwrights Circle @ Speranza Theatre, and is under commission with The Truth, of Radiotopia. Plays include PHILIA; THE TANGIBLES; HERE BE MONSTERS; and THE SECRET LIFE OF BICYCLES, among others. Her work has been published by Playscripts, Inc., and developed/produced at The Blank, The Tank, The Road, Young Playwrights Inc., Manhattan Repertory Theatre, G45 Productions, Rascal Arts, The Drama Bookshop, The Alliance for Jewish Theatre, and Downtown Art. Her academic research, most recently a study of sex and gender categories in Umayyad Iberia, has been published in The Macksey Journal, of Johns Hopkins University, and The Lambda Alpha Journal. Kotis was the 2020 recipient of Robert L. Baker Prize in History and The Margaret Mead Award for Excellence in Anthropology, and the 2019 recipient of the Muriel B. Kahrl Award for studies in American Women’s Culture and the James E. Michael Prize in Playwriting, as well as several research grants. She recently completed a Collections Fellowship at the Museum of the City of New York. Her research on the American mid-century poet Edna St. Vincent Millay can be read in Rapture and Melancholy: The Diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay, edited by Daniel Mark Epstein and currently forthcoming from Yale University Press. Kotis graduated from Kenyon College with distinction and highest honors in Anthropology in 2020. She is a member of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honors Society, and the Dramatist Guild of America.
Photo credit: E. Dalton Powell
Carlyle is a member of the Artistic Board of the Road Theatre Company.
Road credits acting: Beth in Mud Blue Sky (various awards) & Understudy Grace “As White As O”
Road credits Directing: After Orlando, Onassis and Hello Kitty Must Die
Off-Road as an actor: National Tours: Don’t Drink the Water, Macbeth, Duchess of Malfi (John Houseman) Seattle: You Never Can Tell and The Importance of Being Earnest
Local theatre: Theatre 40, Katselas Playhouse, Zephyr, Odyssey, etc.
Off-Road as a director: Marilyn Monroe Theatre, WACO Theatre,Katselas Theatre, Theatre 40, Greenway Court, Zephyr Theatre, regional theatre, etc.
Off-Road as a playwright: The Goddess, Abby Normal
Off-Road as a teacher: USC, South Coast Repretory, creator of Kid Shakespeare after school Shakespeare program from the ages of 6-12.
Training: MFA USC, Kim Stanley, Milton Katselas
“Bisexual Sadness”
FAYE – Tiffany Wolff*
GENEVIEVE – Alaska Jackson*
MIRANDA – Kate Huffman*
LILLIAN – Samira Beija
ALEX – Samuel Martin Lewis*
NAOMI – Gloria Ines
STAGE DIRECTIONS – Julia Manis*
*Road Company Member