PLAY DEAD Comes to Horse Hospital and Playhouse East

Mia Hull will direct Bailey Edwards' new play Play Dead , a queer, darkly comic modern myth about love, loss, and the brutal ways heartbreak consumes us.  It features Edwards and Annalisa Plumb in the cast. 

Echo is reeling from a breakup — gutted, sleepless, and desperate. In a fit of grief-fuelled revenge, he kidnaps his ex's dog, Scotland, and waits for the inevitable panicked phone call. But as the waiting begins, the story spirals: grapefruits pile up, microphones spark confessions. What starts as a dark comedy becomes mythic, violent, and painfully human.

Play Dead begins as a confessional comedy and unravels into a mythic confrontation with addiction, obsession, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive. Blending Ovid's Metamorphoses with raw contemporary honesty, the play is funny, brutal and devastating and asks when love becomes an addiction, how much of yourself are you willing to lose?

This is the debut play of Bailey Edwards (Mothers of Monsters, Highway One) and was developed with the help of his longtime collaborator Mia Hull. Earlier this year, the show was workshopped at Theatre Deli before its first public sharing with Amber Anderson (Peaky Blinders, Emma) at the Rosemary Branch in May 2025

Betyl is a small company that makes theatre that crosses between classical and the contemporary, often in unorthodox places. They have worked with Kameron Steele, Physical Plastic, and the Suzuki Company of Toga to develop a physical theatre practice. For the last decade, they have made theatre in barns, former frat houses, outdoor showers—and now, a dog crate.

Bailey Edwards is an actor and writer based in London and New York. His stage work includes Princess Ivona at NYC's Theater Row, Alarum at RedCat in LA, and the West Coast premiere of Nicky Silver's Too Much Sun at the Odyssey Theater. In film, Bailey has appeared in My Dead Boyfriend, Netflix's Bright, Highway One and starred in the psychological thriller Mothers of Monsters. He also wrote and starred in the web series Mark and Bailey, which premiered and featured in Paper Magazine. 

Mia Hull. In the UK, Mia Hull has directed an exterior production of Anne Carson's Agamemnon with a grant from the Judith E. Wilson Fund and was commissioned to create an experimental piece for the Christopher Isherwood centenary at the University of Cambridge. She is a former Artist-in-Residence at Judson Memorial Church, recipient of the 2017 Hubbard Hutchinson Fellowship, and has worked with the Suzuki Company of Toga (Japan), Compagnie in Cauda(France), and AlaSur (Argentina). Play Dead is Hull and Edwards' fourth production together and their first in the UK.