PLAYS
Full length, one act, musical theater/opera/dance theater
FULL LENGTH
THE HIROSHIMA DAUGHTER
The play is set in the 1950s America. ROZ, a crusading journalist, brings horribly scarred MIYOSHI to the U.S. for reconstructive and plastic surgery. Miyoshi with her sumi-e brushpainting becomes a media darling after Roz introduces her to the nation on the popular television program "My Three Wishes." BROOKS, a former diplomat and Roz’s wartime lover, warns her that Miyoshi puts a face to the consequences of nuclear warfare, raising the ire of Congressman HAWKINS and threatening Roz’s fund-raising efforts to bring over additional young women disfigured by the bomb.
Cast of ten: 4 women (1 Asian American, 1 Black, 2 White), 6 men (White)
SCRIPT SAMPLE: From Act One. After physical therapist Georgia helps her recover from surgery, Miyoshi agrees to help Roz fundraise and has an unexpected guest.
ONE GOOD TREE
In a broken corner of America, DAVID, a gay teenager, takes the lives of his father, a self-appointed minister, and his mother with the family shotgun. Then confesses online. SANDY, David’s lawyer, enlists NAVEEN, an Indian American therapist, to help her build her defense. If David will let them. Right now he won’t. Populist provocateur WELLINGTON FISK has all three in his sights.
Cast of five: three men (1 White, 1 South Asian, 1 open casting), two women (White).
SCRIPT SAMPLE: From Act One, NAVEEN interviews DAVID and shares his diagnosis with SANDY with unexpected consequences.
SLEEPING WITH THE DEAD
CURT, gay and white from a Midwestern political family, returns to the family home to die of AIDS. VINCE, his Black nurse, is tasked with caring for Curt and keeping him out of sight while his brother TERRY runs for re-election as mayor, a position their father once held.
They clash even as Curt finds Vince reminds him of WAYNE, his late lover, who now visits him in his dreams while Vince deals with a no-win relationship with a married man.
Cast of eight: 6 men (3 White, 3 Black), 2 women (White)
SCRIPT SAMPLE: From Act One. After CURT’s return home, VINCE takes the vitals of a very distrustful CURT.
COLORS AT SUNSET
In a gated community in New Mexico, JANICE and ALEX deal with a son fresh from rehab, a penniless sister who's fled her married Italian conductor, and an aging father badgered by the UNINVITED GUEST that only he can see... while in Mexico, collapsing economically due to climate change, a charismatic leader - LA MADRE - arises galvanizing the country. Where are boundaries in a world where borders - within families, between countries - are both porous and policed?
Cast of nine: 5 women (1 White, I Asian American, 3 Latinx) 4 men (2 White, I Black, 1 Latinx), two actors play multiple parts.
SCRIPT SAMPLE: Beginning of Act Two. LA MADRE addresses her compatriots. The FAMILY reacts.
A GOD BY ANOTHER NAME
Two actors rehearse (Act One) and perform (Act Two) a new two-character play The Unknown God at a regional theatre. JOANNA, an ambitious young actress looking for her big break and PETER, an aging gay actor whose partner leaves him during rehearsals, play passionate doomed lovers, a guileless college student and a manipulative Catholic priest. Love, hate, remembering lines... and crossing them.
Cast of two: 1 man, 1 woman (open casting)
SCRIPT SAMPLE: Beginning of Act Two. Their director having flown the coop, PETER and JOANNA make the play their own.
A GREENHOUSE DETERMINATION
The AUDIENCE are cast as members of Gaia2, a survivalist underground colony set in the future where the world above them has become almost uninhabitable due to the climate apocalypse except for some desperate foragers and cannibalistic bands that prey on them They must decide whether to “mindstrip” and eject a COLONIST who has put their community at risk by coming to the aid of foragers and revealing the existence of Gaia2. TWO EVALUATORS take sides to argue the Colonist’s case - or do them? The Audience votes with their cell phones.
Cast of three: open casting
SUMMER CROSSING
It’s the dawn of the “American” Century. Tammany Hall alderman CHARLES CALAHAN is taking his beautiful wife LILLY and their three children to Europe for the Grand Tour, having risen through Tammany ranks and married above himself. Aboard ship, he befriends JAN KOPICKA, a Czech immigrant rejected at Ellis Island. Jan sees Charles as his ticket back to the America, even as he is distracted by the attentions of the unhappy Lilly. Meanwhile MARY CLAIRE, their impressionable daughter is being secretly romanced by the charming, untrustworthy NICHOLAS VANDERVEER while in steerage, political agitator MAX SOLOMON plots to seize the ship.
Cast of 13: 9 men, 4 women. (open casting)
SCRIPT SAMPLE: From Act One. LILLY questions CHARLES’s motivations and teaches JAN to dance.
OLYMPIC NOTIONS & SUPPLY
SOO, an embittered Korean widow, while witnessing her store being looted in the L.A. Riots is caught on live news saying she wants a gun “to kill all Black people!”. LEMONT, an African American postal worker and recovering alcoholic, appears at the store, offering to help her clean it up, putting Rodney King's appeal, "Can we all get along?" to the test. Soo rebuffs him at first but a guarded friendship develops, to the confusion and distrust of their respective families, particularly KINNY, LeMont’s alienated son. That is until Soo offers to convert her mom & pop into a liquor store to help Kinny learn how to run a business, so he can start his own business - the luggage store he’s always dreamed about.
Cast of eight: 4 women (2 Asian American, 2 Hispanic), 4 men (2 Black, 1 Asian American, 1 White)
Excerpt: From Act One. KINNY confronts LEMONT. SOO offers KINNY a startling proposition.
RECKONING ANGEL
MATHIAS, a successful novelist burnt out and sickened with his fame, has fled to an abandoned farm on an isolated island off the coast with SARA, his younger wife, in hopes of finding new meaning in his work is in the grip of writer’s block. FRANC, a young man, appears on their doorstep, insisting he is the man’s illegitimate son and that he's come for his "inheritance" which he refuses to name. Mathias immediately distrusts him, while SARA takes the young man’s side. A deadly game of shifting alliances ensues.
Cast of three: 2 men, 1 woman (open casting)
SYMPHONY PASTORALE - A life in Four Movements
A 50-minute birth-to-death choral play in four movements with an ensemble of five actors performing multiple roles including JOHN, his mother in labor, a radio, his adolescent efforts at dating, an amusement park, and his irregular heartbeat in the last moments of life (among other things), all conducted as if they were music as John fights being born, makes out in the front seat of his dad’s car to a chorus of frogs and crickets, experiences his growing family, and faces his mortal end when he least expects it.
Cast of six: 3 men, 2 women, conductor (open casting)
Excerpt: First Movement. JOHN, against his best efforts, is born. Now it’s his PARENTS’ turn to raise him!
ONE ACT
SOCIAL SCIENCE
An ACADEMIC delivers a paper on race relations, only to discover his representative “BLACK MAN” is actually White and his “WHITE WOMAN” is really Black and each has a will of their own. Identity meets hilarity.
Cast of three: one woman (Black), one man (White), one open casting
YE OLDE MYSTERIE PLAYE OF THE NATIVITY
Backstage at an Elizabethan Nativity play, AGNES, wife of MERBERT the guild master sponsoring the performance and the leading lady cast as the Virgin Mary, thinks it's a lousy part and wants WALTER, their self-proclaimed poet, to rewrite it for Mary Magdalene – locking horns with MAXIMUS, the director. As for SIMON playing Joseph, he’s never been on stage and he’s terrified.
Cast of six: 2 women, 4 men (open casting)
SOLO
SALES MANAGER works over sales force – and the audience – by building them up, tearing them down – and playing them off against one another, all with the goal of increasing their sales.
Cast of 1: open casting
MORNING TEA
JOYCE visits her elderly mother FRANCES concerned she has taken in and is caring for Aunt Bea, a neighbor dying of cancer, only to learn their relationship is deeper than she could have ever imagined and seeing her mother with new eyes.
Cast of two: 2 women (open casting)
HOME MOVIES
GEORGE and MARJORIE are showing their home movies and you’re invited. But their memories conflict as vacations, holidays, and a senior prom flicker before us until one clip of Marjorie crying in the kitchen halts the show. The home movies are performed as mime while the audience listens in to George and Marjorie reevaluate their marriage as voices behind them.
Cast of seven: four women, three men (open casting)
FOUR STRAIGHT WOMEN WATCHING GAY PORN
To help MARIA get over her funk after being dumped by her boyfriend, her girlfriends present her with a unique way for her to fuck him over - using gay porn to everyone’s mutual delight. But when they recognize the guy delivering pizza from one of the videos, the party takes a very different turn.
Cast of five: four women, one man (open casting)
MUSICAL THEATER / OPERA / DANCE THEATER
GRAB THE SUN! - Book for Musical
GRAB THE SUN! is a contemporary retelling of LYSISTRATA set in an inner city high school about two teenagers RAINY and CLEVE. Rainy wants a better life for herself while Cleve joins a gang that gives him an identity he finds nowhere else. When Rainy’s younger brother JAMAL is shot, she is galvanized to adapt the Greek play they’re studying in DEREK’s theater class for the school musical. She organizes the girls to help her update it, renaming it GRAB THE SUN! - only to come into conflict with Cleve and their boyfriends who insist they’re disrespecting them.
Cast of 29: 4 women, 5 men (leads & supporting) 7 women, 7 men (students, gang members), 3 women, 3 men (double cast)
SCRIPT SAMPLE: Scenes 5 & 6, ACT ONE RAINY convinces the GIRLS in her class to join in creating GRAB THE SUN!, only to find CLEVE and the BOYS oppose the idea.
CRAZY NORA - Opera lilbretto
Based on a true story, Irish immigrant NORA POWER In 1820s Philadelphia becomes embroiled in a conflict between the charismatic FATHER HOGAN and the newly appointed BISHOP CONWELL over St. Mary’s, her parish church. She is unaware Hogan is falling in love with her until the conflict between the two clerics culminates in a riot inside the church with Nora accused of being Hogan’s whore. The next morning finds Nora bereft and madly rambling atop the Friends almshouse, refusing Hogan’s help.
Nora becomes a professional dun or debt collector, dressed in a top hat and a man’s great coat, bitterly independent with her own debts to collect.
Cast of 11: 3 women, 8 men (leads & supporting) and chorus (open casting)
SCRIPT SAMPLE: From Act One. NORA urges HOGAN to invite BISHOP CONWELL to the parish school where she teaches, with unfortunate consequences.
DANCETELLER/BEFORE FOREVER
I was Playwright-in-Residence with Danceteller, a modern dance company that used spoken material in their performance pieces. I collaborated with Trina Collins, the company’s artistic director and choreographer on three full-length performance pieces, including BEFORE FOREVER which explored the lives and challenges of men and women dealing with HIV-AIDS using their own words either as dance-driven monologues or mixing their recorded voices with music to create soundscapes for the dancers.
BEFORE FOREVER was performed on the both coasts with an edited version performed in high schools. We were also invited to Russia by People’s Friendship Theatre of Moscow to create a Russian-American version that we toured in Russia and Lithuania.
ARTICLE: I wrote about our experiences in Russia and Lithuania in a front page story for Philadelphia’s CITY PAPER titled “Seven Dancers & 20,000 Condoms.”