Liz Baker

writer for the stage & screen

Liz is a writer of plays, films, and video games based in Seattle, WA. She holds a BA in Film Studies from Mount Holyoke College and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University, where she studied under Rob Handel. Her awards include 2nd place in the Alfred P. Sloan Screenplay Competition (2019), Eugene O’Neill NPC Semi-Finalist (2019), and Theater Masters’ Take Ten Finalist (2018). Her residencies include Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Hangar Theatre A.I.R.S, and Adams State University's Rare A.I.R. programs. In 2018, her play The Death of Odysseus was published by Samuel French as a part of Theater Masters’ Take Ten Vol. 4.

She currently works for Bungie, Inc as a narrative designer on the MMORPG Destiny 2. Her credits include Destiny 2: Beyond Light, Season of the Chosen, and Witch Queen. She is also a proud member of the playwrights' collective, Parley, who produced her most recent play Dreams of the Nth Empire (available for free viewing on parleyproductions.com).

Plays

Fix! That! Face!

10 min (2n)

Two spritely avatars of childish impulse and instinctual restraint have been tasked with making their world spic'n'span. Brat and Angel push and pull against one another in a wordless dance of dualities as a game-show clock counts down on their chore time. This show was performed as part of Parley's site-specific production APOSIOPESIS.

Dreams of the Nth Empire

90 min (3n)

Driven together by their increasingly apocalyptic dreams, a trio of soothsayers band together to turn humanity from the disastrous course set by the empire in which they live. The only problem is they can’t quite figure out how to pull that off. All too aware of the sword of Damocles hovering over their heads, SIBYL, ORACLE, and PROPHET cast desperately into the past for wisdom on conjuring a new future. Meanwhile, the present –– with all the distractions of daily life –– challenges their perceptive powers, threatening to derail the whole endeavor.

Something Massive Looms Overhead

90 min (1w, 2m, 2n)

1977. Voyagers 1 & 2 are bound for the stars, each carrying a golden phonograph record containing the sounds & images of Earth... just in case any intelligent life forms out there are wondering who we are. The problem is, we don't exactly know ourselves. Three Millennials attempt to answer this by recreating the project in 2018 –– a process that ultimately forces them to confront the fact that even if we aren't alone in the universe, that doesn't mean we won't be lonely anymore. A phantasmagoric play about science, communication, human imperfection & existential smallness.

Slip Into Her Skin

90 min (5w, 2m, 1n)

What do a fast-talking thirteen-year-old, an avant-garde theatre director, a trans accountant, and a devoutly-Christian ingenue have in common? When an edgy warehouse production of Hedda Gabler draws these four radically different women into orbit with each other, they are continually forced to reevaluate themselves and their strategies of survival. How do you untangle who you are when the world refuses to stop dictating what you should be?

Soaps Gold

30 min (2w, 2m)

The stars of soap opera Nouveau Riche are thrown for a loop when the show's execs fire the whole production team in favor of a highfalutin New York director who promises to return the soap to its daytime glory. With a clandestine affair, a dire diagnosis, and a destiny-altering secret thrown into the mix, the line between reality and television gets blurrier and blurrier.

The Death of Odysseus

10 min (2m)

Roommates Pete and Jasper have a pretty good thing going. That is, until Jasper makes it his mission to rescue the dying bee outside of their apartment. When a conversation about video games, the ecological importance of bees, and the music of Father John Misty takes an unexpected turn, the two young men find themselves opening up to the scary and exciting possibilities of where their friendship could go.

Porcupines

90 min (3w, 4m)

When she left home three years ago, Rose sorta expected that everything would stay the same. Now as a college graduate with zero job prospects, she moved back to find that her sister has come out of the closet as her brother, her mother has moved in with another woman, and her distant father just so happens to be in town. Oh yeah, and her ex-best friend is back too. The only thing that hasn’t changed is Gramma Alma’s drinking, but that’s little comfort. When the tensions of this screwed-up blended family prove to be too much, Rose lets loose the very secret that drove her away in the first place, forcing everyone to reconsider where their loyalties lie.

Screenplays

The Friends I Made & the Zombies I Had to Kill to Get Them

feature length teen comedy

Every school day, Lu has one goal: survive in order to spend the rest of her time on her favorite zombie-hunting video game. When her stepdad-slash-vice-principal tries to disrupt her lone-wolf habits, she gets drawn into an ethically dubious scheme by her computer-expert crush to win the science fair’s cash prize. However, as the project takes on a life of its own, this simulation of a zombie-high apocalypse winds up thrusting Lu into the most dangerous red zone of them all: the spotlight of the entire school.

Dark Matters

feature-length ephemeral drama

Romance novelist Sam Quentin knew nothing about science until dark matter expert Dr. Trish McKay came into her life. Cut to a few years later and Sam still doesn’t know much, only that her brilliant & beautiful wife fervently wishes to understand the universe, taking on the formidable challenge of finding direct evidence of dark matter. After Trish's untimely death, Sam’s faith in any order to the universe, along with the rest of her life, is completely obliterated. But with the help of her mother-in-law Patricia and a persistent hallucination appearing in the form of famous astronomer Vera Rubin, Sam dives into the heart of her late wife’s work while finding her way through the darkest parts of her grief.