Rachael received a 2020 Oregon Literary Fellowship, a 2021 Lighthouse Writer's Workshop Fellowship, and has had more than 250 readings, development workshops and full productions, across the U.S., U.K., the Middle East, Canada and Asia, with recent invitations to develop work at the William Inge Theatre Festival (2018), the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Playwriting Intensive (2019), the Midwestern Dramatists Center Conference (2018 & 2019), the Mid-America Theater Conference (2019 & 2020), the American Association for Theatre in Higher Education New Play Development Series (2019), the Sewanee Writers’ Conference (2019), the Ivoryton Playhouse Women Playwrights Initiative (2019), the Parson’s Nose Theatre’s Women Playwright Series (Winter and Fall, 2019), the Cambridge U.K. WriteON Festival (2019) and the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival (2019) and the Great Plains Theatre Conference (2020 - moved to 2021, due to Covid.) Her work is seen in many literary journals, including the Coachella Review, Silk Road Review, Feels Blind Literary, StoneCoast Review, Quince Magazine, Hamilton Arts & Letters and the Ponder Review. Her work has been nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize. Rachael is the founder and editor of CodeRedPlaywrights, a consortium of writers across the country, responding to gun violence. She and her family live in Oregon. www.rachaelcarnes.com
Currently representing self! But open to other ideas.
Plays
The recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes — in 230 B.C.
A ten-minute play — In a not-too-distant future.
An excerpt — In the year 930, during the Age of Settlement, over the previous fifty years or so, the population of Iceland, this geologically-rich, but resource-poor island (about the size of Oregon) has grown from one, to nearly 10,000 people, who are scattered across the land, and dispersed into a multitude of self-appointed, and pretty shitty, kingdoms. They come together to discuss the impending apocalypse, but are too distracted with witch hunts, and the latest gadgets, to get much done. — Invited to be a part of the Play Lab series at the 37th Annual William Inge Theatre Festival in 2018.
A ten-minute play — An upscale, but small, hotel room, with a well-stocked minibar. A coatrack is hung with a fresh terry cloth robe, cinched tightly on a wooden hanger, with a pair of slippers wrapped in plastic below. Somewhere in the room, a goldfish in a bowl swims idly around. And a couple assesses their relationship on their 10th anniversary.
A ten-minute play — Set in Babylonia is 2,000 B.C. Ice Front trains an arctic light on Erik, a Norwegian journalist who runs an underground WWII printing press, and Elsie, his lover and collaborator in the resistance. Elsewhere, asylum seekers approach the border, freezing in the snow.
A ten-minute play — Gary wakes up to find his hamster missing, and takes an epic journey through career crisis, the audience and into intergalactic space and back again. It’s a hero’s journey, with a hamster.
A ten-minute play — An infant in Portland, OR, has died of exposure, and the ensuing internet commentary brings our collective consciousness, about roles and responsibilities, about the edges and the ends of our duty to our fellow humans, into stark relief. Written in a tone-poem style, this piece for five diverse human beings, men and women of all colors and orientations, washes over the audience melodically and with a rhythmic invention for the players and director to discover and create.
At a small campground — with just 15 sites, one central water pump, no electricity and vault toilets — along the Oregon coast, a short distance from the California state line. The campground is located along the shores of the Winchuck River, famous for its cutthroat trout. The nearest services are available in Brookings, 13 miles north. Margaret, a field biologist, camps alone.
At Green Boots, the name given to the unidentified corpse of a climber that’s become a landmark on the main Northwest Ridge route of Mount Everest. An imagined dialogue between Ronald Reagan and writer/advocate Randy Shilts.
In 1823, Mary Shelley and her four-year-old sail home for England. A widow, she's determined to write.
The indications and contraindications of physical and chemical restraints during the holidays.
Produced at Lane Community College 2018.
Full-length play: England, 1769: As revolution between England and its American colonies simmers, candy-colored Georgian society pits the woeful, starving masses against the excessive powers of the rich elite. Sir Thomas Day, rebuffed at every turn from would-be wives, despite his fortune, grows frustrated, and hatches a plan to steal an orphan, and raise her to be the Perfect Wife. I wrote this because I was pissed about Roy Moore and his ilk. Based on real events.
A full-length play in two acts — In a converted brothel in the middle of nowhere, adjacent to the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, in Harney County, Oregon — A place where people converge in small groups to do one of two things: watch migratory birds, or hunt, few people ever do both — Characters grieve the loss of a future past, a once-great nation, a stolen place, an ideal, over mini muffins and coffee. And one character comes to terms with the loss of a father she never knew.
Chauncey — A middle aged English raccoon — Receives a survey from the local municipal court, forcing him to question everything.
Imagines a young couple somewhat protected – or are they? – by the supernatural, on the day the ferry crashed in 2003.
Monologue from the POV of Jeanne Lumière, sister to the famous Lumière brothers — A commentary on the glut of women who will never EVER be recognized for their effort in art, science, math, etc.
5-minute play: A monologue channeling '45' through Richard III's usurpation in 1493.
Three Things Remain — explores the intergalactic universals of death and rebirth through the purr of a ’63 Alfa Romeo, breakfast foods and the burning sequence of stars.
George has just died — And Kitty comes along as a guide through next steps — the place between carbon and atmosphere.
(Kitty is a cat. He looks just like a cat you know.)
Two characters — Played by four people — Explore the magical realism that can connect the generations.
A play with a play within a play within a musical within a play by puppets who do a play. Based on Henry the IV Part One.
Monticello, VA, 1787 — 14-year-old Sally Hemings is made ready by her mother and the ghost of her grandmother, to accompany Thomas Jefferson, who is 30 years older than she is, to Paris. Trigger warning: Assault, abuse, rape.
FRANCES and DANA are both in their seventies.
In this play, both characters are played by a man and a woman — Two roles shared among four actors.
A coin toss accents transitions throughout — So that the roles are assigned randomly from scene to scene.
Not only are we seeing folks onstage who are older, because that’s rare as hen’s teeth, we’re also seeing a play about two men or two women or a man and a woman — In a slippery, permeable random chance experiment.
My hope as a writer? It’s just about love — And the patience love requires.
Happy human-sock monkey relationships are all alike; every unhappy human-sock monkey relationship is unhappy in its own way.
Successes
Thrilled to announce that I've been awarded this year's Jane Stevens King Artist in Residence award in Theater, by Lane Community College, in Eugene, OR. The residency will support the commission of a new ensemble play, its development in 2021/22 and production in 2023.
My play PRACTICE HOUSE had a staged reading at the 2021 Great Plains Theatre Conference, directed by Susie Baer Collins with dramaturgy by Martine Kei Green-Rogers.
My play WINDBERRY CREEK was selected for Theatre Vertigo's New Play Development series, and will be workshopped and given a public staged reading (Via Zoom).
My play WINDBERRY CREEK was selected for Theatre 33's Summer Staged Reading Festival. Alas, the 29-hour development workshop and performance are postponed indefinitely.
My play PRACTICE HOUSE was selected for the 2020 Great Plains Theatre Conference.