Octopus’s Garden

A World Premiere Co-Production with Circle X Theatre Co. and Outside In Theatre
by Weston Gaylord
directed by Jessica Kubzansky

When two marine biologists and a struggling composer discover that an octopus in a cephalopod lab has written the most transcendent piece of music ever heard, their worlds begin to unravel. Ambitions clash, egos fray, and their brush with something divine breeds obsession.

Innovative puppetry brings soulful theatricality to this fable about art, science, and the moral quandaries that erupt when another being surpasses humankind.

Weston Gaylord (Playwright) is a playwright and librettist based in Los Angeles. His plays have been featured at the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, Ashland New Plays Festival, IAMA New Works Festival, Boston Court Pasadena New Play Reading Festival, and New Roots Theatre Festival. Weston is an alum of the Geffen Playhouse Writers’ Room and the Circle X Evolving Playwrights Group and a recipient of the Humanitas PLAY LA fellowship. He has also developed new work with The Vagrancy, Outside In, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, and SFBATCO. Finalist: O’Neill NMTC, NAMT Festival of New Musicals. Weston has written and developed immersive and mixed-reality theatrical experiences with Disney Imagineering, Meta, Madison Wells, FX, and Spy Brunch, and his work has been presented in Games For Change, The Latest Draft podcast, A Little New Music, and the Future of Storytelling Festival. Online: westongaylord.com

Jessica Kubzansky (Director) is a champion of innovation and artistic excellence, and as such she was invited to be one of two founding artistic directors of Boston Court Pasadena, creating a mission and vision for the company that produces risky adventurous new work coupled with intimate artistic excellence. Her recent work at Boston Court includes Tennessee Williams’s lauded The Night of the Iguana, world premieres of Tira Palmquist’s The Body’s Midnight, her own immersive Measure STILL for Measure, Kit Steinkellner’s Ladies, Sarah Mantell’s Everything That Never Happened, Stefanie Zadravec’s Colony Collapse, plus for Boston Court elsewhere, Luis Alfaro’s Mojada, A Medea in Los Angeles (The Getty Villa), Sheila Callaghan’s Everything You Touch (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre at The Cherry Lane), staged excerpts of Philip Glass’s Madrigal Opera (Boston Court Music Series). Recently at other venues: Sarah Mantell’s Everything That Never Happened (Baltimore Center Stage), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Utah Shakespeare Festival), The Father with Alfred Molina (The Pasadena Playhouse), Othello (A Noise Within), Jeanne Sakata’s Hold These Truths (Arena Stage), Aditi Kapil’s Orange (South Coast Rep), Stupid Fucking Bird (ACT, Seattle), Hamlet with Leo Marks (Theater 150), and many others nationwide.