First Reads: Eelpout by Paul W. Kruse

First Reads is a series of staged readings produced in partnership with Missoula Public Library.
Eelpout is a fast-paced, surreal farce, where friends are lovers, fish can talk, and life’s mysteries beckon from the bottom of a frozen lake. Sven Svensen and Ole Olsen have been best buds since kindergarten, but all that changes on the morning of Ole’s ice-fishing bachelor party. Could they be something more than friends, or is Sven destined for something even more wild and strange. This fantasia on Midwestern masculinity invites us to consider the limits of Queerness. Naturally, this includes a dream ballet Eelpout Orgy!
Paul William Kruse often writes collaboratively, drawing from his years of experience as a videographer and documentarian, and has been commissioned twice by Montana Repertory Theatre (Hip Strip Hijinks, BINGO!). He is a 2023 2025 Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis and a cohort member of Audible’s third Emerging Playwrights Fund. His audio play Once Removed was an official selection at the 2022 Tribeca Festival. Paul’s plays have been produced by Adjusted Realists in Brooklyn, NY; Quantum Theatre in Pittsburgh, PA; the Vortex Theater in Austin, TX; and in high schools around the country. Paul has developed work at The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Yaddo, the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, and Middlebury College. Paul completed his MFA at UT Austin in 2020, where he was a fellow with the Michener Center for Writers. From 2012 2022, Paul was resident playwright with Pittsburgh’s Hatch Arts Collective, which he co-founded with Adil Mansoor and Nicole Shero.