between stars and sky
written during Mercedes’ Tarragon’s 2024/2025 RBC Emerging Playwright Residency
is a chorally driven modern epic following the relationship between Someone (an ethereal being) and Azul (a human from Mississauga).
Someone is a soul splitter, responsible for leading souls through space, time, and life. After a major fuck-up in the eyes of the Great Council, Someone is forced to reexamine their role and responsibility as a Great Being. Meanwhile on Earth, Azul struggles with mental illness, addiction, and the collapse of her relationship with Blanca, her best friend and god-given soulmate. Spanning the before, during, and after of life and death, the play interrogates what it means to be watched by the gods today, exploring love, lust, betrayal, mortality, and self-loathing at the intersection of the human and the divine.
between stars and sky
photos from Tarragon Theatre’s Playreading Week 2025
this piece has been supported and workshopped in collaboration with so many talented artists.
Thank you to:
Jeff Ho
Alejandra Angobaldo
Max Borowski
Gillian Clark
Steph Crothers
Liz Der
Reena Goze
Trinity Lloyd
Jonnie Lombard
Zoe Marín
Rachel Quintanilla
Natasha Ramondino
Hemali Ratnaweera
Rick Roberts
Paul Smith
The RBC Tarragon Emerging Playwright Prize is one of the most prestigious playwriting awards in Canada, recognizing one exceptional emerging playwright with a cash prize, a year’s worth of dramaturgical support from Tarragon Theatre’s Artistic Staff, and a public reading during Tarragon’s annual Play Reading Week in June. The prize provides an emerging artist with the tools to overcome several of the barriers faced at the beginning of a playwriting career.
Over the course of the residency, Mercedes has been working on a new modern epic: All That’s Been Said.