Leo Barnard
Plays
Stalled
5 f
After moving back in with her mom, all Olive can do is watch the same episode of a bad tv show over and over again. When a coyote starts eating the chickens and a sad lesbian couple rents the cottage for the weekend, maybe she will get off the couch. Stalled is a funny and moving exploration of how we seek comfort and how we get un-stuck.
A Room at the Flamingo Hotel
2 f / 2 m / 1 nb
During a period of political rebellion, four intertwined groups of visitors to a single hotel room lie, cheat, fall out of love, and play high stakes games of Go Fish.
Cassini
5f / 2 m / 1 nb / 3 any gender
In 1997, NASA launched the Cassini mission to Saturn. In 1675, Giovanni Domenico Cassini identified the divisions in the rings of Saturn. In the summer, Saturn and Titan host a fête. Spanning 330 years and 975 million miles, Cassini is about saying goodbye.
light: A Lyric Noir
3 f / 1 m
Beverly Jaw can’t get out of bed. She lives in her best friend’s basement and pines for his sister, Alice. But her best friend is dead and things with Alice are complicated. light is a queer noir about depression, loss, and Facebook.
The Suicide Jockey
3 f / 1 m
Somewhere in middle America, a long-haul trucker's insomnia is getting worse. Her sense of unreality stretches and grows, punctuated by patchy radio updates in her cab. After getting home from a long trip, she discovers that her partner has been unfaithful, and retaliates by bringing home the first young woman she meets in a bar. When that young woman reveals she knows more about the couple than she should, long-buried secrets are brought to light.
Schuylkill
1 tm / 1 f
When his best friend’s brother comes to visit, Syd tells the story of how their connection began with a lost wallet and now spans seven years, one rabbit, two lost siblings, many baseball games, and the flooding of the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia.
Collaboration
Dramaturgy
I believe my role as a dramaturg is to help a playwright realize the best version of the play they want to write. I have worked on new plays and devised work at various stages in the development process.
Editorial Work
I have worked on academic book manuscripts, papers, and larger research projects. I have experience with citation organization, bibliographic work, copy editing, and background research and organization.
"Leo was integral to the “100 Conversations about Climate” project, for which they did careful and thoughtful editing for transcripts and for related essays I was writing from scratch. They has an uncanny ability to unlock writing with precise questions and observations, always clarifying, sharpening, and invigorating the language, always listening for what the writing itself wants to be. Whether for scientific prose, narrative, or persuasion, Leo is a consummate editor. Can’t recommend them highly enough."
– Steve Moore, Artistic Director, Physical Plant Arts
Bio
Leo Barnard is a queer playwright, dramaturg and theater maker. Currently based in Chicago, they have also made work in Austin and Philadelphia. Their work has been developed by Lambda Literary, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Philadelphia Artists’ Collective, the SoLow Festival, UT New Theatre, Frontera Fest, Azuka Theatre, the Cohen New Works Festival, the Story Theatre, and PlayPenn. They were a member of the second class of the Philadelphia playwright’s lab, the Foundry, and a former member of the Goodman Playwrights’ Unit. They have a BA from Bryn Mawr College and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin.