FULL- LENGTHS

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.

 Anna Arts Center, (reading) Anna, IL – Feb. 2022

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 (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) 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, 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)

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

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.

New Works Series, Emerging Artist Theatre, Tada! Theatre, NYC, NY, March 2019

Dixon Place, (reading) NYC, NY, Feb. 2019

Paul Artspace: 2018 Year In Review Exhibition, Bermuda Projects, (recording), 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, 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