Thank you to Jake Thomas for featuring Destiny’s Birthright in the Santa Cruz Sentinel’s preview article!
Read the full article (with photos by Jake!) linked here, or below:
From the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Oct 28, 2026:
“Each generation needs new voices to explore what it means to be young. Good Egg Productions is highlighting an exciting new play written by an internet native and Santa Cruz local. Isaac Ludington is presenting their play “Destiny’s Birthright” as part of Good Egg Production’s Local Playwrights Staged Reading Series Nov. 21. The Sentinel had the chance to visit the cast and creative team behind this production and spoke with the writer, the director and the lead actor.
Q: What can you tell us about the process of writing this play?
Isaac Ludington: This is an idea that I had all the way back in high school that I’ve been turning over in my mind for the past 10 years. I recently started diving into writing it a couple years back. It’s been an iterative process of writing a draft, looking at it, figuring out what’s working, what’s not. I’ve occasionally had some smaller groups of people come and read it and give feedback on it. And then I’ll do a new draft. This is an extension of that process. Only now we’re opening it to a much larger audience who’s gonna be seeing and reacting to what’s in this draft.
Q: What was the original idea?
Isaac Ludington: So “Destiny’s Birthright” is a play about the worst fan fiction ever written, and the woman who’s desperately trying to make sure nobody finds out she wrote it. It’s heavily inspired by a real fan fiction called “My Immortal,” which is sort of infamous in online fandom spaces for its poor quality. It’s so well-known that it has its own Wikipedia page. And one of the things about “My Immortal” is, to this day, we do not know who actually wrote it. So it could be a parody, it could be genuine. We truly don’t know. So it started from wondering, what might the person who wrote “My Immortal” be doing today?
And it then turned into this idea that maybe she grows up to be an adult with her own legitimate writing career, but she has this dark secret that nobody can know about. Otherwise it’ll be just a massive public embarrassment for her.
Q: So the main character is a novelist?
Isaac Ludington: She is a novelist, yeah. She writes young adult sci-fi.
Q: How does this play relate to the digital age?
Isaac Ludington: It’s very much a play about the digital age, and the experience of growing up in a world with the internet. I have done my best to authentically show that world.
Q: What is the staged reading going to be like?
Isaac Ludington: It’s gonna be dynamic. There’s gonna be some sock puppets. … I don’t want to spoil too much about what we’re using the sock puppets for, but the people of Santa Cruz are not ready. It is gonna be really thrilling and really funny.
Next, we spoke with Sarah Mitchler, a founding member of Good Egg Productions, who is reading the leading role, Amelia.
Q: What was your first impression upon reading the script?
Mitchler: Hilarious. Honestly, Amelia’s not boring. Even though the show is about her, she’s not the lifeblood of the piece. That’s really the characters in “Destiny’s Birthright,” and the internet culture surrounding her.
Q: In the script, your character is embarrassed about a fan fiction entitled “Destiny’s Birthright” she wrote when she was younger. What was the fan fiction based on?
Mitchler: In the show, “Devin Dragonheart,” which we see young Amelia reading in the beginning of the show. It’s a work of fantasy. She’s in middle school.
Q: How old is she at the time of the play?
Mitchler: She’s young to mid 30s. She’s established a career as a writer. She’s a couple books into this series. She’s just about to finish this series that’s been really successful.
Q: How do you connect with the character?
Mitchler: I was thinking about pictures that I posted online as a younger child growing up with the internet and not really knowing that that could be here forever for the rest of my life. For Amelia, it went really wrong because her content went viral. She was able to hide behind anonymity for some amount of time until a fan of hers gets lucky with a guess. Watching Isaac working and refining — it’s amazing to me because I’m kind of a perfectionist and I want to have everything ready before I put it out into the world.
Next we spoke with Lu Ludington, Isaac Ludington’s younger sibling who is directing the reading.
Q: What is it like to work in this capacity with your sibling?
Lu Ludington: It’s pretty fun. We have been close collaborators for most of our lives, but it’s never really been where I’m trying to interpret something that Isaac has written. So it’s slightly uncharted territory. But it’s been really fun to get to put my own spin on the words that Isaac wrote.
Q: What is it like to be the younger sibling but also the director?
Lu Ludington: I definitely feel like, every once in a while, I have to overassert my vision, but I feel like because Isaac and I have always been very close growing up together, it’s not too much of a fight. It’s very easy for me to read the script and imagine what Isaac wants from it.
Q: What’s it like working with this cast?
Lu Ludington: This cast is really wonderful. One of the most exciting things about this cast is how excited they are about the piece. Every single person is just pouring their heart and soul into this because they connect with the material.
Q: Do you think that that might have something to do with the time that it’s set — that it’s relevant to this generation?
Lu Ludington: Absolutely. This play taps into a lot of Gen Z’s childhood experiences and millennials as well. And I think that plays about young adults, written by young adults, are a little hard to come by. And so a lot of times when there are plays of this genre, they don’t feel like they were actually written by someone who understands them.
Q: What’s your message to young people who might be thinking about coming to see the play?
Lu Ludington: I think that this show can be enjoyed by even people who don’t have a lot of experience going and watching theater. I think that there’s a lot of fun visual storytelling that happens. It’s a story that a lot of people can relate to, just sort of the inner embarrassments and shames of our childhood carrying into adulthood.
If you are interested in seeing what a play about internet culture is all about, “Destiny’s Birthright” is written by a young playwright about the coming of age in the digital era. You can get tickets for Nov. 21 at 7 p.m. to see the first of Good Egg Productions’ Local Playwrights Staged Reading Series at Scratch Studio, 303 Potrero St., Suite 02B in Santa Cruz. Find details and tickets at goodeggsantacruz.com/updates.”
by Jake Thomas for the Santa Cruz Sentinel
