Heidi Kraay examines the link between brain and body, seeking empathy with fractured characters. Her work pulls myth, metaphor and monsters together to discover connections across difference. Plays include Unwind: Hindsight is 2020, see in the dark, How to Hide Your Monster, New Eden, Me and My Shadow and Kilgore, as well as co-devised plays, one-acts, plays for young audiences and short plays.
Her work has been presented where she lives in Boise, Idaho, regionally, in NYC and internationally, most recently through Boise Contemporary Theater, Climate Change Theatre Action, Surel’s Place, Barnard College, Spark Creative Works, West of Lenin, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Women’s Theatre Festival, Fargo Moorhead Community Theatre, Playwrights’ Round Table, Trinity Street Players, HomeGrown Theatre, Tomo Suru Players, Thingamajig Theatre Company, Radio Boise, the Alternative Theater Company, Campfire Theatre Festival and Seven Devils Playwrights Foundry.
She has been a top finalist at the Women Playwrights’ Initiative, a finalist at City Theatre, Southwest Theatre Productions, Purple Crayon Players, the Local Theater, Campfire Theatre Festival and Creede Repertory Theatre’s Headwaters Festival, and a semi-finalist at Eugene O’Neill Center, PlayPenn, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Seven Devils Playwrights Foundry, Unicorn Theatre, The Local Theater, UP Theater Company and B-Street Theatre. Her work has been awarded grants from Idaho Commission on the Arts, Boise City Department of Arts & History, The COVID Cultural Commissioning Fund, The Cabin, Alexa Rose Foundation and Boise Weekly. Heidi was a founding associate artist for Migration Theory, a physical art company for which she co-devised SuperSecretSiteSpecificSomething and small matters.
Heidi holds an MFA in Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts from California Institute of Integral Studies and is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. www.heidikraay.com
Plays
When a young girl shows up in the desolate village that Juneau, Alaska has become, the surviving community embraces her as their new hope. That is, until a boy is found hunting her down with brutal accusations. Set in a future Juneau, Alaska, after all the glaciers have melted, the ice fields have vanished and nothing is recognizable, see in the dark is a mythic look at the value of compassion over suspicion. Full-length mythic drama.
a piece about being in between
about caring for each other
about the only love story ever told
about west downtown boise
about all the little things
that change our lives in big ways
devised physical theater piece
Savannah answers a cry for help from her sister, who just met her grandfather and is taking care of him at his home, and travels to support her. When their mom joins them, Savannah discovers that the hidden secrets between all of them are growing a storm in this space between her, her sister and her mom that will blow up out of the monster she’s been pushing down inside herself. They have to decide if the truth they uncover will connect or fracture them forever. Full-Length Drama.
Travel through downtown Boise's interior and exterior landscapes through five parts of a love story from meet to loss, in order to fall in love with this place to start over from here. Devised Promenade Theater Piece.
Lost in a blizzard, Brian stumbles upon Michael’s warm and welcoming cabin. Lost and longing to please God, Michael's chance for salvation stumbles in from the cold. One disciple is a good beginning...but Michael has his eye on disciple number two. With Brian's help, she’ll join them soon--the key to the New World, she can save us all. Full-Length Drama.
Holistic Growth Team's long life serum can put Boise on the map and make the Treasure Valley a bubble of prosperity. But when a mother driven by loss and instinct uncovers the key to this corporation’s success, the consequences of perfect health may be unbearable. Co-Devised Full-Length Drama.
When Marianne’s father dies, she finds comfort in childhood imaginary friends. Absorbed in an invented reality, she cuts herself off from daily life to a catatonic degree. Forced into hospitalization, she expresses her mind through art and ends up saving herself by her own terms. Full-Length Drama.
Greg was raised by his grandfather Tate. Or maybe it's the other way around. On the run from yet another one of Tate's disastrous relationship choices, the two find themselves in small-town Texas...that is until Greg falls for Katie, his dedication is pushed to its limit and all three are forced to face their past. Full-Length Dark Comedy.
When a tiger cub's mom dies, she heads out with her bunny friend and a tag-a-long caterpillar to find her father so he can teach her how to hunt. When her dad's no help, she has to figure out how to survive on her own with her new family. This play about friendship, adventure and transformation asks how we talk to our children about grief. Play for Young Audiences.
When a construction company starts building on her family's pond, young beaver Thistle rallies her marshland friends to help her protest -- peacefully. But when everything gets out of paw and Thistle gets trapped, her family has to make waves together to find her and protect all the wetland creatures from disaster caused by progress. Play for Young Audiences.
A play featuring animals of the Arctic and Antarctic trying to save
their homes and two children much closer to the equator who help them— who are brave enough to try. Play for Young Audiences.
When Agnes starts to forget herself, she returns to her honeymoon spot for one last breath before finding her husband in the life after this one. But out of a storm comes a teenage stranger to interrupt her plans…a girl who feels strangely familiar. This play about last goodbyes asks how love and other supernatural cloudbursts can connect us across difference, across cosmos, across lifetimes and forgetting. Both stage and radio play versions available. One Act Dark Comedy.
When Janet loses her voice, it's the last straw that breaks her, but it's the first time she's listened in years. One Act Dark Comedy.
A woman tries to get her memory back in order to get her life back but ends up losing all her memory in order to save her sister’s life. One Act Drama.
A loving family moves into the perfect house, but when the house demands a sacrifice, the cost of perfection is monstrous. One Act Puppet Horror.
New at school, Greta faces bullies, and unwittingly summons three monsters from her dreams. At first they terrify her, but they want to help. Their solution may be worse than the problem. One Act Puppet Horror.
Corey goes to the basement to retrieve her cat, stays for alone time, and gets ensnared by a voice in a little hole in the wall. Catching her attention, the house sucks her inside its structure. To get out, she has to lose something of herself. One Act Puppet Horror.
A woman with terminal cancer takes a last balloon ride up to the troposphere and meets a young albatross who helps her die the way she wants, a gift that will help him earn a mate. 10 Minute Dramatic Comedy.
Three high school friends cope with the loss of their friend by climbing to the top of the same construction site where she jumped to her death. 10 Minute Dramatic Comedy.
Kern and Fan love each other more than life. But when the end of their lives (and the world as we know it) approach fast from the worst flood ever, parting might be their path to survival. 10 Minute Drama.
A strange, beautiful woman tries to save two honeymooners stranded at sea after a plane crash, but their mixed trust of her sincere kindness brings out her violent, ancient sea monster inside. 10 Minute Comedy.
When a demon turned Horrific Puppet Affair host is accused of no longer being scary, he tries to prove himself by eating all the children in the world, only to discover that the best plan taking over is to get Donald Trump elected President of the United States. 10 Minute Dark Comedic Puppet Horror.
Mesmerized with the ocean, a swimmer gets pulled down to the world below and drowns. Before she dies, underwater creatures transform her into a fish. She gets eaten and coughed out of a much larger animal, given another chance at life -- as a fish. 5-10 Minute Puppet Movement Piece.
A monster kept as a prisoner of war in a woman's brain is tortured as her constant creating drowns him with ink, but this overworking ends up turning the tables. 10 Minute Dark Comedy.
After a year of romantic misadventures, disasters and loss with a ragtag carnival crew, coming close to death is the only thing that saves Amy. Now it's her turn to save her daughter's life by sharing this secret. Dramatic Short Monologue Play.
Dani finds a shelter when the earth and all its animals, plants and elements fight back to regain balance lost when humans were in control. After reinforcing her safe location, her refuge becomes her cell as she waits out the destruction above ground. Dramatic Short Monologue Play.
A couple hit a dog and try to revive it, only to discover that they are now under the dog's control. Comedic Micro-Play.
A woman uses a toxic spray to keep men away from her at the club. Comedic Micro-Play.
A woman tries to push a deer out from the middle of the road but is turned into roadkill in the process. Comedic Micro-Play.
Successes
Delighted that City Theatre in Miami gave my 10-minute play lift a reading through their City Reads in Key Biscayne on April 27th. Also, thanks to Goucher College's Theatre Department for giving my micro-play DreamSong staged readings on May 1 and 2, as well as recording a podcast version, which you can listen to here.
My play Wolf/Girl received its university premiere last month through Boise State University's Department of Theatre, Film and Creative Writing at the Danny Peterson Theatre in Boise, ID, running February 8 through February 17.
Thanks to my second commission from Climate Change Theatre Action, my micro-play Tree People was read and performed through various companies, universities and organizations this past fall in Maastricht, Netherlands; Atlanta, GA; Greenfield, MA; Boston, MA; Abbotsford, BC; Philadelphia, PA; Cork, Ireland; Austin, TX; Minneapolis, Minnesota and Feldkirch, Austria.
I'm grateful I got to share a reading of my full-length play Ark, based on Elisabeth Sharp McKetta's book for middle-grade readers, in a reading through Chaotic Acts of Theatre on July 22. Before that, my micro-play Tree People got its first reading through the Campfire Stories series at the Modern Hotel and Bar on July 10. Both events in Boise, Idaho.
I enjoyed bringing my ten minute plays Ways Not to Drown and Terminal McCartney to Story Forward's Couch Surfer event on Valentine's Day. It's a cool happening that pairs Boise writers with musicians. The artists share their work and talk about their process with a moderator. They think of it as a mix between Fresh Air and Tiny Desk Concert.