Full-Length Plays

Human Error

(2F, 3M)
Madelyn and Keenan are NPR-listening, latte-sipping blue-staters who are planning a family.  Or they were, until they learn that because of a mix-up at the fertility clinic, Madelyn's embryo was accidentally implanted in another client's uterus.  That news is hard to take; fostering a relationship with the other couple, NASCAR-loving NRA cardholders, is even harder. Can these polar opposites make it through nine months of gestation without killing one another? 

Human Error premiered at the Denver Theatre Center, directed by Shelley Butler with dramaturgy by Sarah Lunnie. It was developed at PlayPenn, the Lark Playwrights Week, the Colorado New Play Summit, and Orlando Shakes’ PlayFest.

Accidental Rapture

(4F, 2M)

A lot has happened in the ten years since Amy, Paul and Richard were in grad school together. Amy and Paul got married and became academics; Richard also found a wife, a new job selling Christian merchandise, and a new life serving God. So Amy's not really looking forward to spending an awkward weekend at Richard's house. Will Richard's born-again wife object to Amy's feminism? Will Amy and Paul's daughter get brainwashed by their God-fearing hosts? Can Amy keep herself from cursing for forty-eight hours?

And things just get worse when the world ends.

It turns out that Amy and Paul's visit happens to coincide with the night of the apocalypse, and thanks to a scriptural loophole they've been swept along with the saved. Worldly cities are destroyed, fire rains from the skies, lifelong friendships are tested, awkward silences are endured. Hilarity ensues.

Thrust together into the kingdom of God, the couples grapple with some big questions. Is there any room for overlap between Christian fundamentalists and liberal humanists, between red-state and blue-state America? Can friends stay friends when they share everything in common except for the pesky matter of an underlying belief system? Is eternal life and knowledge of God's love everything it's cracked up to be? And what happens to a person's faith when it's proven right?

Accidental Rapture has been produced by Visions and Voices, the Bloomington Playwrights Project, Valparaiso University, and the 16th Street Theatre, and was written with support from the Indiana Arts Commission.

Assholes and Aureoles

(2F)

2 Women, 14 Characters, 11 Taboos, and several dozen laughs you'll feel guilty about tomorrow. This comic tour de force for two performers was the best-attended show at the Indianapolis Fringe Festival and an award-winner at the Midtown International Theatre Festival.

Barrenness

(3F, 1M)

A young couple, struggling with fertility, experiences an early miscarriage. Greg deals with the loss by pursuing his crush on their pregnant obstetrician, who in her spare time is a Holocaust denier in her spare time; Beth, meanwhile, forges an unlikely bond with her fervently religious obstetrics nurse, who's convinced that Beth is gifted by God, or possibly possessed. An unexpected comedy about trauma. Developed as part of Page 73 Productions’ summer residency program.

Glutted

(3F, 3M)

Dr. Ursula Faust will have everything she wants once she’s harnessed the dark power of the underworld. Unless, that is, there’s a case of mistaken identity and Mephistopheles offers his services to Wagner, her clueless horndog of a graduate assistant, instead.

Hunting High

(2F, 2M)

Reconnecting with a dark man of mystery at a class reunion seems like a romantic adventure. But if that man is very possibly a fugitive abortion-clinic bomber who didn't even go to your high school in the first place—well, let’s just say that Kathy’s possibly not making the best choices at this particular point in her life. Hunting High has been developed through workshops at Long Island University and the Deep Dish Theatre Company, and a reading at the New Jersey Rep.

Malignance

(5F, 2M)

Carla has always kept her neighbors at arm's length—especially now that her neighbors include the boorish and insulting white family next door. But when that family discovers that their little girl Eva has an inoperable brain tumor, Carla increasingly finds herself sucked into their lives—hosting grim birthday parties, running disastrous errands, and weathering egregious insults. Everyone else in the neighborhood is hungry to get involved in the seductive power of someone else's grief, but Carla's the only one who wants to extricate herself from it. Finally, the clock's ticking down as Carla has to decide whether or not to accept an invitation to play a central role at a ceremonial celebration of the little girl's life. What do parents who are losing everything have the right to demand from Carla, and what will it cost her to give them what they want? Malignance was developed at PlayPenn.

Mouse Cop

(2F, 2M, 1 Mouse)

Kat’s top-secret job at an agency that resembles the Department of Homeland Security is at a crisis point, her husband is unemployed, the pesky neighbors are coming over for dinner, and there’s a mouse loose in the house. Something’s gotta give. First produced by Noble Fool Productions in Chicago.

Scrooge Variations

The Ghost of Christmas is a harried technocrat with limited managerial skills and an inept staff, and she hasn’t taken a vacation in about two thousand years. That all comes to a head when what should be just another gig — a by-the-numbers redemption of one Ebenezer Scrooge — collapses under the weight of technical difficulties and human error. This chaotic holiday comedy has been produced to terrific responses by the Bloomington Playwrights Project, Rough Magic, and Vox Humana.

Some Other Kind of Person

(4F, 1M)

Bill, a hapless, middle-management drone on a business trip in Cambodia, takes an uncharacteristic trip beyond the comfort zone of his hotel and finds himself at a brothel teeming with underage sex workers. Experimenting with moral outrage, he decides to liberate one of the girls the only way he knows how — by buying her. The rapacious madame with whom he negotiates this increasingly complicated transaction fits right into the landscape of labor arbitrage and expensive overseas adoptions — a multicultural world globally interconnected by the cords of commerce in which people are for sale and actions ripple with unintended ethical effects. An unlikely comedy about sex slavery and moral accountability. Commissioned by the InterAct Theatre’s 20/20 program and scheduled for production by the InterAct in 2013.

Where Men Are Empty Overcoats, or Closet Chronicles

(2F, 4M)

It’s the early 1990s and Agatha already felt overshadowed by her beloved older brother; now that he’s come out of the closet and her parents are convinced he’s going to hell, she’ll never get any attention.

Short Plays

My shorter plays, including Tiny Baby, Be Good, The Other Desk, Plain in the Land of Shinar, The Truth About Tiny Tim, Arms and the Man, and Who Is Kris Kringle, have been produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville, City Theatre of Miami, Vital Theatre Company, the Phoenix Theatre, the Source Festival, Estrogen Fest, the side project, EndTimes Productions, and the Bloomington Playwrights Project, and have been developed through readings and workshops at Red Bull and Chicago Dramatists. They’ve also been published by Dramatics Magazine, Dramatic Publishing, and HowlRound.com.

Plays for Young Audiences

The Day John Henry Came to School

(1F, 3M)

Johnny, the great-great-great-great-grandson of American folk legend John Henry, is an email-addicted, text-messaging, video-gaming technophile. He's also, though he would never admit it, a little lonely. So it seems like a stroke of luck when, the night before parents' day at school, Johnny's great-great-great-great-grandfather magically shows up at the front door. But is it? Being a steel-drivin' man isn't as useful or as cool as it used to be, and no one likes a guy who'd rather smash a video game with his hammer than play it. Commissioned, developed and produced by Imagination Stage.

Lost and Foundling

(3F, 3M)

Pryce was found in a big-box store as a baby and raised by sales associates. Her first word is "affordable." Her discovery one day that there's a place called Lost and Found all the way on the other side of the store sparks restlessness and curiosity about where she came from. What follows is an epic journey of hilarious proportions as our intrepid hero sets off alone down strange aisles, through unfamiliar sale zones, past dangerous pitfalls like the Demanding Shopper and the Neverending Line. A comic and contemporary myth set in the recognizable world of changing rooms and free samples, Lost and Foundling is a modern fairy tale about growing up, self-reliance, and big big savings. A finalist for the Bonderman, Lost and Foundling was developed and produced by Childsplay and the Geva Theatre Center and was subsequently produced by Imagination Stage.

Please contact me to learn more.