Experiencing Interruptions?

TORNADO TASTES LIKE ALUMINUM STING

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

"a beautifully rendered interaction of forms, with the courage to stand firm on the right duration.” --Erin Trahan, WBUR

“exhilarating… palimpsest-like” — Peter Keough, The Arts Fuse

“gripping, potent, poetic” — Gerald Peary, The Arts Fuse

Synopsis:
In their new play Tornado Tastes like Aluminum Sting, autistic playwright Harmon dot autcreated a character much like themself: a nonbinary autistic cinephile named Chantal Buñuel. The largely unknown middle-aged playwright who grew up in poverty was diagnosed with autism, Tourette's syndrome and synesthesia only five years ago.

In this short film, also titled Tornado Tastes like Aluminum Sting, director James Rutenbeck and Harmon dot aut intercut interviews and workshop readings with playwright/director Craig Lucas (Light in the Piazza, Days of Wine and Roses) and rehearsals with director Oliver Butler (What the Constitution Means to Me, A Knock on the Roof) and nonbinary autistic actor Jean Christian Barry (How to Dance in Ohio) with strikingly original hallucinogenic imagery by autistic animators Soul Proprietor.

Tornado Tastes like Aluminum Sting is the work of a team of neurodivergent creators celebrating the first big success of a brilliant artist who called on their unique phenomenological sensory superpowers to create an electrifying theatrical experience.

  • Harmon dot aut
    Director
    All the Little Things We Kill (2019)
  • James Rutenbeck
    Director
    A Reckoning in Boston
  • James Rutenbeck
    Director
    The Ride Ahead (Editor), A Reckoning in Boston (Director)
  • Harmon dot aut
    Writer
    All the Little Things We Kill (2019)
  • Sabrina Avilés
    Producer
    Raising the Floor
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Documentary
  • Genres:
    documentary, animation
  • Runtime:
    27 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    February 21, 2025
  • Production Budget:
    90,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9, 4:3
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Indie Shorts
    Los Angeles
    United States
    December 15, 2025
    Online
    Independent Shorts Awards – Platinum Award, Indie Short – Award of Excellence, Special Jury Mention – Award of Excellence, Sound Design
  • Salem Film Festival
    Salem, MA
    March 27, 2026
    World Premiere
  • Ashland Independent Film Festival
    Ashland, Oregon
    United States
    In competition: Shorts
Distribution Information
  • N/A
    Country: United States
Director Biography - Harmon dot aut, James Rutenbeck, James Rutenbeck

Director Harmon dot aut (they/she) is an Autistic/Disabled person who writes plays and makes visual art as a way of expressing their divergences. Harmon is 2026 Creative Capital Winner. Their play Tornado Tastes Like Aluminum Sting, had its world premiere at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival in July 2024, and their newly-commissioned play The Bridge, will premiere this summer at CATF.. Venturous Playwright Fellow (2023/4); Resident playwright at Spectrum Theatre Ensemble. An excerpt from Harmon’s play, Space, has been selected to appear in the anthology: WE/US: Monologues for Gender Minority Characters - Smith & Kraus, March 2023. Selected works for the theatre include: Naming Things & Space (STE 2022); Minden (Reading @The Tank NYC, 2019 Director: Meghan Finn); People Like Us, a new musical (written with the film composer & singer/songwriter Lisbeth Scott, in development); No Land to Land In (Dixon Place, 2014, Director: Craig Lucas); Goodbye, Kansas, a new musical (2010, KC Fringe Fest); Disability Romp Ballet (A Ha! Dance Theatre, Folly Theatre, KCMO - 2008). Harmon. is a fellow at the Hermitage Artist’s Retreat in Englewood, Florida and Visionary Playwright recipient at Theatre Masters, NYC.

Director James Rutenbeck (he/him) is an Emmy ® award winning filmmaker. His nonfiction films have screened at Cinema du Reel, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery and Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. James' 2021 feature, A Reckoning in Boston, premiered at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and screened at numerous other festivals including Human Rights Watch Film Festival and Morehouse College Human Rights Film Festival, where it won the Best Feature Award. Reckoning aired on the PBS series Independent Lens in 2021. James is a two-time recipient of the Alfred I. duPont Columbia Journalism Award for his work as episodic producer of the landmark PBS series on the social determinants of health, Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? and Class of ’27, which he executive produced, directed and edited. Class of ’27, which explores the lives of young children in three rural American communities, is streaming as an Editor’s Pick at The Atlantic. Editing credits include the Emmy™Award winning NYT OpDoc My Disability Road Map; Zoot Suit Riots, Jimmy Carter and Roberto Clemente for the PBS series American Experience; American Denial and Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness for Independent Lens and the POV film The Ride Ahead, by Samuel and Dan Habib, which premiered at Hot Docs 2024 in Toronto.

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Director Statement

My practice is holistic - whether I am painting or constructing a sculpture, embroidering a tree stump or the hood of a truck, writing a play or a screenplay or a song, composing music, acting/performing, combining installation with disability advocacy, filming and designing digital media - I am engaged in one activity. My art practice is a fractal, every medium is a self-replicating pattern I zoom in on and zoom out from. My Auti/synesthetic brain processes in fractals, I see these shapes in my mind and I have to concentrate on various patterns to find information or memories or even to formulate words to speak. These processes are not automatic or “second-nature”, I must labor to make my voice box work, to use my body and coordinate its movements so I can Do. The fractals provide a structured system, like an internal assistive device, that allows me alternative methods for communicating and transmuting my unquenchable curiosity, fluidity, and imagination into material form.
--Harmon dot aut