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WRITING

"We don’t get an epic.

We don’t get an Odyssey. 

At this point, we don’t even get an Odysseus. 

We can only tell tiny stories, now."

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-Anna Miles, Our Pinprick Poems

WRITING SAMPLES

PLAYS​

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Excerpt from "Our Feet Off the Ground"

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A brand new feminist dance show which drew inspiration from the stories of Hans Christian Andersen; the show darkly reimagined these classic tales, intersecting their language and themes with the medium of dance as a vehicle for reckoning with the perils and passions of inhabiting a female body. With choreography and narrative developed through collaborative devising, Our Feet Off the Ground explored the expansiveness of desire and the social punishments incurred when desire is deemed too much. Our Feet Off the Ground was performed in site-specific outdoor locations in May 2024, inspired by Andersen’s imagery connecting woods and wilderness to the boundlessness of the human soul.

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Excerpt from "Minotaur, Minotaur"

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Liberally adapted from Greek myths about the half-bull half-man monster known as the Minotaur, as well as Euripides' Hippolytus and Seneca's Phaedra,  Minotaur, Minotaur tells the intertwining stories between generations of women who want to the point of pain and explores the limitations of the cultural narratives we spin about women's sexual desire. As they wind through time like string unraveling through a labyrinth, humans and Gods alike attempt to invent their own understandings of desire while struggling under the weight of the social (and literal) mythologies which threaten to crush them- or rip their eyes out and drink their blood. You know, Minotaur-style.

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Excerpt from "A Sad Tale's Best for Winter"
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William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale could be said to ask the question: “how can we forgive?”​ But what about the times when we can’t forgive? Is it possible to move forward, and to heal, in those moments when the catastrophic violence can’t be erased with miraculous forgiveness?​ Through text both classic and original and through song, dance, and spoken word, A Sad Tale’s Best for Winter, a new adaption of The Winter's Tale by Anna Miles, explores these questions by interrupting and disrupting Shakespeare’s text- bringing the story into a fantasy world where women live isolated from men, where bears hide behind trees in relentless pursuit, and where a new generation struggles to undo the centuries worth of fear, pain, and violence in the hopes of creating a new, better world. 

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Excerpt from "It Was the Nightingale: Persephone's Play"
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A feminist adaptation of the Greek myth of Hades, Persephone, and Demeter, with a little Eurydice mixed in: in this version, Persephone is in complete control of the story as she reckons with the ambivalence of growing up and attempts to synthesize the conflicting parts of herself.
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Excerpt from "Think of Me, Fred Weasley"
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In 2004, both navigating the troubled waters of public schools in forgotten corners of Northern California, the teenaged Anna Miles and Melissa Dunham both embarked on journeys of adolescent self-discovery, using the only tools consistently at their disposal- a series of college-ruled notebooks and some colored pens. Follow their stories of first love, intense obsession, and ultimate heartbreak as they unfold and converge in this original one-act musical play, adapted from Anna and Melissa's real high school and junior high journals. 
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"Our Pinprick Poems," A Short Play
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A group of women, the wives of soldiers who have long since gone off to war and left them behind, gather together to weave garments and weave stories: the tiny, simple stories of waiting, of isolation, of staying inside where it's always safe. A group of women share what they have gathered and the small pinpricks of poems they've written for themselves in the absence of the epics that will never be written for them. 
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"Thinking of Monkeys," A Short Play
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A play about monkeys, cult leaders, and social responsibility, with a little bit of Greek mythology thrown in- featuring choreography by Himerria Wortham, music by Val Larsen, painting and visual art design by Teresa Giltner, writing by Anna Miles, and performances from all four. 
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"Girls and Boys": A Short Play, published in The Santa Ana River Review
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When they sit in trees and share their toys
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"Woman;Wolf", A Short Play
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A feminist parable adapted from a story written by a fifth grader.
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