MOUTHFEEL by Emma Howard to Open as Part of Neurodivergent Plays Season

This September, Neurodivergent Plays - previously known as the Neurodivergent New Play Series - will open its 2026-27 Season with a reading of Mouthfeel - written by Emma Howard and directed by Camila Calderón - at Brooklyn Art Haus, located at 24 Marcy Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, on September 20th at 4:30pm.

Mouthfeel is an experimental dark comedy set in a heightened version of reality, where four people lurch towards each other in attempts at connection. Yarl and Slab try to date one another. Urdeen attempts to make small talk in public spaces. Customer service workers pour their hearts out to anyone who will listen. People speak their subtext out loud and compulsively confess their most shameful and vulnerable desires. Throughout the play, they find moments of connection with one another, inadvertently saving each other. A lost bird is found.

According to playwright Emma Howard, “[a]s a neurodivergent person, I think I’ve always been fascinated and bemused by social scripts and the seemingly arbitrary rules that accompany them, but I feel like all those things are heightened in certain scenarios like first dates where the desire to connect is so strong and the ability to connect seems so limited by the socially acceptable rules for conversation. And I think in this particular situation I was kind of weirdly moved by the clear intention on each person’s part to form a connection within the wildly stilted and awkward nature of the conversation.”

They add that “another big inspiration for me was the specific kind of connection that I’ve found in customer service interactions (both as an employee and a consumer) during deep depressive episodes. There are all kinds of rules and social pressures that come with interpersonal relationships, and I think sometimes there’s a weird sense of freedom in the short, momentary connections you can form with someone you might never see again,” stating further that “when I think about neurodivergent empowerment, specifically as a writer or performer, one thing that comes to mind for me is just what a gift it is to have such a heightened sensitivity to our environment and people around us and the way we relate to other people. I definitely spend a lot of time feeling exhausted and discouraged by sensory sensitivity and burnout and social anxiety and there are plenty of things about neurodivergence that make being alive in the world feel uniquely challenging, but especially right now I think it’s a difficult time for everyone, for a variety of reasons. And one of the greatest sources of solace for me has been my sense of humor and the sort of attunement I feel to the comically absurd nature of things, which I feel like is deeply related to neurodivergence, and I can’t imagine going through life without that.”

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