Brighde Mullins Selected Works

It's the mid-1980s, just when the Human Genome Project is getting underway. After being dumped in the desert by her military-minded dad, Tara goes on the lam to escape her dysfunctional family, and bumps into a brilliant symmetry-obsessed geneticist who also happens to be a deadbeat dad and former heroin addict. As this unlikely couple tries to find some small salvation in each other, Tara's family is forced to examine their troubling past. Drawing on evolutionary psychology and Neo-Darwinian thought, this is a comic play about tragic personalities—will they be able to move forward into the future?

Anne Marie has an epiphany on the subway when she reads this poster: "No One Ever Remembered a Great Accountant: TEACH." She quickly decides to ditch her lucrative advertising career, and dreams of pursuing a more meaningful life of teaching inner-city high school students. But despite her over-qualifications, a lack of teaching credits lands her at Staten Island Community College. Armed with enthusiasm, she throws herself into her work, but an insanely unruly student and an indifferent department begin to upend all of her good intentions. How long can she hold out?

A comedic history play set in the 19th century during the Irish potato famine. Mavourneen, a poor Irish peasant, moves to the United States and finds work as a servant, where she becomes entwined in the shifting romantic and political intrigues of her wealthy Anglo-Irish employers.

A comedy set in Las Vegas and the desert wasteland surrounding it.

Mullins's first professional full-length work, performed in 1990 and featuring Lili Taylor as a saint. This musical had a book and lyrics by Mullins, with score by Charles Goldbeck.

Mullins's early one-act play about a patient in a home for eating disorders, anthologized in the collection Lucky Thirteen.

Named for a notorious paparazzi hangout spot in Los Angeles, The Bourgeois Pig explores the power of image——on the page and in the public eye——through the character of a late-1970s war photographer-turned-paparazzi.

Set in 1978 Los Angeles, The Bourgeois Pig tells the story of the Riley family, trying hard to hang onto their hopes and each other in the face of serious dysfunction. Jack, the father, is a brilliant but damaged former war photographer who never really came back from Vietnam, now making his living as a paparazzi. His ex-wife Francie hasn't quite given up on an acting career that began (and pretty much ended) with an appearance on "Laugh-In" eight years before. Older daughter Riley is in her first year at UCLA, awakening to intellectual exploration and her attraction to women. Her sister Colette struggles with the pressure of her mother's expectation that she grow up thin and beautiful, and find the success that Francie never had.