Jane Haley is the punny voice of the comic strip “King Tot,” a three-panel strip about a nine-year-old pharaoh in Ancient Egypt. Jane has just been nominated for the Chuckling Willow, the single most important award for female cartoonists in New England. All seems to be going well until bleak news strikes the Haley household. As Jane tries to hide her coping by working extensively on her comics, her art suffers as her main character tries to find his way through the Land of the Dead to find his “mummy.” Playwright Olivia Dufault pairs humor with heartache in this exploration of the processing of grief.
The Tomb of King Tot premiered as a part of the Clubbed Thumb Summerworks Festival at The Wild Project in New York City in June 2016 under the direction of Portia Krieger.