Keegon Schuett is a gender non-conforming playwright from Memphis. Their plays about queer identity have been produced by Emerald Theatre Company, including Birds of a Feather, Sub Sandwich, The Sound of ____, and A Fruit Pie for Anita. An alum of Curious Theatre’s Curious New Voices, where Oedipus Vexed; or Tragic Motherfucker and Anniversary premiered, they’ve written trans-centered works like Pilgrimage, besos, and this dry spell (winner of the 2024 Yale Drama Series).
Schuett developed their poetic plays praying mantis, faithful flame, rough patch, the quiet part, and by the fire with Chicago Dramatists and honed their platypus love triangle melodrama, a life of luxury, in the Inc. New Play Incubator with Theatre L'Acadie. A resident writer with Voices of the South, their work includes Goddess of Tears, another cabinet, and exquisite corpse experiments co-written with David Couter. Their play Chicken, about setting boundaries for an open relationship during COVID, premiered at Quark Theatre in June 2025. Schuett’s plays Slow, Kitty Steals a Dog, Brace Yourself, Count Spatula, and Goddess of Tears are published with YouthPLAYS.
At MacDowell, Schuett used their time as a generative period for several new pieces of dramatic writing. They presented narrative passages from lone wolf, a queer coming-of-age werewolf story, accompanied by nighttime footage filmed along the paths at MacDowell. They tackled the first pages of My Deepest Darkest Secret, an autobiographical screenplay about adjusting to life in Tennessee at age ten, when a kindergartener attempted to blackmail them after correctly guessing they couldn’t ride a bike. They also began work on in seine, a morality play inspired by the wild true story of a dog in France who learned to push children into the Seine to earn repeated steak dinners. Finally, they developed Stupid & Sullen, an anachronistic drag piece exploring the life and lies of Mary Toft through lip-sync performance and puppetry.
Portrait by Marisa Klug Morataya
