The World Premiere of Bo-Nita at Seattle Rep, October 18 – November 17, 2013, also garnered rave reviews.

Up next for Elizabeth: She continues workshopping Portugal, a play that centers around workers at the Hanford nuclear waste site who are exposed to radioactive materials while on the job.

Bo-nita at Portland Center Stage:

Bo-Nita at Seattle Rep:

Mitzi’s Abortion was produced in New York and Florida in 2011, Washington DC, July 12-25, 2012, and in Minneapolis, October 19-28, 2012. See reviews. Mitzi’s Abortion, received ACT Theatre’s (Seattle) New Play Award in 2005, and had its world premiere at ACT in 2006.

Bo-Nita plays at Seattle Rep until November 17 (see reviews) and then moves to a run at Portland Center Stage, February 1, 2014.

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Hannah Mootz, Bo-Nita, Seattle Rep

Sometimes the stars align perfectly in the theater. The play is excellent, the directing crisp and the acting picture perfect. This doesn’t happen very often but when it does, a spectator feels like she’s just won the Powerball lottery. A Searing Portrait of a Young Girl’s Life, by Alice Kaderlan, Seattle P-I

The magic of Heffron’s writing—and Mootz’s performance and Budraitis’s direction—is its deftness, its ability to slip these bitter questions into a story that is, despite itself, still funny. Bo-Nita, like its title character, is a little miracle. A Grim Caper, by Brendan Kiley, The Seattle Stranger

Seattle-based Heffron’s cluttered, revved-up, ultimately poignant script swerves between a comedy of the grotesque that draws guffaws and cringes, and a compassionate study of a bright, at-risk kid who talks tough but can’t always mask her hurt and loneliness. Misha Berson, Seattle Times.

Mootz teeters between girl and hag, thug and wag, with nary a moment’s conflation. Her multiple performances in one seal her reputation as one of Seattle’s most intriguing and technically adept talents. Though the only performer onstage, each of her distinct characters steals scenes from the others; it’s a stage trick like an Escher drawing. Opening Nights, Bo-Nita, Margaret Friedman, Seattle Weekly.

“Elizabeth Heffron is one of the friendliest playwrights you’ll ever meet. She laughs easily; and when she listens, it’s usually with the attentive, sensitive smile of an experienced mom. Pretty, relaxed, and engaged, she doesn’t seem in any way a troublemaker. But that’s only true if you haven’t seen her plays. “That’s what I was told by a literary manager I met at Hedgebrook,” she says, remembering a recent encounter at the Whidbey Island writers’ colony. “After we read one of my plays, she just looked at me and said, ‘But you seem like such a nice lady.’ ” Read the rest of the story: Seattle Weekly Fall Arts: Elizabeth Heffron. Why a local playwright wants us to consider a rigged economic system.

Post-Play Discussions: October 27, 2 p.m.; October 31, 7:30 p.m.; November 3, 2:00 p.m.; November 6, 2 p.m. SRO Spotlights: Thursday, November 7. 11 a.m. (Meet the artists of Bo-Nita.)

Next, Bo-Nita has a run at Center Stage in Portland, from February 1 – March 16, 2014. If you Tweet it hashtag: #pcs_Bonita

Seattle Rep’s synopsis for Bo-Nita:

Life’s not easy for Bo-Nita. It never is for a 13-year-old, but especially one who winds up with a dead, semi-ex-stepfather on her bedroom floor. With humor, pathos, and a dash of Midwest magic realism, Bo-Nita follows the resourceful exploits of a working class mother-daughter duo determined to stay together—and out of jail. Elizabeth Heffron is a local playwright and alumna of the Rep’s Writers Group. Under her skillful hand, Bo-Nita, is a theatrical coming-of-age tale that is both hilarious and heartbreaking.

See the Seattle Rep Writer’s Group Spotlight: Elizabeth Heffron. Elizabeth talks about her latest work-in-progress, Portugal, that will have its first read at The Rep this Friday night. Excerpt from the Q & A:

(Portugal) is about a pair of tank farm workers, a young couple, and what happens when one of them gets “dosed” by radioactive waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation over in eastern Washington. How the company responds. How their family and co-workers respond—and ultimately how this accident changes both of them. The problems over there are so overwhelming and seemingly intractable, and yet people keep doing what they can to try and clean the place up, even in the face of massive technical problems and corporate corruption. I am drawn to this combination of both despair and hope.

The Weatherman Project will be directed by Sheila Daniels. Co-written with former Weatherman member Kit Bakke, the play tells the story of five young people in the midst of the Vietnam era and the road that leads them to the Weather Underground, a radical anti-war group.

The Weatherman Project was first workshopped through the Rep’s Writers Group in May, 2012. Read Seattle Rep’s Playwright Profile of Elizabeth about The Weatherman Project.

The Weatherman Project schedule at the Rep: Wed., Jan 30, 7:30 pm; Fri., Feb. 1, 7:30 pm; Sat., Feb. 2, 2:00 pm; Sun., Feb. 3, 2:00 pm.