Unknown: A Play

Nobody knows Sydney Anders. Nobody living anyway. Well, maybe one or two people, but they don’t know her well. So nobody paid much attention when the boxes came into the Archives—seven to be exact, six full of journals and one of cassette tapes. But Sophie was there when the boxes came. She just turned 30 and has been volunteering at the Archives for two years now. Thea was also there. She’s 15 and has been spending a lot of time at the Archives lately. Unknown follows Thea, Sophie, and a handful of characters who interact with them, as they flip through the pages of Sydney’s life, discovering her story as they go about their business in a very idiosyncratic archive related to the lives of lesbians. Inspired by the 40-year-old Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn, NY, Unknown offers a portrait of a small community of lesbians spanning four generations. It asks how we come to know a person as something more than the role they play in our lives or the labels society applies to them.