ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Loud thanks to the Cathy Hong and Danniel Schoonbeek of the PEN America website, to Joe Pan at Hyperallergic, and to David Blumenshine & crew at Similar Peaks for giving these fun-loving DEAD YOUTH an Internet home.

Even louder thanks to Fiona Templeton, E. Tracy Grinnell, and Caroline Bergvall for selecting this play to inaugurate the Leslie Scalapino Award, and to the admirable actors at The Relationship who dazzled me with the baller way they put on all this ornate language like a costume and swaggered around.

& gratitude to Leslie Scalapino, whose Dahlia’s Iris first gave me the inkling that one character might serve as a medium for another, one body a medium for another, one genre a medium for another, and that the whole non-Cartesian assemblage could host improbably occult effects and propagate uncanny fields.

Freedom for Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, and Abdi Wali Abdulqadir Muse. This play is a spell for their safety.

Peace and sweet dreams for the once and future DEATH YOUTH