PDX Playwrights Presents JEPHTHAH'S DAUGHTER And SUICIDE IN THE GARDEN by Katie Bennett

PDX Playwrights Presents JEPHTHAH'S DAUGHTER And SUICIDE IN THE GARDEN by Katie Bennett

A Daisy Dukes Short - Suicide in the Garden

by Katie Bennett

Date/Time: Friday Jan 31 at 7:00 p.m and Saturday Feb 1 at 9:00

Place: Hipbone Studio, 1847 E. Burnside Street, Portland

Tickets: $10 at http://fertilegroundpdx.org

Love. Death. Blame. And Laundry.

This 10 minute comic short was chosen in a triple blind competition to be produced by PDX Playwrights as part of their evening of Daisy Dukes Shorts.

Jephthah's Daughter

by Katie Bennett

Date/Time: Sunday Feb 9 at 2:00 p.m

Place: Hipbone Studio, 1847 E. Burnside Street, Portland

Tickets: $10 at http://fertilegroundpdx.org

Young time traveler Tali befriends Isaac on the day he is spared sacrifice at the hands of his father, Abraham. They become convinced that the curvatures in the time roads are becoming straight due to the destruction of Yahweh's feminine counterpart, Asherah. Soon they may not be able to travel in time at all. As the world becomes more linear and patriarchal, Tali fears that her name will be forgotten and that she will be sacrificed by her own war-mongering father, Jephthah.

Inspired by the sacrifice myths of Isaac and Jephthah's Daughter, this story takes place in an imaginary Mesopotamian world before the invention of the linear calendar. In the Land of Ersatz, there is no before or after, there is only now. Men and women are equal and both worship one deity, Asherah-Yahweh, who is one God: "One in two and two in one." However, the belief system in the Ersatz begins to change when Isaac's father is tempted to sacrifice his son Isaac for the sake of the male line and Tali's father makes a bargain with God to sacrifice the daughter he loves for leadership and power.

Katie Bennett, an Oregon native, is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley with an MFA in Theatre from the University of South Carolina. She is a college professor, actor, director and writer. She has worked with the playwriting group PDX Playwrights since 2013. Her short works produced by them are Heaven on Fire, In Season, The Egg and the The West One. Longer works include In Search of the Red Skull and Jephthah's Daughter, which will appear in the Fertile Ground Festival 2020.

Also a screenwriter, Katie's short screenplay Bird in the Water won first place in the 45th Northwest Filmmaker's Festival's Northwest Exposure Competition in 2018. Her feature screenplay Liberty and Grace was a Second Rounder at the Austin Film Festival in 2016.

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