People acting on a small stage resembling a living room in a theater, with three individuals engaged in a scene, a table, and a chair set with a tablecloth, facing an audience.
Two people with glasses and gray hair sitting at a table in a dark room, engaged in conversation. The one on the left is touching his chin and the one on the right is looking towards him, wearing a white cap and an orange shirt under a vest.
A person standing in a wooded forest during autumn, looking upward with hands clasped, with dashed lines overlayed on the image.

An unknown autistic playwright who spent years in isolation writes a startlingly original new play that brings neurodivergence center stage in an electrifying theatrical event.

A colorful collage featuring abstract, distorted faces and figures. The central figure has a large, yellow face with purple shading and red lips, overlapping with other faces that have exaggerated features and vivid colors, including blue, green, and orange, with one wearing sunglasses.
A highly stylized, abstract image of a person's face, with a bright, overexposed lighting effect.

“Gripping, potent, poetic.”

— Gerald Peary, The Arts Fuse

“ ...exhilarating, palimpsest-like ..This is a triumph not of outsider art but insider art, dramatizing and validating the subjectivity of a unique, gifted individual, with a highpoint in the play and the film being Chantal drawing on their own inner life to console their father’s nightmarish memories of the war in Afghanistan.”

— Peter Keough, The Arts Fuse

“Formally adventurous.”

— WBUR
A person in profile with long, dark hair, in a warmly lit indoor setting.
A person with curly hair and sunglasses, wearing headphones around their neck, stands with arms crossed in a classroom or office. In the background, another person with a cap is looking at a book, near a wall decorated with photos or posters.

TORNADO TASTES

LIKE ALUMINUM STING

A new film by Harmon dot aut & James Rutenbeck

(29 minutes)

Upcoming screening April 24-25:

Ashland Independent Film Festival→

A person holding their head with one hand, with visual effects of lightning and colorful streaks overlaying the image.
Three people sitting and talking in a dimly lit room, all appearing to be in a theatrical performance or rehearsal.

In their new play, autistic playwright Harmon dot aut creates a character much like themselves: Chantal Buñuel, a nonbinary autistic cinephile. Raised in poverty and diagnosed with autism, Tourette’s syndrome, alexithymia, and synesthesia, only six years ago.

Tornado Tastes Like Aluminum Sting traces the play’s evolution—interweaving interviews and workshop readings with Craig Lucas (The Light in the Piazza, Days of Wine and Roses), rehearsals led by Oliver Butler (What the Constitution Means to Me, A Knock on the Roof), and a performance by Jean Christian Barry (How to Dance in Ohio). The film is charged with hallucinogenic animation by Soul Proprietor.

A bold collaboration of neurodivergent artists, the film announces a singular new voice—transforming lived sensory experience into something electric, disorienting and wholly original.