The Anthropology of Desire

A new play which is a meditation on intimacy, perception, and the strange geometries of longing—unlike anything else in the short-play landscape. The Anthropology of Desire is a sharp, lyrical triptych that follows Essie, a perceptive student, and the Professor, a brilliant but restless academic, across three conceptual geographies—Cambridge & Congo, Mongolia, and Tenochtitlan. Told through a series of brief, cinematic Moments guided by a shape-shifting Narrator, the play unfolds like memory itself: flashes of insight, fragments of conversation, encounters that linger long after they pass. As Essie and the Professor move through worlds of Bonobo sexuality, Mongolian horse-color taxonomy, and Aztec sacrificial cosmology, their intellectual pursuits become mirrors for their emotional lives. What begins as research becomes a meditation on longing—how desire shapes knowledge, and how knowledge, in turn, reshapes desire. Their connection is comic, unsettling, tender, and mythic, resisting easy definition even as it draws them inexorably together. Formally inventive and theatrically bold, the play blends cinematic montage with the intimacy of live performance. Its compact length makes it ideal for festivals and university productions, while its philosophical depth rewards readers who crave theatre that thinks as fiercely as it feels. It is a meditation on intimacy, perception, and the strange geometries of longing—unlike anything else in the short-play landscape.