FULL- LENGTHS
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, New York, August 16th-29th. https://poorpeopletheplay.wordpress.com
Drama League Directing Residency, The Drama League Theater Center, Stewart F. Lane and Bonnie Comley Studio Lab, March 13, 2015, 7pm
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.
Staged Reading, OnSet Productions, Burdall Yard, Bath, UK, Jan. 2015
Staged Reading, Athena Theatre, Manhattan, NY, Dec. 2014
Staged Reading, The Bechdel Group, Manhattan, NY, Oct. 2014
Staged Reading, Truant Arts, 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.
Staged Reading, Grex Theatre Group, Shelter Studios, 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, Manhattan, NY, March 2014
Staged Reading, Sanctuary Playwrights, Long Island City, NY, July 2013
Designed Cecilia Roberts
To Dream of Trees (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, 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, Queens, NY, Aug. 2013
Theatrix, New York University, Manhattan, NY, March 2013
Designed by Cecilia Roberts
Finding Mother (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, 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.
Nature Consortium, The New Alchemists, Seattle, WA, Aug. 2015
Staged Reading in Unheard Focus Festival 2015, The Bread & Roses Theatre, Goblin Baby Theatre Company, London, UK, Feb. 2015
Dixon Place, Manhattan, NY, June 2013
Thespis Theatre Festival, Winner of Best Production in Festival, 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, Manhattan, NY, Nov. 2012
Semi-Finalist, Papatango New Writing Award, Papatango Theatre, London, 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.
Staged reading, Winner of the 2011 Mario-Fratti/Fred Newman Political Playwriting Award, 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, Hollywood, CA, Aug. 2011
The Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Project, Women in the Arts 2010, Palm Springs, CA, Nov. 2012
Lawrence Community Theatre, Staged Reading, New Plays Contest, Lawrence, KS, Aug. 2012
ONE ACTS
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, Manhattan, NY, Aug. 2014
Bad Theatre Festival, The Treehouse Theatre, 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.
East Village Chronicles Vol. 10 Metropolitan Playhouse, Manhattan, NY, May 2014
Midwinter Madness Festival, Roy Arias Studios, Manhattan, NY, Feb. 2014
Truant Arts, Theatre Lab, 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, 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, Manhattan, NY, March 2013
Women’s Work Lab, New Perspectives Theatre, 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, 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, Manhattan, NY, June 2012
Emerging Artists Theatre, One Man Talking, 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, Brooklyn, NY, Dec. 2012
