"The Bechdel Test - It's a Damn Low Bar" Residency
2023 - 24 Bechdel Resident Mollie Gordon!
Mollie Gordon (she/her) is a queer playwright currently based in New Jersey. She uses her writing to create queer utopias and explore the ways that queer people carve out space for themselves. Her plays contain elements of magical realism and a focus on expanding multifaceted LGBTQ+ representation for the theatre.
Mollie’s plays have been developed with The Bechdel Group, Athena Project, Personal Pizza Party, and Sarah Lawrence College. She was a 2022 recipient of the David Lindsay-Abaire Award for Excellence in Playwriting and a 2023 finalist for the New Perspectives Women’s Work LAB. Mollie was recently a member of the inaugural Personal Pizza Party Writers’ Kitchen cohort. She has a BA in Theatre and Writing from Sarah Lawrence.
Mollie can be found on New Play Exchange, on her personal website, and on most social media platforms at @molliecgordon.
The Bechdel Group is proud to support Mollie's work on The Tin Man's Daughter.
What Mollie has to say about this project:
The Tin Man's Daughter (working title) is a piece is inspired by The Wizard of Oz, and centers on a young woman, perhaps even a girl, named Tina, who doesn't want the heart that the Tin Man so desperately craved. Instead, she wants a new body—one that is different from the creaky body she lives in. The piece will be a magical realism exploration of body image, with an emphasis on disability. Ultimately, Tina learns that she can use her heart to love her body, just as the Tin Man learned that he had a heart the whole time.
This play will also explore how women are still often defined by the men in their lives, especially when it comes to celebrities; hence the title being The Tin Man’s Daughter, rather than just her name. As Tina goes on her quest, which I’m envisioning as a queer and feminine take on the male-driven epic genre (think Gilgamesh), she constantly comes up against people who view her only as an extension of her famous
father.
What Mollie has to say about her work:
I use my writing to create queer utopias and explore the ways that queer people carve out space for themselves. My plays always contain elements of magical realism, and a focus on expanding multifaceted queer representation for the theatre.
You will be invited to hear and discuss selections from The Tin Man's Daughter in May of 2024 and to attend a full staged reading in August 2024.
Mollie’s plays have been developed with The Bechdel Group, Athena Project, Personal Pizza Party, and Sarah Lawrence College. She was a 2022 recipient of the David Lindsay-Abaire Award for Excellence in Playwriting and a 2023 finalist for the New Perspectives Women’s Work LAB. Mollie was recently a member of the inaugural Personal Pizza Party Writers’ Kitchen cohort. She has a BA in Theatre and Writing from Sarah Lawrence.
Mollie can be found on New Play Exchange, on her personal website, and on most social media platforms at @molliecgordon.
The Bechdel Group is proud to support Mollie's work on The Tin Man's Daughter.
What Mollie has to say about this project:
The Tin Man's Daughter (working title) is a piece is inspired by The Wizard of Oz, and centers on a young woman, perhaps even a girl, named Tina, who doesn't want the heart that the Tin Man so desperately craved. Instead, she wants a new body—one that is different from the creaky body she lives in. The piece will be a magical realism exploration of body image, with an emphasis on disability. Ultimately, Tina learns that she can use her heart to love her body, just as the Tin Man learned that he had a heart the whole time.
This play will also explore how women are still often defined by the men in their lives, especially when it comes to celebrities; hence the title being The Tin Man’s Daughter, rather than just her name. As Tina goes on her quest, which I’m envisioning as a queer and feminine take on the male-driven epic genre (think Gilgamesh), she constantly comes up against people who view her only as an extension of her famous
father.
What Mollie has to say about her work:
I use my writing to create queer utopias and explore the ways that queer people carve out space for themselves. My plays always contain elements of magical realism, and a focus on expanding multifaceted queer representation for the theatre.
You will be invited to hear and discuss selections from The Tin Man's Daughter in May of 2024 and to attend a full staged reading in August 2024.