Scissoring
by Christina Quintana
Directed by Atticus Cooper Boidy
January 27 – February 18, 2023
Abigail Bauer is a New Orleans native. She lives with her long-term girlfriend, Josie Hernandez, a Nuyorican artist who is the furthest thing from a wallflower. When Abigail chooses to accept a job teaching U.S. History and Government at a conservative Catholic high school, she must also choose to step back into the closet, despite her girlfriend’s wishes and her own conflicted desires. Her professional ambitions and religious beliefs run a crash course against her personal relationships and internalized shame. Humor is found through anguish, thanks to the guidance Abigail receives from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Eleanor’s friend and lover of many years, Lorena Hickok. Together with these remarkable apparitions, the PA System in the school also steps in to shake her up and help her find the courage to embrace who she is and what she wants out of life. With the intersection of religion and sexuality along with an explicitly diverse cast of characters, this new play promises to become part of the canon of LGBTQ theater.