Read the 1st 10 pages || Development history below
“the traces of this hidden world of love that lies just behind things”
Characters
PERSE, 13-14, a girl who wants to be a pop star. Short for Persephone, pronounced per-see.
JOAN, 40s, Perse’s Mother, a wealthy banker.
MELINDA, 33-34, a struggling novelist who becomes PERSE’s tutor.
VOICE, 54, Melinda’s interrogator, a woman.
JOEY, 16, a pop star of Beiber proportions, a boy.
JOEY also plays INTERVIEWER and RECEPTIONIST.
Synopsis
When PERSE tells her mother JOAN that she wants to create a music video and post it on YouTube, JOAN pulls her out of school and finds her a tutor, MELINDA. At first, PERSE and MELINDA are at odds, until a barely averted act of violence binds them together. When a music video they make together goes viral, MELINDA and PERSE grow even closer, until PERSE’s jealous co-star JOEY drives them apart. A final violent confrontation reveals the truth about MELINDA, her love for PERSE, and the identity of the interrogating VOICE driving the story. PERSE is a play about sudden fame, obsession, identity in our online age, and the uncertainty of memory.
Development History
Lark Play Development Center’s 2013 Playwrights’ Week, directed by Heather Cohn, featuring Kelli Dawn Holsopple, Becky Byers, Evan Maltby, Kate Levy and Susan Ferrara.
Named a Semi-Finalist for the 2012 National Playwrights Conference at the O’Neill Theater Center
Read at the Playwrights Continuum in 2011 by Jane Lincoln Taylor, Carissa Cordes, John Albano and Erica McLaughlin
Staged reading at Flux Theatre Ensemble’s 2011 Retreat
MELINDA: Candice Holdorf
PERSE: Becky Byers
VOICE: Jane Lincoln Taylor
JOAN: David Crommett
JOEY: Will Lowry
Perse recieved continued development through Reverie Productions Writer’s Group in 2011
Perse was developed through Flux Sundays in 2011. A special thanks to actors Anna LaMadrid, Melissa Herion, Carissa Cordes, Kari Swenson Riely, Isaiah Tanenbaum, the retreat cast, and all the actors and directors who led to the play’s completion.
Corinna Schulenburg 
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