And She Breathed

Full Length Play in Progress
from December 2024

Summary

And She Breathed is a full-length theatrical work about a young woman confronting pregnancy, political catastrophe, inherited grief, and the possibility of building a life in a world that feels increasingly hostile.

In the days following a devastating election, Mariyah begins receiving visits from mythic mothers: Mamaluna, the radiant face of the moon; Deterra, an earth goddess searching across time for her lost daughter; and a mysterious grandmother who understands love as an act of tending. As Mariyah moves between revelation and psychological crisis, she must decide whether her visions are warnings, delusions, sacred encounters—or some entanglement of all three.

Blending poetic dialogue, movement, humor, ritual, and ecological mythology, the play asks how we might grieve the world without surrendering our lives to grief. At its center is a love story: between partners, friends, mothers and daughters, human beings and the living Earth.

Playwright’s Notes

And She Breathed emerged from a period of profound personal and political rupture. Written through the languages of movement, myth, intimate conversation, and ecological ritual, the play follows a woman attempting to distinguish revelation from crisis while deciding whether she can bring new life into a wounded world.

The work asks what happens when grief grows too large for a single body to carry. Its goddesses do not offer escape from reality; they ask Mariyah to remain inside it—to breathe, to love, to accept care, and to understand survival as a sacred and collective practice.

At the heart of the play is the question that continues to guide much of my work: How do we witness the suffering of the world without abandoning our own lives? And She Breathed looks toward tenderness, interdependence, spiritual imagination, and the changing seasons for an answer.

Excerpt 1 - Mariyah - Act 1 Sc 1

MARIYAH
I never thought it would happen to me. That the dreams and fantasies of my heart would catch on the wind and travel up the sky like a message in a bottle to my God. She gave me you. Cobblestone streets and amber sunlight in the space around you.

Your laughter, your heart, your lack of temper. The glow of new love tasted of rose-steeped honey.

Your hands. Soft. Your teeth. White. Your eyes deep brown and gentle. You refused to sleep in my bed the first night. And the next, and the next.

I finally had to ask you to, and you slept tenderly beside me all night long. Your warmth held me in embrace. It was like we had always known each other.

Every step next to you was a tender kiss from the god of love.

Excerpt 2 - Mamaluna - Act 1 Sc 4

MAMALUNA
Pregnancy isn’t a stop in your cycle. You are woman. You are gravity. You are infinite. You have the face of a mother now.

MARIYAH
I want to scream. I want to scream over the bodies of my brothers and sisters. I want to scream over the ones left behind. I want to pull out my hair and start over. I want to fix it.

MAMALUNA
We clutch our hearts to our hands and we breathe, mija. You are not culpable for this.

I am movement. I am the cycles itself. The turning wheel of time. I am mourning, and I am raging; I am the hunt, the hunter, the hunted. I am the mother of all, the song on every mother’s lip.


Excerpt 3 - Deterra - Act 1 Sc 9

DETERRA
The wheel of time will never stop, sweet Mariyah. Women mourn ceaselessly. I have mourned ceaselessly. But it was in living the wheel of time—both linearly and all at once—that I learned how to transform my grief into wisdom and purpose.

MARIYAH
A sacred grief.

DETERRA
It will permeate throughout time, but it is not a danger in and of itself. More dangerous is the way you let it twist around your heart.

I only reclaimed my strength when I realized my daughter was all around me. That the colonizer had not stolen her, but dispersed her. I see remnants of her soul everywhere: in the shining eyes of women, in the cries of baby girls and boys.

MARIYAH
Restoration happens.

DETERRA
History bends toward justice, my dear. History bends toward spring.

You must wed within you the darkness of your pain with the light and promise of this life. May you let the seasons change within you, dear Mariyah.

Excerpt 4 - Grandmother - Act 2 Sc 1

GRANDMOTHER
I once transferred a ladyslipper orchid from garden to garden. Incredibly finicky flowers. Require the most tender care. I nursed a hummingbird back to health with sugar water and Gerber baby food.

How did I do it? I let go. I let go of any twist over my heart and chose to sing and love over take and kill. I had to realize that even if I believed in love, I had to practice it, and relinquish control over to the sacred.

I didn’t know if the orchid would survive. I didn’t know if the bird would either. I was on the precipice of death with both of them, but I had faith.

Nursing is about creating the best circumstances for someone’s hardship, and then letting go. The same applies to life. You have to have faith that the sacred will take over.

Excerpt 5 - Altair - Act 2 Sc 3

ALTAIR
We have you and me. Man and woman. Thick or thin. Child or not. You don’t get to mourn the rest of the world when you could be jeopardizing you. Everything else comes second. Everything comes after us.

Our love is our revolution. Choosing faith in each other—that’s progress. That’s human. Having someone who inspires and encourages you, who believes you can actually conquer the world.

You choose the man who will never let you walk behind him. Who will take your hand and walk by your side, step by step, limp by limp—or push you to the very front and follow closely behind. That is love. That is sacrifice. That is hope.