Val Dunn
Val Dunn is a writer/deviser who creates plays, zines, and radical queer joy. Her work possesses a strong sense of place and tackles issues of class and dykehood while pushing against the limitations of form. Val’s writing has been presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Philly Theatre Week, Philly SoLow Fest, You Can’t Fail @ Tattooed Mom, The Museum of the American Revolution, and soon at Azuka Theatre and Trustus Theatre. She is a member playwright of InterAct Theatre Company's Core Playwrights. Val’s work has been additionally supported by Play Penn, the Orchard Project, Signal Fire, Centrum Arts, the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, SANDBOX, and Washington College. Val holds a B.A. with honors in drama and English from Washington College where she received the Stewart Award for Drama, The Mary Martin Prize, The Jude & Miriam Pfister Poetry Prize, The William W. Warner Prize for Writing on the Environment, The Literary House Genre Fiction Prize, and was a finalist for the Sophie Kerr prize in Literature. Val currently splits her time between Philadelphia, PA and Bristol, UK.
O, Possum!
The climate is in crisis, and so is the Mammalian Exhibit at Jumping Cholla Community Park — where a Park Ranger ‘deals’ with her feelings of inadequacy by biting off more than she can chew, looking longingly at her mate-me-be-me hero Thorn, and munching peyote with her best friend — the titular Opossum. But a bake sale gone awry turns out to be the last [single-use plastic] straw for our under-appreciated Park Ranger… who promptly punks out. At a park without a Park Ranger, things get wild: Opossum proposes eating our young, gluten-free = anarchy, and everyone remains cognizant always that the great hurtle toward death continues. How will the community of Jumping Cholla Community Park ever survive if they don’t work together as a community?!… seriously, how?… a balladeering Tumbleweed wants to know.) O, Possum! A (bleak) comedy about climate change, friendship, and dealing with the consequences of our inactions.