‘Arrowhead,’ new comedy at IAMA, explores love, sexual identity

IAMA Theatre Company continues its “Sweet 16” season of world premieres by Los Angeles-based playwrights with a new comedy by Catya McMullen. “Arrowhead” opens Feb. 8 at Atwater Village Theatre with director Jenna Worsham at the helm. 

Gen is unexpectedly pregnant. Gen is also a lesbian. Yeah, it’s confusing. So Gen does what any unexpectedly pregnant lesbian with a doe-eyed, (potential) arsonist of a girlfriend must: she goes and throws a secret abortion party at a lake house with her straight friends from college. With the arrival of Gen’s lesbian best friend and a few other unexpected visitors … what could go wrong?

“Arrowhead explores the question of what happens when what you want sexually conflicts with your feminism, your identity and your community,” says McMullen, who wrote the play while staying in a Lake Arrowhead vacation home that inspired its location. “While this play is in many ways a love letter to queerness, it is not a singularly queer story. My hope is that it will resonate with people of all sexual orientations — that almost everyone can walk into the theater and find at least some small part of themselves reflected in the characters and perspectives. Oh, and laugh. We hope you laugh, too.”

“This is a play of landmines around gender and gender roles,” says Worsham. “But, above all, it’s a comedy. The audience is going to laugh its way into a deeper conversation.”

Arrowhead was commissioned by IAMA and workshopped in 2022 as part of the company’s annual New Works Festival. This marks the company’s second full production of an IAMA-commissioned play, following the critically acclaimed world premiere of “Radical or, are you gonna miss me?” by Isaac Gómez last November.

“From the moment I first read Catya’s work, I knew this was a voice IAMA needed to produce —and, as an actor, what a gift,” states IAMA artistic director Stefanie Black. “I couldn’t be more excited to bring this play to life. Her female characters are powerful and beautifully three dimensional, a reflection this female-led company celebrates. We’re so lucky to be premiering this bold and hilarious new play by a writer we’re proud to call family.”

McMullen is a playwright and screenwriter. Her plays include “Georgia Mertching Is Dead” (Ensemble Studio Theatre, Time Out NY “Critic’s Pick”) for which she was awarded the Outer Circle Critics John Gassner award for best new play by a new playwright; “AGNES” (Lesser America, New York Times “Critics Pick”); the comedic hip-hop musical “Locked Up Bitches” (The Flea Theater); and “Rubber Ducks and Sunsets” (Ground UP Productions); among others. She is a proud alum of the Obie award-winning EST/Youngblood, and was the co-creator of The Homebound Project with Jenna Worsham, a fundraising theater initiative for No Kid Hungry, which raised over $150,000 to help feed hungry children affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. She is currently writing the feature film adaptation of “Marjorie Finnegan Temporal Criminal” for Margot Robbie’s Lucky Chap Productions. She has developed film and television with Amazon, Hulu, Universal, Showtime and Lionsgate, and has staffed on Amazon’s Youth (creator and executive producer); AMC’s” Dietland”; Freeform’s “Everything’s Gonna Be Okay”; Showtime, Taika Waititi and Peter Warren’s “The Auteur”; FX’s “Y the Last Man”; and others. 

Arrowhead opens on Thursday, Feb. 8 at 8 p.m., with performances thereafter on Fridays, Saturdays and Mondays at 8 p.m., and on Sundays at 2 p.m. through March 4 (dark Monday Feb. 12). All tickets are $40, except Monday. Feb. 19 and Monday, Feb. 26, which are pay-what-you-can, and previews, which are $25.

Atwater Village Theatre is located at 3269 Casitas Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90039. Free parking is available in the ATX (Atwater Crossing) lot one block south of the theater. For reservations and information, call (323) 380-8843 or go to iamatheatre.com.

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