My Cousin Nelu is Not Gay
by Diana Lobontiu
Play, 2 non-cis men
This is a mildly to moderately vengeful two-person show in which Diana (a lightly fictionalized version of the real Diana) spills their guts about being a lesbian Romanian immigrant in America, while their cousin Nelu (a massively fictionalized version of Diana's real cousin) tells the audience his story of being a raspberry farmer in the Transylvanian countryside whose farm is a front for the mafia. Nelu is NOT gay. Except in this show. This is an absurdist comedy butting up against a confessional monologue. This is a bilingual play in which English clashes with Romanian and the gays wrestle the straights to take control of the stage. This is what happens when factual family history meets the stories we tell ourselves about how we grew up, or how we wish we had.
About the Author
Diana Lobontiu is a Romanian American playwright, actor, educator, and administrator based in Brooklyn. Diana holds a playwriting MFA from Brooklyn College and a BA from Wellesley College. They teach playwriting at NJIT and Brooklyn College. They are interested in exploring the intersections of masculinity, dominance + oppression, failure, and loneliness. Diana was named a 2024 MacDowell Fellow, a 2023 Jane Hoppen Resident with Paragraph Workspace for Writers, and received the 2023 Puffin Grant for My Cousin Nelu Is Not Gay. Recent writing includes My Cousin Nelu Is Not Gay (The Brick Theater 2023, Ars Nova’s ANT Fest 2022), Rentabutch (Bushwick Starr Reading Series Finalist 2023), and If You’re A Man At Night…You Gotta Be A Man In The Morning (The Brick Theater 2024, The Workshop Theatre 2023). Diana has performed their solo show Sfânta: Hell Bent on Heaven, about a teenage wannabe Russian Orthodox saint, at the Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Kalamazoo, Oregon, and Orlando Fringe Festivals.