AJ Dwayne's HEART/LUNG to Have World Premiere at Brooklyn's Vino Theater

Heart/Lung, an original, genre-blending new drama about a closeted lesbian doctor who falls in love with her patient will have its world premiere at Brooklyn's The Vino Theater this May.

Heart/Lung's premise follows Patricia D. Smith, an ambitious pulmonologist - a doctor who specializes in the lungs - through a decades-long career shaped by identity struggles, heartache, and hope as she faces adversity in an unforgiving world.

The story begins in 1984, where Patricia meets her very first patient, Sandy, a precocious and spirited recent college grad, and the two are immediately smitten with each other.

However, prejudice against LGBTQ+ folks doubled with the unique challenges of a woman doctor during a time before that was commonplace forces Patricia to remain in the closet to save her career...even if it dooms her relationship. A cast of six female-identifying people play numerous characters, including a Greek chorus of pulmonology patients to push the story along and a complicated openly lesbian couple Patricia treats in 1995.

Playwright and director AJ Dwayne first wrote Heart/Lung as a ten-minute play which debuted at Montclair State University in 2011. Since then, it has transformed into a 60-minute one-act with runs at five Fringe festivals (Jersey Fringe, Sketch Club Players, Mesa One-Act Festival, East Lansing Ones) before retooling and expanding the play for a 90-minute runtime. Dwayne was first inspired to write Heart/Lung by an obituary about a renowned pulmonologist, and has interviewed dozens of people in and around the LGBTQ+ community, conservative opposers, and caretakers to shape the story into what it is today.

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