Trying To Be a Mermaid

Set in a rural Louisiana emergency room, the play follows the aftermath of an unusual incident involving Elizabeth Sutton, a 41-year-old insurance claims worker who is brought in after being found swimming naked in a private pond on a cold November night. Tased by police when she refused to leave the water, Elizabeth sits calmly in an intake bay, explaining, without irony or embarrassment, that she has been working on becoming a mermaid for months. What initially sounds absurd gradually reveals its own internal logic, and beneath the humor lies a quiet, serious longing to escape a life she finds empty and unfulfilling.