Alum Stages Two New Plays at Westmont

Westmont alumna Diana Lynn Small ’09, who graduated from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin in 2015, has written two plays being produced Oct. 16-24 at Westmont. “Good Day,” directed by Mitchell Thomas, Westmont associate professor of theater, is Oct. 16-24 at 7 p.m. in Porter Theatre. “Mad & a Goat,” featuring alumnae Heather Johnson ’10 and Paige Tautz ’14, is Oct. 22-24 at 9 p.m. in Black Box Theatre at Westmont. Tickets, which cost $12 general admission and $7 for students, seniors and children, are available online. Both plays contain mature content.

“A Conversation with Playwright Diana Lynn Small,” moderated by Thomas, is free and open to the public on Saturday, Oct. 24, at 6 p.m. on Porter Patio.

In “Good Day,” a prodigal daughter returns home, only she can’t get any farther than the front lawn. An exterminator shows up to clear away a suburban wasps’ nest, but a hunger strike prevents him from doing his work.

“Good Day is a funny and unsettling play that examines grief, spirituality and the unfathomable nature of love and reconciliation,” Thomas says. “Diana’s work explores the place and people of the American West to help us to recognize where we come from, where we are going, and who we are – for better or for worse.”

“Good Day” was selected for the 2015 Great Plains Conference PlayLabs, Kitchen Dog Theatre’s New Works Festival, made Honorable Mention for the 2015 Kilroy List and was a finalist for the 2015 Play Penn Conference.

“Mad & and a Goat” is a two-women show about one woman who joins a Wyoming goat farm she inherits from her occult-leader birth parents to free herself from college debt.

“I created ‘Mad & a Goat” as a container to explore my identity as a multi-disciplinary theater artist while in a strictly playwriting graduate program,” Small says. “The play has evolved over the course of four productions and it will be different at Westmont too. To keep the play in constant development helps preserve its madness and allows me and my collaborators to grow the work as we grow as artists.”

Workshop productions at the Fort Collins Fringe, FronteraFest, and the Cohen New Works festival in Austin have featured the play.

Small, who began writing for the stage her third year at Westmont, premiered her first full-length play, “Muevéme, Muevéte” at Westmont in February 2009. At Commencement that year, she earned the college’s Dave Dolan Award, given to a graduate whose campus leadership has made significant contributions in our awareness and response to the social and spiritual needs of the community, the nation and the world.

“I’m thrilled to be presenting two of Diana’s plays here at Westmont, and to have her return as an artist in residence to connect with our students and community,” Thomas says. “Diana has a wonderfully distinct voice and style and we are so happy to be able to work with her as she emerges from her MFA program training and begins to make a significant contribution to the American theater.”

After graduating, Diana joined the Lit Moon Theatre Company in Santa Barbara, served as an instructor in the Westmont theatre department, and wrote three plays for Westmont’s stage. She credits the small size of her theater classes at Westmont with helping her explore the many disciplines within theater arts and develop life-long relationships with her peers and professors.

She’s made new theater with UT Austin (“Good Day,” “Enter a Woman Pretty Enough” and “Mad & a Goat”), Theatre Masters (“Dogfight”), the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (“We’re Still Kids”), Westmont College (“Muéveme Muévete,” “Beauty Bomb,” “They Must Be Wings” and “Jupiter I Love You”), and the Zach Theatre (“Dream: A Midsummer Forrest Tour”). Diana was an artist-in-residence at Tofte Lake Center in Ely, Minnesota, in 2014. In July 2015, she directed the new play “MAST” by Elizabeth Doss for the Austin theater company Paper Chairs.