Just Plays by J. Lynn Jackson (aka Jeff)
The Red Sweater
Charles Darwin, Her True Story
The Red Sweater
A Two Act Play by J. Lynn Jackson, 2017
A Catholic priest in search of love wrestles with belief and doubt. His journey – both guided and misguided by family, work, church, and self - ultimately inspires a leap of faith beyond the bounds of conventional religion and in to the passionate embrace of a bigger God.
The Red Sweater is based on Maurice L. Monette's memoir, Confessions of a Gay Married Priest.
Lucía Fuentes
Charles Darwin, Her True Story
The Red Sweater
A Two Act Play by J. Lynn Jackson, 2019
Spiritual guru, Hernán Espinoza, walks Japan’s Shikoku pilgrimage path to honor the lives of 43 students who disappeared in his home country of Mexico. Coincidentally, the Abbess that guides all Shikoku pilgrims has a vital interest in Hernán’s journey, yet senses she must test his true intentions. While taking a shortcut to save time, Hernán has a breakdown. Not knowing whether he is alive or dead, a man or a woman, a saint or a sinner, in Japan or not, he continues to the end, which, on the circular Shikoku path, is also the beginning.
Lucía Fuentes was a semi-finalist for the 2021 Woodward International Playwriting Prize. In 2022, Miyoko Sakatani's Playland Productions produced a staged dramatic reading directed by Katja Rivera at San Francisco's Potrero Stage . The play is one of three plays PlayGround selected for their 2022 Free-Plays Festival (with the best attendance and best ticket sales) and one of four plays selected by Town Hall Theatre for production in their 2023-2024 New Voices Festival.
Charles Darwin, Her True Story
Charles Darwin, Her True Story
Charles Darwin, Her True Story
A Two Act Play by J. Lynn Jackson, 2021
It's January 1, 2001 in southern Chile. A wealthy sponsor of Latin American revolutions appears shipwrecked on a shrinking patch of thin ice along with a ghost, a gun, a knife and a secret admirer. While telling stories of relations with Pablo Neruda, Frida Kahlo, Fidel Castro, and others, clues for survival and escape are revealed, but for just one.
The play celebrates Latin American revolutionaries and the potential for revolutionary change in everyone . It also shows how survival skills can ultimately backfire if unexplored or overused, and can delude one’s sense of self and whole being.
Latinx Mafia premiered Charles Darwin, Her True Story directed by Terzina Vital as one of nine plays selected for PlayGround's 2022 Innovators Showcase Festival at Potrero Stage in San Francisco. The play had the best attendance and best ticket sales of the nine festival shows.
The Gate Guard
Diva, Shaman of Chamula
Charles Darwin, Her True Story
It's 2019 in Santiago, Chile. When hungry slum-dwellers storm the gate at Christ's Home Hospital, the soon-to-retire gate guard, José, is left with a broken hand, no job, no healthcare, and no pension. He's also left with much more time than he wanted to heal his hand, his stressed marriage and his long festering wounds left by the Pinochet dictatorship. As months pass, José loses all hope for positive change. Then, a student uprising ignites all of Chile and sparks a flame José thought had been doused forever inside himself, his relationships and his country.
Coming Soon.
Four Fathers
Diva, Shaman of Chamula
Diva, Shaman of Chamula
Mikey's estranged father and uncles break him free from the remote Arkansas compound where his mother raised him on bibles, guns and bubble gum. After barely uttering a word in 10 years, Mikey is now in the big city and is desperate to get a job and become a man, but his over-texting mother plots to get her little boy back.
Coming Soon.
Diva, Shaman of Chamula
Diva, Shaman of Chamula
Diva, Shaman of Chamula
In southern Mexico, the Shaman of Chamula is mysteriously "disappeared" the same day Diva, a washed-up drag queen, turns (head over heels) to him for "spiritual direction". Determined to find the Shaman, Diva seeks support from friends in the local gay, indigenous, and women's rights movements. Diva learns the Shaman is caught up in a skirmish between Zapatista rebels, the corrupt federal government, drug lords and the ruthless developers of the proposed Palenque Pyramids theme-park. To draw attention to the Shaman's cause, Diva does what she does best - she unites her fragmented community in the creation of a musical extravaganza, calling on old friend Ricky Martin to recruit talent from across the Americas. For Diva, bringing attention to Mexicos's disappeared and regaining the Shaman's spiritual direction is well worth the personal sacrifices of keeping her hair in place and her nails from breaking.
Coming Soon.