MUSICALS
Alice in Wonderland (Theatre for Young Audiences, 95 Minutes)
An imaginative, musical twist on a classic tale.
Written by Lavinia Roberts
Music by Ahmed Alabaca
Directed by Lily Raabe
Assistant Directed by Jordan Richards
Follow us down the rabbit hole as OFT produces a magical new musical adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that will delight audiences of all ages. Our production of Alice is not your average play – every day before the show audiences will be invited to follow three White Rabbits into a 1,000-square foot interactive and immersive Wonderland art installation – designed by Natalie “Wild Tiny” Coblentz, in OFT’s new O YAA studio space next door. Puppetry by String and Shadow Puppet Theatre.
A bit more about the play:
This modern-day musical features many of your favorite classic characters – like the Mad Hatter, the Caterpillar, the March Hare and more – while bringing up the maddening themes of environmentalism and climate justice. As the Cheshire Cat says, “There’s a good deal to be mad about these days. Anger is all the rage. I am mad, and you are mad – here’s the thing, we all are mad. Where do we go from here? The answer isn’t clear. It’s easy to get lost in the madness.” Join Alice on her adventure through Wonderland as she makes new friends and is faced with an impossible decision: overthrow the Queen of Hearts or allow Wonderland to burn.
Olympia Family Theatre, (Production) Olympia, WA – 2023 Production Photos
FULL- LENGTHS
The Curious Case of Agatha Christie (80 Minutes)
Friday, December 4, 1926, famous crime novelist Agatha Christie goes missing. Avid mystery novel fan, and aspiring journalist at lady’s magazine Gentlewomen’s Gazette, Helen Casewell, feels pigeonholed, carrying cups of tea and writing housekeeping articles. Helen dreams of covering criminal investigations and other grittier topics. She sets out to uncover the truth behind Agatha Christie’s disappearance, in the hopes of forging a career as a reporter.
Emporia State University, (Reading) Emporia, KS – 2024
Hendrix College, (Reading) Conway, AR -2023
Winner, History Matters: Celebrating Women’s Plays Of The Past, 2022 Judith Barlow Prize, (Reading) NYC, NY – 2022 Press
Big Muddy Play Festival, Southern Illinois University, (Production) Carbondale, IL – 2022 Production Stills Press
Miss Austen’s Choice (90 Minutes)
Aspiring novelist and romantic, Jane Austen, accepts an invitation to visit old family friends at Manydown Park. There, she is thrown together with the vastly different Harris Biggs-Withers and presented with a choice, a singular opportunity, that could change the course of her and her family’s life.
Big Muddy Play Festival, Southern Illinois University, (Virtual) Carbondale, IL – 2021
University of Roehampton and Canterbury Christ Church University, (Virtual) Roehampton, UK and Canterbury, UK -2021
Louisa May Alcott’s War (120 Minutes)
December 1862. The American Civil War has begun. Louisa May Alcott has experienced some success writing sexy thrillers under pseudonyms, but longs for life experience to fuel her writing. The young abolitionist enlists and is called to duty, as a nurse in Union Hotel Hospital, in Washington DC. Leaving her beloved sisters behind, Alcott faces dire conditions and male colleagues who don’t feel women have any place at the hospital. Yet, she employs strength, compassion, warmth, and wit to tend to the injured and dying Union soldiers, despite the horrific working conditions. The nurses are even able to provide the wounded men with Christmas festivities. Yet, when Louisa contracts typhoid, the battle for her life begins. Louisa May Alcott’s War is a story of love and loss, and how one of America’s most beloved writers is forever changed by her experience as a nurse during the Civil War.
Semi-finalist, Harold Clurman Playwrights Division, Stella Adler Studio of Acting, NYC, NY – 2021
The Jeanine Larson Dobbins Conservatory of Theatre & Dance, Southeast Missouri State University, (virtual) Cape Girardeau, MO – Dec. 2020
Finalist, 2020 Inkslinger Play Competition, Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond, LA – 2020
Semi-finalist, AACT NewPlayFest 2020, Fort Worth, TX – 2020
SIU New Play Lab, Southern Illinois University, (Virtual) Carbondale IL – July 2020
[Un]Earthed (Theatre for Young Audiences, 90 Minutes)
Some are considered lucky when they find themselves in a refugee camp after the destruction. But in the struggle to build a new life, Myra and her father have to find a way to pick up where they left off on Earth. How will they thrive when all they’ve known is lost in order to begin again? Find out what happens when everything becomes [Un]Earthed.
Semi-finalist, PLAYground Festival of Fresh Work, Purple Crayon Players, Northwestern University, Evarston, IL – April 2019
Finalist, 2019 New Works Playwright Competition, Olathe Civic Theatre Association, (Reading), Olathe, KS – March 2019
Semi-finalist, Write Now, Childsplay, Tempe, AZ – Feb. 2019
2019 Living Room Series, Blank Theatre, (Staged Reading) Los Angeles – Jan. 2019
Ground and Field Theatre Festival, UC Davis, (Reading), Davis, CA – Sept. 2018
Chaos Nights Volume II, Katzpace, (Reading), London, UK – Sept. 2018
Furnace Festival, The Center at West Park, (Reading) NYC, NY – Aug . 2018
Finalist, Black Earth Institute Fellowship 2018-2020, Black Earth, WI – June. 2018
Treasure Valley Children’s Theatre, Surel’s Place, (Reading), Boise, ID – Feb. 2018
Poor People (90 Minutes)
A stage adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel Poor Folk
Commissioned and directed by Irene Kapustina
Set in St. Petersburg in 1846, Poor People offers an episodic narrative, intertwining symbolism, surrealism, and realism. The play tells the story of Makar Devushkin, a middle aged clerk, who despite his poverty remains a human with an endearingly bumbling, optimistic outlook and humor. Makar’s existence is transformed when Varvara Dobroselova, a young seamstress and Makar’s distant relation, enters his life. The two develop a platonic relationship, which they use as a shield when forced to face unscrupulous relatives, unwelcome sexual advances, contempt at work, sickness, and hard labor. Poor People celebrates the resilience of the human spirit when circumstances seem insurmountable.
Theatre is Easy says that Poor People is told “With clear-eyed compassion and unflinching emotional truth,” and Fringe Review says the play “draws shockingly strong parallels between 19th century St. Petersburg and 21st century New York. The struggle to make it through today. The struggle to imagine a bright tomorrow.”
New York City International Fringe Festival, Kraine Theatre, Manhattan, (Production) NYC, NY – August 16th-29th, 2015 https://poorpeopletheplay.wordpress.com
Drama League Directing Residency, The Drama League Theater Center, Stewart F. Lane and Bonnie Comley Studio Lab, (Staged Reading) NYC, NY – March 13, 2015
Poster Designed by Cecilia Roberts
365 Last Suppers (80 minutes)
Set in a contemporary Chelsea art gallery, a gallery assistant supervising the work of a post-modernist, conceptual artist, is inspired to be more creative in her own life, by an Aboriginal ceramist hired to make the piece. This work explores why we make art and the politics of the contemporary art world.
OnSet Productions, Burdall Yard, (Staged Reading) Bath, UK – Jan. 2015
Athena Theatre, (Staged Reading) Manhattan, NY – Dec. 2014
The Bechdel Group, (Staged Reading) Manhattan, NY – Oct. 2014
Truant Arts, (Staged Reading) Manhattan, NY – April 2014
Happiness One Dollar (80 minutes)
“Happiness One Dollar,” explores a failed relationship between a cripplingly shy paralegal who sells palm readings, happiness, tarot cards, and portraits in central park during his lunch break, and an unstable artist who glues trash to objects and does her therapy sessions aloud to herself in the park.
Grex Theatre Group, Shelter Studios, (Staged Reading) Manhattan, NY – July 2014
Cock Tales (90 minutes)
A comedy set in a swanky cocktail bar in the East Village. Maurine, a bar tender generous with dry witticisms and dry martinis, juggles an unstable performance artist admirer, a sexist boss, and befriends a young struggling chef currently working at the bar as a busser.
Manhattan Repertory Theatre, (Staged Reading) Manhattan, NY – March 2014
Sanctuary Playwrights, (Staged Reading) Long Island City, NY – July 2013
Designed Cecilia Roberts
To Dream of Trees (Theatre for Young Audiences, 60 minutes)
In this futuristic drama with puppetry, a young girl searches in a post-apocalyptic landscape, a giant trash mound, for the strange creatures of her dreams: trees.
Dream Up Festival, Theatre for the New City, (Production) Manhattan, NY – Aug. 2013
Designed by Cecilia Roberts
The Twine (60 minutes)
“The Twine,” explores the nature of memory, the subconscious mind, loss, and how we perceive and experience love told through dance, masks, and music. A young woman, stumbling through a labyrinth, desperately seeking freedom from the endless maze. She encounters various creatures from Greek mythology, and her only companion is a strange, silent women carrying a ball of twine.
UNfringed Festival, The Secret Theatre, (Production) Queens, NY – Aug. 2013
Theatrix, New York University, (Production) Manhattan, NY – March 2013
Designed by Cecilia Roberts
Finding Mother (Theatre for Young Audiences, 60 minutes)
Paloma, an imaginative seven year old has lost her mother to cancer. She is joined by No Name, her quirky imaginary friend. Paloma, afraid of forgetting her mother, begins to work on an imaginary machine to find her mother, in her dreams. Paloma faces her grief both in her dreams, and with her family.
Manhattan Repertory Theatre, (Production) Manhattan, NY – Oct. 2012
Designed by Cecilia Roberts
Eaten Voices (60 minutes)
A little girl, Leona is trapped in night. She meets a child, and decides that she must be the Moon’s Child. Together, they travel through night, a place of stories, song, dance, and mystery, heading towards day.
Final Frontier Festival, Gadfly Theatre Productions, (Production,) Minneapolis, MN, – June 2017
Nature Consortium, The New Alchemists, (Production) Seattle, WA – Aug. 2015
Unheard Focus Festival 2015, The Bread & Roses Theatre, Goblin Baby Theatre Company, (Staged Reading) London, UK – Feb. 2015
Dixon Place, (Production) Manhattan, NY – June 2013
Thespis Theatre Festival, Winner of Best Production in Festival & $5000, (Production) Manhattan, NY – Oct. 2012
Looking for the Questions, Not the Answers (100 minutes)
A librarian, disillusioned by the lack of interesting reference questions, posts a flyer on the NYC subway seeking questions. The response she gets will surprise you.
Boomerang Theatre Company, First Flight Festival, (Reading) Manhattan, NY – Nov. 2012
Semi-finalist, Papatango New Writing Award, Papatango Theatre, London – 2012
Semi-finalist, Princess Grace Award, NYC, NY – 2012
Counting Skunks (75 minutes)
What can you do when the traditional family fails you? You can create a new kind of family. Gracie, a high school senior in Parsons, Kansas, flees her abusive father to live with her older half-sister, only to find her sister living in a compromised situation. This is the story of a tenacious teenage girl on a winding road to finding dignity and love.
Winner of the 2011 Mario-Fratti/Fred Newman Political Playwriting Award, Castillo Theatre, (Reading) NYC,NY – Aug. 2011
Little Scholar (70 minutes)
Three generations of women, Ruth, her college age daughter, Beth, and Ann, her bitter mother, struggle through economic uncertainly in a small Kansas town. After tragedy hits the family, the three women learn that they are stronger together than they ever were apart.
The Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Project, Ready for Our Close Up, (Reading) Hollywood, CA – Aug. 2011
The Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Project, Women in the Arts 2010, (Reading) Palm Springs, CA – Nov. 2012
Lawrence Community Theatre, Staged Reading, New Plays Contest, (Staged Reading) Lawrence, KS – Aug. 2012
ONE ACTS
No Place Like Gnome (Theatre for Young Audiences, 40 minutes)
A live virtual adventure about friendship, self acceptance, and finding your place! Only Make Believe is a Non-profit Arts Organization that creates and performs interactive theatre for children in hospitals, care facilities, and special education programs.
Commissioned by Only Make Believe, NYC, NY & Washington, DC, (Virtual) – 2023
Fast Forward (35 minutes)
“Fast Forward” is a one-act dystopian comedy, told through monologues. In the ruined landscape of the not-too-distant future, citizens struggle to carry on with imperfect dog cloning clinics, indentured call center servitude, oxygen meter malfunctions, engineering the perfect child, getting emergency medical care from a robot, and a justice system based on your selfies. This dark comedy asks, how much will it take for us to change?
Femme Fatale Play Festival, (Virtual) -Aug. 2021
Kansas City Fringe Festival, (Virtual) Kansas City, KS – July-Aug. 2021
Big Muddy Shorts, Southern Illinois University, (Virtual) Carbondale, IL – Feb. 2021
Raise Less Corn and More Hell! Annie Diggs: A Prairie Populist (45 minutes)
A One Woman Show Inspired from the Life of Annie Diggs
Annie Diggs, journalist, orator, poet, advocate of women’s rights, temperance worker, and populist advocate, brainstorms various potential headlines for her newspaper, The Kansas Liberal, and shares key moments of her life and work as an activist.
Kansas City Public Theatre, Theatre Lab, (Staged Reading) Kansas City, KS – 2019
Dixon Place, (Reading) NYC, NY – Feb. 2019
TADA! Theatre! New Works Series, (Staged Reading) NYC, NY – 2019
The Stephanie Lehr Playwriting Competition, Finalist, Wichita, KS – 2019
Forward Theater Company, Two Steps Forward Monologue Festival, Madison, WI -2019
Paul Artspace: 2018 Year In Review Exhibition, Bermuda Projects, (Audio Drama), Ferguson, MO – Dec. 2018
Image courtesy of Cecilia Roberts.
Image courtesy of artist Emi Gennis.
The History of DNA Exchange (25 minutes)
The 2 billion year history of sexual reproduction starting with the simplest of organisms, told by an extraterrestrial astro-biologist using shadow puppetry.
Dark Festival, The Tank, (Production) Manhattan, NY – Aug. 2014
Bad Theatre Festival, The Treehouse Theatre, (Production) Manhattan, NY – Nov. 2014
The Black Triangle (45 Minutes)
Black Triangle is about two ghost hunters, one a medium, the other much more scientific, exploring the Triangle Waist Company factory fire. A tale of NYC’s horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and one woman who had enough.
Alley Repertory Theatre, Visual Arts Collective, (Reading) Boise, ID – 2018
East Village Chronicles Vol. 10 Metropolitan Playhouse, (Production) Manhattan, NY – May 2014
Midwinter Madness Festival, Roy Arias Studios, (Production) Manhattan, NY – Feb. 2014
Truant Arts, Theatre Lab, (Production) Manhattan, NY – Oct. 2013
Stellar Evolution (45 minutes)
“Stellar Evolution,” is a dark comedy detailing the night of a drunken hookup. An idealistic, naïve artist, Alistair, and a disillusioned theoretical physicist, Azreal, meet at a Soho opening and return to her East Village apartment.
Midwinter Madness Festival, Roy Arias Studios, (Production) Manhattan, NY – 2014
The Rules of the World
Three generations of estranged women, Nico, a young transgender woman, her mother Eva, who runs a Botanica, and Sibella, Eva’s spunky Italian, Catholic mother, fight to discover the sacred in a world ruled by commodification.
Downtown Urban Theatre Festival, Here Arts Center, (Production) Manhattan, NY – March 2013
Women’s Work Lab, New Perspectives Theatre, (Production) Manhattan, NY – Aug. 2012
Red Flowers in the Snow (45 minutes)
Three squatters try to take care of themselves when no one else cares.
Midwinter Madness Festival, Roy Arias Studios, (Production) Manhattan, NY – Feb. 2013
The Moment (25 minutes)
A man of the streets captures the life of the city in a yearning, inspiring, and heart-thumping ode to the pavement.
East Village Chronicles, Vol. 8, Metropolitan Playhouse, (Production) Manhattan, NY – June 2012
Emerging Artists Theatre, One Man Talking, (Production) Manhattan, NY – March 2013
The Dead Moon (25 minutes)
A young woman captures death. She journeys through a series of caves attempting to find a way to defeat her strange captive. “The Dead Moon,” is told through physical theatre and part of the “Tales from the Tree,” a night of original and imaginative fairy tales written by four emerging female playwrights. These dark and innovative works incorporated theatre, film, music and dance.
Tales from the Tree, Sparrow Tree Theatre Company, (Production) Brooklyn, NY – Dec. 2012
lavinia roberts 