Do Any Of You Know Who This Is? / You Did It!
Hollywood Fringe Festival 2023 / Cutting Ball Theater 2024
Payson debuted her original solo show, Do Any of You Know Who This Is? at the 2023 Hollywood Fringe Theater Festival. The project received the Hollywood Producer’s Encore Award and was invited to return for an extended run. It later premiered professionally under a new title, You Did It, as a co-production with the experimental Cutting Ball Theater in San Francisco.
You Did It! is a show about a woman named Me. Me has an eating disorder. Me runs a small artisanal grocery store. Me seeks herself in everyone she meets. She wants to know— what are you having for dinner and also what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? I’ll go first.
Harpies, 2022
Payson cowrote the short film Harpies with her writing partner, Molly Kirschenbaum. The campy, genre-bending script has earned placement in multiple screenwriting competitions, including quarterfinalist selection in The Script Lab Screenplay contest, and semi-finalist selections in Hollyshorts and the Manhattan Film Festival. The film is a proof of concept for a pilot of the same name that placed in the second round of selections in the 2022 Austin Film Festival.
It's 1894, and with a fake mustache and well-endowed roll of socks, Nora, a poor farmer's daughter, is the first woman to attend the Royal Academy of the Arts in London. Her ruse is upended, however, when the Academy admits its first official female student, insufferable heiress Margueritte Durand.
Watch Harpies Here. Password: Harpies2023