Li’l Hat & Hold Still are two interrelated plays on the loss of self in an intimate relationship, the fear it arouses, and the desperate attempts to keep the inexorable at bay without foreclosing on the last—perhaps only—mutually consenting intimacy one has known. This, while not forfeiting one’s privilege—which may indeed be a right—to ongoing consent, arguably the final value by which human dignity is exercisable and thereby recognizable to oneself and to others.

But when the cost of No or Stop fluctuates too high, and Yes seems out of the question, one is left to one’s own primitive resources to move forward. That is to say one is alone and trapped. In Li’l Hat, a couple struggles to kindle a dormant connection through a meaningless act of physical intimacy, the pursuit of which is violent for its relentlessness. Only when all hope appears to have been shattered do they find their connection. In Hold Still an act of grooming between a couple becomes an imaginary nightmare of voyeurism and vulnerability that must be transformed into destructive reality for it to end.