Lay My Burden Down

Lay My Burden Down is a serious play with silly puppets about an interracial lesbian couple navigating the burdens of privilege, trauma, and racism—and the transformations that become possible with aging, dying, and loving. Two women meet at a deathbed, decades after the explosive end of their relationship. The dying woman—mother, savior, murderer—is both puppet (literally) and puppet master, having brought her biological and spiritual daughters together again. But as the former lovers fight old battles and relive past passions (with the help of sock puppets), it becomes clear that the reunion won't go as planned.

Strange Angels Theater

Strange Angels Theater is a San Francisco-based company that focuses on stories about the complexities of women’s lives—especially women who are historically marginalized. Their practice is to partner with service organizations and other groups to bring plays, storytelling, and art-making directly to people in their communities. Projects have included “Hunter’s Point,” a play about homelessness, home, and frayed family connections, produced in the historic basement theater at St. Boniface Church in the Tenderloin; Home/Cooking, a series of art-making/storytelling salons with current and formerly homeless women; and Everyone Deserves a Home, a roving interview/photography studio designed to elicit stories from supportive housing residents about their lives.

Artist Biographies

Christine Young

Christine Young is codirector of Strange Angels Theater and a theater director and dramaturg specializing in new plays about social issues affecting women’s lives. She has worked with many local theaters, including Just Theatre, Crowded Fire, Lunatique Fantastique, Magic Theatre, Golden Thread Productions, Mugwumpin and CalShakes. Christine is a former Literary Manager and Associate Artistic Director of Playwrights Foundation. She currently teaches in the Rhetoric and Language Department at University of San Francisco and researches the use of creative teaching practices in general education classrooms.

Elizabeth Gjelten

Elizabeth Gjelten is a playwright, poet, community arts worker, and codirector of Strange Angels Theater. Her plays touch on the radical acts of faith needed to build bridges between people divided by class, ethnicity, or painful personal histories. They include “Hunter’s Point” (Strange Angels Theater; Bay Area Playwrights Festival), “Big Breath” (Alleyway Theater, Buffalo, NY; Actor’s Ensemble of Berkeley), “What the Birds Carry” (Pear Avenue Theater), and “Dance Lessons” (Venue 9, Working Women Festival). A company playwright with 3Girls Theatre, Liz’s plays, poetry, and fiction have been published in anthologies, literary magazines, and chapbooks.

Cat Brooks

Cat Brooks is an actor, playwright, director, and dramaturg who’s performed on stage and screen for over 30 years. Notable roles include Lady Macbeth at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and starring in her one-woman show ‘Tasha (Best of SF Fringe Festival; 3GT Salon Series Playwright Festival; featured in Oakland’s BAMBD Festival). A resident artist with Lower Bottom Playaz and 3Girls Theatre, Cat is a 2024-2026 resident playwright with the Playwrights Foundation. Her short film, “Bottled Spirits,” is touring the global film festival circuit. Co-founder and executive director of the Anti Police-Terror Project, Cat hosts Law & Disorder on KPFA.

Sheila Devitt

Sheila Devitt is an accomplished puppeteer, having performed several roles with Lunatique Fantastique, Same Boat Collective, and Rhodessa Jones’ Medea Project. She’s also an all-around theater maker: actor, director, teaching artist, and producer. An ensemble member of Theatre of Yugen and member of the Actors’ Reading Collective, Sheila has performed nationally and internationally, including in the GALA Choruses Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and Hosho Noh Theatre (Tokyo). Regional credits include Marin Shakespeare Company, African American Shakespeare Company, Brava! for Women in the Arts, Ross Valley Players, Town Hall Theatre Company, and Cinnabar Theatre.

Valerie Fachman

Valerie Fachman is an actor, singer, and writer. Val acted in Chicago for 15 years (with companies like American Blues, Pegasus, Next, Blind Parrot, Chicago Shakespeare, and CityLit) and co-founded Bright Arrow Theatre (a branch of CityLit) where they produced, adapted, wrote, and performed stories by and about women. A member, actor, and manager with Performers Under Stress, Val has also performed locally with Marin Shakespeare, SF Shakespeare, Berkeley Shakespeare, Custom Made Theatre, Exit Theatre, Shotgun Players, Piano Fight, and SF Theater Pub. Recently, Val inhabited photographer Dorothea Lange for WP Last West, which expects to tour art museums statewide.