Adelynn
Anderson
Actor / Writer / Director
About Me
Adelynn is an actor, director, and writer, originally from New England and currently based in New York City. Their favorite non-theatrical activities are making hyper-specific Spotify playlists, designing spreads for their bullet journal, and playing guitar covers of various mid-2010s soft-rock alternative radio hits (much to the delight of their roommates).
Their first experience as an actor was playing an orphan boy in Oliver! when they were eleven. This sparked a lifelong desire to bring various conniving little British lads to life on stages across the mid-Atlantic. Now, they have recently graduated from NYU with a BFA in Drama and used it, most recently, to continue that tradition by portraying Much the Miller's Son in a Robin Hood retelling (Nottingham, FFTT).
While at NYU, Adelynn's training with Playwrights Horizons Theatre School deepened their performance skillset and introduced them to a previously unknown love of theatre-making as a writer, director, and devisor. They appeared in a number of theatrical productions at NYU (including the Fall 2021 Tisch Mainstage) and directed a full-length play in their final semester at Playwrights.
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Adelynn's favorite pieces of media (across all mediums) are, in no particular order, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," Dead Poets Society (1989), "Succession," It Chapters 1 and 2 (2017-19), Fall Out Boy's "Infinity on High,"The Bacchae by Euripides, The Social Network (2010), "Supernatural" Season 4, "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen, and the 2015 revival of Spring Awakening by the Deaf West theatre company.​
The kinds of work Adelynn is most drawn to are pieces that re-interpret modern and historical canon through a queer and/or trans lens and new work that puts a microscope on the complex intimate moments that color a relationship, often blurring the lines between platonic, romantic, and sexual intimacy.
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Acting Reel
Personality Reel
Directing
Click for photos / video link
bakkhai
2022
​​​Playwrights Horizons Theatre School
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This iteration of Anne Carson’s Bakkhai is a radical interrogation of Euripides’ story and characters through a queer-and-trans-affirmative lens.
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It sought to discover the ways in which the original text houses a story of trans self-discovery (despite its conservative language regarding gender expression) while also consciously ignoring much of the playwright’s original morality, choosing to use the text to tell a story-below-the-surface that explores the degree to which one must, literally or metaphorically, first be torn apart limb-from-limb before they can achieve self-actualization and lead a truly free and fulfilling life.
Playwriting
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[untitled]
2025
Currently Workshopping​​
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​Through the cultural lense of a rural New England Protestant church community shortly after the turn of the millennium, this new play follows a small group of young adults, among them the pastor's son Michael, his best friend and aspiring punk rocker Mariah, and the new church secretary Alex, who has just moved in to the town that nobody ever moves to. Curiosity turns to obsession turns to devotion in this allegory that asks the question: what if Jesus returned to Earth as the gay, communist, weirdo son of a single and emotionally absent father in 2003, right at the inception of the "war on terror"?
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This play is not yet titled and is currently being workshopped with the goal of staging a reading in late 2025.
it's cool that we can do that
2020
"Dinosaur, Roar!" Play Festival
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In an unidentified and unimportant area of the forest, two young girls spend the day searching for their favorite snack: leaves.
Frog is determined to get the perfect specimen for their meal, Newt is just having fun with her best friend.
Frog is searching, but does she really know what for?
This script is finished and was my first completed work. A companion play is currently in drafts.
Essays
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Medium.com
2019​
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An examination of the character Neil Perry from Peter Weir's 1989 classic Dead Poets Society, specifically focusing on his untimely death at his own hand and how this plot point relates to his coding as homosexual. This essay argues that the story can only be logically understood if Neil is, in fact, gay and closeted, drawing textual support from his relationship with his classmate Todd, various queer motifs (particularly the recurring character of Walt Whitman), and his journey with theatre.
"'The Desire Before the Desire': Trans Thematics in Bacchae’s Pentheus"
Medium.com
2022
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A companion text to my directorial vision of Bakkhai in 2022, this essay argues for a trans reading of Euripides' play utilizing extensive support from the scholar and translator Anne Carson. Not only is the Bacchae a play that tells an inherently trans story, but there is room for interpretation that it is in many ways trans-affirmative. Pentheus' journey from rigidly masculine monarch to soft, inquisitive, and feminine maenad under the influence of the endlessly gender fluid Dionysos is, at points, genuinely touching and beautiful.
Recent Work
Nottingham
by Zoe Gray
Foul Fiend Theatre Troupe Summer 2024​
Dir. Jake Keville and Zoe Gray
Role: Much the Miller's Son​
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​Advertised as "a new rom-com," this reinvention of a classic English folktale takes its name not from the titular character of Robin Hood, but rather his love interest: not Maid Marian, but the Sheriff of Nottingham. What if, while on a secret reconnaissance mission aimed at taking down the famous bandit, Nottingham realized he was gay instead? And what if Marian was Robin Hood's very butch very platonic BFF? And what if a 10 year old was there? Nottingham examines love, lust, duty, honesty, and what it really means to be brave.
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Produced as part of Foul Fiend Theatre Troupe's Summer 2024 Outdoor season, Nottingham was performed for the general public, free of charge, in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.
Chasing Geese
Columbia University Short Film​
Dir. Casey Friedman
Role: Eva
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Two sisters, Eva and Fernanda, travel to New York City during their spring break in hopes of exploring their recently deceased grandmother's Upper West Side community. Fernanda is there to try to understand who she is and where she came from. Eva is just there to spend time with her.
Described as "Brilliant and high-strung ... [and] despite her ambitious course load and busy schedule adjusting to life at MIT, there is nothing [Eva] wouldn’t do and nowhere she wouldn’t go for her little sister."
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Filmed in early March 2023, this project was created in conjunction with Columbia's CUFP club and premiered at the Obscura Film Festival in April 2023.
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