Anne Valentino
"All a first draft has to do is exist"
Kinda Human (full length)
In 1982, 61-year-old Barney Clark received the first ever permanent artificial heart. Behind the scenes is a little-known laboratory where data-driven scientists experiment on Holstein calves implanted with mechanical heart prototypes. It is in this lab where Diana, junior research fellow, confronts the parameters of humanness—the patient’s, the cow’s and her own. Diana, not yet fully out, struggles with both the “men’s only” culture of the lab and also with her partner Naya’s demands about the transparency of their relationship. Along the way, Diana gets a little perspective from Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the resident laboratory cow slash reincarnated Victorian poet and also from a well-intentioned Lesbian Chorus.
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Semi-finalist for Panndora’s Box Sweet Sixteen New Works Festival, Long Beach, CA – Oct. 2022
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Staged reading at Vagabond Theatre, Baltimore Playwrights Festival - Oct. 2022
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Finalist for Arts Fort Worth, Original Works Series Staged reading, March 2023
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Staged reading (monologue from play, "I Am a Dyke") Project Y Women's Theatre Festival (Honor Roll! Slam, NYC) June 2023
The Couple on the Couch (full length)
Dylan and Radha are a married couple who’ve hit a bit of a rough patch. What’s the solution for saving their marriage? A couples therapy-based reality TV show of course! After being chosen to appear on “Couples on the Couch: The LGBTQ Edition,” the women quickly realize that reality television is anything but “real.” Their lives are overrun by cameras recording their every move, disembodied voices emanating from the walls of their apartment providing helpful “direction,” not to mention a therapist whose intentions may not exactly be pure, especially given that one of the esteemed doctor’s primary backers is a group calling themselves The NEW Moral Majority; their mission: ban gay marriage once and for all. The craziness and chaos of it all eventually send Dylan and Radha on an impromptu road trip that leads to some truly eye-opening made-for-TV revelations.
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Finalist for the Larking House Playwright Intensive, 2023
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Shortlist - Epiphanies New Work Festival, Wild Imaginings, Waco, TX, 2024
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Finalist, Pegasus PlayLab, UCF, 2023
The Boxes We Keep (full length - all-female cast)
After coming out to her mother Lara, Chloe is banished from the kingdom, in a manner of speaking. She thus transforms into “Tess,” a pumpkin-spice latte sipping, Lululemon wearing, PTA leading, soccer mom—someone distinctly different from who she truly is. Lara, meanwhile, is in the early stages of dementia and can no longer live alone. She must therefore rely on her two other children, Georgia and Randi—they, however, have agendas of their own, not to mention, rather intriguing closets of their own. The play follows the lives of a family of women who must navigate through some pretty heartbreaking and morally ambiguous territory. Best described as a somewhat less tragic, lesbian-forward, quirky and slightly offbeat adaptation of Lear, ‘The Boxes We Keep’ reminds us that the pursuit of happiness can often be a shitshow of an ensemble endeavor.
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Winner Lesbian Thespians Play Writer's Contest 2023
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Staged Reading, Island City Cultural Center, Aug. 2023
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Production, ArtServe, Ft. Lauderdale. Lesbian Thespians, July 2024
FACSIMILE (full length)
‘Gravity Plus’ represents a radical new idea in treatment for abuse victims— particularly younger victims. Utilizing groundbreaking research coupled with cutting-edge technology, Dr. Elliot is determined to help the nation’s youth heal from their traumas. Yarro, herself a graduate of the program, is guiding the newest cohort through the Gravity Plus experience. There is Tasha, an outspoken high school senior who must contend with the aggressive advances of their stepbrother. Callie is a college freshman locked in a dependent relationship that is prompting a dangerous eating disorder. Alicia’s trauma runs a little deeper, and her unwillingness to share may be all too telling. While Jackson, the only male member of the group, grapples with his sexuality as well as the abuser who is taking advantage of his struggle. The question is, will Gravity Plus actually help them heal—and how relevant is the phrase “first do no harm,” given the stakes of this program?
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Finalist 2024 Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival.
In a Margaret Atwood Minute...(Or, The Book Bitch) (full length)
What does the country look like when freedom of expression is a thing of the past, when cultural norms are dictated solely by the religious right, and when almost all books have been banned? Who is willing to fight for the precious few freedoms (and books) we have left? Luce and Zoe, two former gender studies professors—as gender studies no longer exists—are taking up the cause. And when news breaks that the Chancellor of Books has removed even more titles from the allowable reading list, the women realize they cannot just sit by and remain silent any longer. They become the resistance. The play brings us into a somewhat absurd, proto-surrealistic world in the not-too-distant future in which extreme censorship is all too prevalent and literature and culture have been ravaged by a conservative utilitarianism.
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Production (full-length), Overtime Theater, Leon Valley, TX, June 2024
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Finalist for Jersey City Theater Center New Play Festival. (one act version) Staged reading May 2023
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Staged Reading: Creative 360 Art Speaks Festival (one act version) June 2023
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Semi-finalist, ATHE Conference (short play version) 2023
That's a Merperson Problem (full length)
Jo the Merperson has a problem, and it’s not that they’re desperately in love with Stephanie, the nerdy scientist studying the water quality of the lake, and it’s not that the other merfolk have a mean-girl complex and refuse to let Jo play in their mermaid games, and it’s not even the agonizing uphill battle they face trying to get others to understand why they reject “mermaid” and prefer a gender neutral term. No, their problem is even more serious—algal blooms, aka blue-green algae, aka HABs, aka cyanobacteria. Their lake is on the verge of maximum toxicity. As a merperson, Jo really has no escape as the blooms start to take their unmitigated toll. Then there’s Stephanie, a water resource specialist desperate to convince people that the dangers are real, that climate change is real. Will a chance run-in with Jo give Stephanie some needed perspective? Or is she already too late to help the dwindling merfolk population who call the Finger Lakes home?
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Finalist, Water's Rising: New Climate Action Plays, Gloucester Stage, 2024
The Dresses (full-length)
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Zeya and Scottie are a happily engaged lesbian couple who like to frequent places like museums, farmer’s markets and the shore. One fated trip to the museum, however, will alter the course of their lives forever. While at The Smithsonian National Museum of American History, they check out the First Ladies Dress exhibit; this sets off a chain of events that ultimately leads to the “Great First Lady Dress” heist. Not only do the women plot to steal the dresses, they also have plans for making some pretty bold (and theatrical) statements with them—right on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Add Joan, the way-too-happy hostage, into the mix and you have what is on its surface a somewhat absurdist comedy about the lengths people will go to to make a statement, but one that also begs the deeper question, “who does get to determine how history is represented?”
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Finalist/Staged Reading: Cincinnati LAB Theatre's New Works Festival, July 2024
You Welcome (full-length)
The Feast of the Seven Fishes, Nochebuena, and an All-American happy meal kinda holiday?
A young Italian couple settling in Argentina, Emilia and Ario were just beginning the journey that would come to define their life, their language, and their family. Two daughters and one American dream later, Emilia and Ario find themselves immigrants yet again in a tiny two-room garage apartment in Rochester, New York. But does the promise of a “dream life” ever live up to the hype? The play follows three generations of this Italian-Latinx-American family over six decades and four very different Christmas Eves as they try to come to terms with how their lives (and language) fit within the box that is American “normal.” Mean-spirited hazings, divorce, culinary clashes, secret lesbian lovers, and strange religious cults are just the tip of the iceberg. The family must figure out how to stay focused on the “merry” while navigating the madness in their version of America—whatever that might look like.
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Finalist/Staged Reading. Summer Playwrights Festival, The Road Theatre Company, North Hollywood, CA, July 2024

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Production, Aphra Behn Festival, SATE Ensemble Theatre, St. Louis, April 2024
Allie Wheeler is a hotel namer; yes, that is an actual job. She is also an amateur photographer—her “little hobby,” so deemed by her husband. Sent to Lost River, West Virginia, Allie has to determine whether or not to let a hotel, hitherto called “The Thisben,” keep their “The.” The fate of one seemingly tiny little word leads Allie down a somewhat surreal, fairytale esque rabbit hole of linguistic confusion, literary allusion, and one leaky self-reckoning.
The The (one-act)
Anne Sexton Had a Band
(one-act)
Little known fact…Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anne Sexton had a band. They were called Anne Sexton and Her Kind, named for one of her more controversial poems. Disheartened by men who, well, manhandled her words, themes and intentions, Sexton wanted a way to control the voice that told her story. Her poems were her story; they were her legacy. This play examines a completely fictional, imagined moment in Sexton’s life. Taking a poetry class under the tutelage of Robert Lowell and coping with the fallout of a tempestuous marriage, Anne Sexton searches for an alternative to the heavy hand of men looking to direct her work and her life.
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Top Twenty Scripts, The Kenneth Branagh International Award for New Drama Writing, 2024, Windsor Fringe
Lesbian Woman (one-act)
Lesbian Woman is on a mission to help lost lesbians find their place in what can seem an unwelcoming world. We first watch Lesbian Woman assist an older lady finally venturing out of the closet following a very trying thirty-two-year marriage. She then helps a struggling writer disheartened by the literary powers-that-be’s insistence that she “de-gay” her work. Lesbian Woman’s final encounter with a mother unwilling to accept that her daughter is gay also pits our hero against her arch enemy, PTA Mom Woman. This final showdown, an absurdist and comical battle, will leave some theatregoers wondering, WTF just happened?
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Reading, Valdez Theatre Conference, Alaska, June 2024
Photobombed (monologue)
What happens when you grow up being shown images of queer people as a form of spectacle? What happens when your town population is 3000, and 2998 of those people are straight? You're taught that difference equates to deviance, that certain people can populate a "zoo." And you consequently, are raised on the mantra that "that" kind of life is unacceptable. So what happens when you get engaged to a woman?
Produced by Politics and Prose, “Dramatize Your Story” event. Washington DC, May 2022
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Staged Reading, Rockford New Words, Rockford, IL – Jan. 2023
Those Pitying Saints (short play)
Eighteenth century poet Alexander Pope adapted the tragic tale of Eloisa and Abelard. Their “illicit” love condemned, per the governance of this medieval period, Eloisa was locked away in a convent—effectively teaching her a “lesson” about the perils of making one’s own choices where one’s body is concerned, a female body at any rate. We visit Eloisa as she is cloistered away. She is writing a letter to Abelard, now a much-heralded priest. As statues of “pitying saints” stand guard, they simply cannot help themselves. Their often harsh commentary is ever present. We then flash forward over a thousand years where Ellie also stands condemned, brazenly thinking that she has a choice when it comes to what happens to her body. The pitying saints, now not-so-empathetic Supreme Court justices, proceed to set her straight. How far have we really come?
Staged Reading: Philadelphia Artists Collective New Ventures Play Reading Festival 2023​
Bar Room Roulette (short play)
Daphne and Collette have been married for four years now and it seems there’s a bit of trouble in paradise. Collette’s answer: polyamory. Uh-oh…The conversation that follows tackles some big questions like, can dating other people really help your marriage? What are the true limits of love? And will there be any bar room takers as Daphne broadcasts her wife’s polyamorous intentions?
Produced by Flushed Ink Productions. Apshalt Jungle Shorts. Sept. 2023
MATÈ (short play)
Cory and her mother Emilia have just returned from the theatre. The play that they saw, ‘night Mother, uncannily prompts some deep and rather dark discussions about life, death and the point of it all. As mothers and daughters are sometimes apt to do, Cory and Emilia engage in a frank and, on occasion, somewhat barbed conversation that takes them into territory they never imagined they’d venture into. But with the very real and terrifying specter of a debilitating cognitive illness hovering over this family dynamic, seemingly no topic is off the table.
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Produced by "A Light in Dark Places," Stella Adler Studio, Burbank, Sept. 2023​
The Legend of Cake Mama Lives On (short play)
Deb “Cake Mama” Jones has become an overnight viral sensation thanks to a local food blogger. Her famous cheesecake recipe is taking TikTok by storm. A celebrity even wants to hire her to make their wedding cake. One problem…she may not have actually originated the cheesecake recipe. Will social media prove “senior-friendly”? Or will her mea culpa get her canceled?
Production, StageWorks Theatre Co. One Act Jamboree, Pompton Lakes, NJ, July 2024
Reading, Naples Players (Finalist, New Play Festival), Naples, FL, Jan. 2024​
Speed Bumps (short play)
Diego Espinoza is busy putting in a speed bump…in the early morning hours…on a neighborhood street…all by himself. Clearly, Diego is doing something wrong—at least according to the woman who takes it upon herself to get out of her car to see what exactly it is that he’s doing. The conversation that ensues between them reveals a great deal about not only the logistics of unauthorized roadwork at six o’clock in the morning, but also about small town issues surrounding race, perceptions of ethnicity, and the privilege inherent in getting to drive down a “bumpless” road.
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Produced Fusion Theatre: THE SEVEN Short Works Festival, Albuquerque, NM June 2024​
You Asked... (short play)
It’s seemingly a normal dinner at a normal restaurant between a normal couple, or is it? One woman must reveal the truth about herself, about her diagnosis. Her partner, however, seems to have more pressing things on his mind. This is a play about secrets, lies and the deeper meaning of that plate of untouched escargot.
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Finalist, VetRep Play Contest, Nov. 2023​