Works by Justice Hehir:
all the other animals
body talk
kitten season
the dowagers
({free*play})
Night Creatures
true believer
Welcome to the Wedding of Vincent and Gina
the deodand, or: the rat play
Synopses:
all the other animals – Wildlife rehabber Elena has a home filled with North American fauna in need of tending. When a power outage leaves Elena, her apprentice, son, mother with Alzheimer’s, and nine wild animals in the dark, care becomes increasingly chaotic- and creative. A play about how to keep everyone warm and fed on a dark and stormy night.
body talk – Two women are bound by a devastating act of violence. A play about relationships and survival in the time of Trump- all on the horizontal axis.
kitten season – A two-legged kitten brings novice animal rescue workers to a run-down apartment complex, where a feral cat colony has grown to enormous proportions. Their good intentions are met with hesitancy by the residents at first; but a pronouncement that feeding the cats will result in eviction changes everything. Residents and non-residents alike are left to figure out what their responsibility is to these creatures, and how far they’ll go to keep them safe.
the dowagers – Salome, Tara, and Chris share an apartment building and a system for navigating the unspeakable. A pandemic-era play about neighbors, proximity, and the many permutations of care, “the dowagers” is a meditation on loss and lust – set on a single stoop.
({free*play}) – FreePlay is a growing feminist sex toy company, popular in part to its deconstructed take on the modern dildo, whose founders pride themselves on their non-phallo-centric aesthetic. Run by best friends since college, engineer Amy and sculptor Sara, the Brooklyn-based business is intimate and casual, their office shared by aspiring artist (and ulcerative colitis activist) Travis, and their devoted intern, Emma. As Amy starts IVF and Sara begins fantasizing about Travis, the equilibrium the pair had thought they reached begins to crumble. What ensues is a story about engineering, the painful intimacy of female friendships, dildos, and the people who make them.
Night Creatures – On a snowy day after Christmas, three NJ animal shelter employees hold down the fort. With the inclement weather comes a lull in the everyday bustle of the shelter, and the group’s interactions soon expand to fill the space. This play is about animals, the humans who disappoint them, and the unexpected individuals who try to make things right.
true believer – An underfunded abortion clinic in rural New York debuts their newest initiative to reach young people in a conservative small town: “Teen Night.” An ill-timed blizzard, however, ensures that no one is showing up. As the employees dutifully keep the clinic open, exchange Secret Santa gifts, and try to pass the time, they don’t notice someone outside is watching.
Welcome to the Wedding of Vincent and Gina – Join us for the wedding reception of Vincent and Gina. They’ve known each other for three years, got engaged on a beach, have a dog named Frank, and spent a fuck ton of time planning this shindig. And its hashtag (#invinciblelove). Specifically, join Table 14. A mixture of cousins and work friends and childhood friends, it’s pretty clearly the leftover table. As the reception starts, the sound system fails, and the table tends to Megan’s head wound (a bird flew into her head), the fault lines lingering at the corner table become clear. Over hors d’oeuvres, dinner, and dancing, what starts out as a basic Jersey Irish-Italian wedding transforms into something a little more complicated. In Act Two, the linens, centerpieces, and swordfish entrees melt away as a Neanderthal clan surrounds a fire and felled bison to unite two people together. We trade DJs and fancy portapotties for hair braiding and bison butchery, affected dress for nudity. Welcome to the Wedding of Vincent and Gina is an evening of participatory wedding nonsense and non-nonsense, an investigation of what makes a wedding a wedding, and the unexpected moments that cut through the bullshit and leave us re-evaluating our own relationships.
deodand, or: the rat play – A would-be birthday hang for Rae’s 33rd at a delightfully grim dive bar in Jersey gets derailed when Diana, her best friend, decides to rescue a rat stuck to a glue trap in the bathroom. A real-time play about rat-wrangling, neurodivergence, and everything we can and cannot see about the people we love the most.
Bio:
Justice Hehir is a playwright whose work explores sexuality, feminism, and the formation and rupture of human bonds. She is a company member of Colt Coeur and the recipient of a 2021 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. She is currently commissioned by George Street Playhouse and is an alumna of the 2020 Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group. She is developing her play, the dowagers, with Colt Coeur in collaboration with director Joan Sergay (upcoming, July 2021). Other recent projects include “true believer”, published this year by Table Work Press, and “freeplay”, under development through a 2020 EST/Sloan Project commission. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from Hunter College and a BA from Rutgers University in English and Women’s and Gender Studies. She lives in Newark, NJ.
Website: www.justicehehircom.wordpress.com