about Surrey
You probably read part of this on my homepage, but here is more about me in the semi-awkward, 'traditional', 3rd person bio format.
Surrey Houlker (she/her) is a Queer, Massachusetts-based theater maker who explores the intricacies of the LGBTQIA+ experience through belonging, community, honesty, and humor. Surrey is also drawn to stories that examine grief, loss, and neurodiverse ways of connecting with others. She is also a big crier.
Surrey's full-length plays include her first play FOR THE FISH (upcoming residency/reading: the cell theatre, residency/reading: Great Plains Theatre Commons (GPTC), reading: The Depot, workshopped production: Moonbox Productions Boston New Works Festival, finalist: Seattle Public Theater Distillery Festival, Live Arts WATERWORKS Festival, semi-finalist: Local Theater Company Local Lab), and THE DEAD DADZ CLUB (reading: TC2 Theatre Company). Other short plays include HOUSE PLAY co-written with Gabriele Preston (performance: Fresh Ink Theatre), LINDA'S DONUTS, SEVEN MINUTES, and EVERYTHING MUST GO (performance: Emerson College). Additionally, Surrey was a finalist for Company One Theatre Volt Lab 2024. Surrey holds a BFA from Emerson College.
In addition to writing, Surrey believes wholeheartedly in the intersection of arts education, trauma-informed teaching, and advocacy. She currently works at a cheese shop and has worked with Arts for Learning Massachusetts, A.R.T., ArtsEmerson, The Gamm Theatre, and as a teacher with Tiverton RI Public Schools. She is passionate about giving young people the space to start conversations with their personal and collective histories regardless of societal factors that may tell them otherwise.
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When I came out at age 13, I was advised not to tell anyone about my hormonal urges. I guess there was a worry about what would happen to me if I became too visible in the land of manicured cul-de-sacs and Massachusetts residents fond of the Confederate flag. But I told a lot of people anyway and continued to kiss my first girlfriend in every nook and cranny of our town. It was an exhilarating, awkward, confusing, and ultimately liberating time for me. I still carry that pimply, determined 13-year-old with me in all my creative work, advocacy, and playwriting.
I write in conversation with my many selves. There’s the previously mentioned squirrelly 13-year-old Surrey who had an embarrassing emo phase, the kinetic toddler Surrey who tried to ride her dog like a horse, and the Surrey one-week-ago who still hasn’t recovered from losing her father in 1998. I write about adolescence, loss, and Queerness through a lens of magical realism to heal parts of myself and encourage collaborators, audiences, and readers to do the same. I craft plays that examine the often ridiculous, fiercely resilient reality of living with the tangled knot of grief through life’s many different stages. My art uplifts Queer voices to help dismantle patriarchal, traditionalist, and exclusionary structures with understanding, heart, and humor. The folks I write about show us that a more empathetic, more expansive, more liberated world is possible.
Stylistically, I would describe the stories I create as earnestly character-driven and emotionally honest, with one foot planted in reality and the other planted in the mouth of some unrelenting, gurgling creature. By blending grounded relationships with moments of dream-like vulnerability, I seek to dissect what it means to be truly visible. The characters I write about live both within and in opposition to their surroundings. They grapple with talking, malevolent fish, dead dads who aren’t really dead, vaguely threatening, homoerotic dreams, and middle school talent shows. They break from their given confines to build something new for themselves and their communities.
In writing stories for and with my Queer community, I have learned much about collective liberation and unapologetic visibility. I often think about my past and future selves and ask, ‘What do they need?’ I don’t have an answer to that yet, but if Queer folks of all ages feel a powerful streak of recognition and catharsis after experiencing one of my plays, I think I am on the right track.
