"In the Bright Future, the environmental rampage will have ended, amnesty will be given to all those who return to their senses, and it will be said, 'We are not free yet, but we are on our way!'" On an asterism situated between two constellations in a universe not far from this one, a motley assortment of well-meaning but ineffectual people--who have been psychically kidnapped--train and prepare for the Bright Future, an almost-utopia they will eventually be deployed to enact back on planet Earth. Part boot-camp space-travel memoir, part how-to manual for the construction of a paradise, The People's Republic of Valerie, Living Room Edition is an attempt to transform feelings of despair, grief, and rage into something of value, into positive action, into something of beauty that might uplift and create space and occasion for imagination and community.
About the Author: Kristen Kosmas is a writer and performer. She has had new works commissioned by On the Boards (Seattle), the Chocolate Factory (NYC), Performance Space 122 (NYC), The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf (NYC), Seattle University's SITE Specific, Dixon Place (NYC), and the New City Theater in Seattle. Her plays and four critically acclaimed solo shows have been presented in Seattle, Austin (Fusebox Festival, Physical Plant, Frontera), Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and in New York City at numerous venues including the Chocolate Factory, PS 122, La Mama, Dixon Place, the Prelude Festival, Barbès, the Ontological/Hysteric Downstairs Series, and the Poetry Project. Her play Hello Failure was published by Ugly Duckling Presse; her multi-voice performance text This From Cloudland appears in the latest issue of "PLAY A Journal of Plays"; ANTHEM and The Mayor of Baltimore and There There were published by 53rd State Press; and her play APEX appears in "15 Second Plays Curated by the Debate Society," published by UDP.
As a performer, Kristen has appeared in many notable new plays including Awaiting Oblivion by Tim Smith-Stewart, Potatoes of August by Sibyl Kempson, Mark Smith by Kate Ryan, ASTRS and Some Things Cease To Be While Others Still Are by Karinne Keithley, The Internationalist by Anne Washburn, Producers of Fiction by Jim Strahs, The Florida Project by Tory Vazquez, and Hurricane by Erin Cressida Wilson.
Kosmas is a founding member of the OBIE Award winning performance series Little Theater (NYC); The Twenty-Five Cent Opera of San Francisco, a monthly event for the enactment of texts and theatricals (NYC); and Birthday Girl, a pro-feminist, anti-racist, queer-fabulous, multidisciplinary, liberatory space for celebrating new performance (Seattle).
She is an Assistant Professor of Theater at Whitman College and a current member of New Dramatists in New York City.
