My Works
Theatre most excites me when it plays with time and space.
Each performance is a new opportunity to immerse ourselves in a world that is simultaneously imagined and concrete, insubstantial and urgent.
Each performance is a new opportunity to immerse ourselves in a world that is simultaneously imagined and concrete, insubstantial and urgent.
Below are my favorite 10-minute plays and excerpts from my full-lengths and one-acts. To read complete scripts, please visit the New Play Exchange, or feel free to contact me directly.
Full-Length Plays
|
Deposition
1 M, 2 W After thirty days in a coma, Nelson awakens convinced he has visited the afterworld, where a vast river separates him from a benevolent figure on the far shore. His wife, Annie, is equally convinced Nelson has experienced nothing more mysterious than a dream induced by an oxygen-starved brain. As Annie struggles to reconcile her memories of her husband with his new reality, Nelson slides deeper into obsession. At play’s end, she leaves him with an ultimatum: solve your mystery, or save our marriage. |
| ||
|
Ball
4 M, 2 W When the greatest ballplayer in the world, BJ Choice, announces he intends to play for free, he immediately becomes a league-wide laughingstock. Fans riot, teammates brand him a traitor, and no club in the Professional League will sign him. Falling from greatness with BJ is Sal Shea, the reporter who hosted BJ’s fatal press conference and who is fired in the wake of his humiliation. One year later, BJ has retreated to a simple, desert life, far from the highlights and fantasy boards. Sal tracks him down, hoping to convince BJ to attempt a comeback. For if BJ can rehabilitate his career, Sal may yet save hers. |
| ||
|
The Apple Don't Fall
4 M, 4 W Six months ago, Dan’s entire known family died tragically in a tornado accident in Appalachia. So when Glenne shows up claiming to be his long-lost half-sister, Dan fears she wants nothing more than a piece of his inheritance. Besides, Dan already has plans for the money: to create—with a visionary director named Leon and his silent troupe of “enactors”—a new form of theatre consisting wholly of gesture. |
| ||
|
A Wake
3 M, 3 W A Wake tells the story of James Cole, a high-school English teacher who has begun to despair of inspiring in his students the same love of language and literature that first motivated him to teach. When he assigns Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, one of his students, an aspiring actress named Dana, unexpectedly connects with the play, reawakening in James the enthusiasm he feared he had lost, not only for teaching, but for living life to its fullest potential. It is a reawakening that prompts him at last to seek the truth about his own family's history, and the ways in which he has allowed the ghosts of his past to shape his present and future. |
| ||
|
Badlands
2 M, 2 W I was inspired to write Badlands in the months following my move from Maryland to Los Angeles, where I had been hired as a sales representative for a chemical company run by my uncle. The play’s protagonist, Jeffrey, has been similarly transplanted, and he now finds himself working as an assistant to his friend Tyrone. For a brief while, Jeffrey is able to distract himself with the thrill of a new home and girlfriend, but as his enthusiasm for his job diminishes (due in part to his growing realization that he and Tyrone have drifted much further apart than he’d imagined), he begins to seek escape in an idealized fantasy of the American West through which he traveled en route to California. |
| ||
One-Act Plays
|
Patient X
2 M, 2 W Doctor Jon treats Tamara for an inexplicable case of X-ray vision, as his deceased father and her grandmother watch from the afterlife. Tamara’s condition proves a mixed blessing for everyone—living and dead—when she sees inside a locked safe full of secrets that belonged to Jon’s father. |
| ||
|
The Soapbox
4 M/W Exactly 10 years ago, Avee Van Westin was sent to prison for vomiting on the principal soapbox of a major population center. Now free—and still outraged by the disparity between punishment and crime—Avee returns to the soapbox to demand an apology from its administrator. But Avee finds no sympathy—neither from the administrator nor from any of the other citizens clamoring to speak their minds. Frustrated repeatedly, Avee must choose whether to accept fate gracefully or take one last stand against authority. |
| ||
|
Snowbound
1 M, 1 W, 1 M/W Sherri Blount sits in her Baltimore rowhouse, sipping a cup of tea as outside a blizzard rages. Upstairs, Andy Bowden reflects on the revelations of the past few days. While sifting through the belongings of his recently deceased wife, Andy discovered a pile of letters written by a man with whom she had once had an affair. He drove all night to confront the adulterer, only to find that the man—Sherri's husband—has himself recently died. Just then the blizzard hits, and Andy has no choice but to wait out the storm with Sherri. |
| ||
Patrick and Jason
The first "real" play I wrote was about two brothers, Patrick and Jason. I intend to write a four-play cycle about their relationship, one play per season. I'm about halfway there.
The first "real" play I wrote was about two brothers, Patrick and Jason. I intend to write a four-play cycle about their relationship, one play per season. I'm about halfway there.
|
| ||||
A Sampling of 10-Minute Plays
A Year of Living Dangerously
I produced this cycle of four 10-minute plays at the 2011 Capital Fringe Festival; it was also my directorial debut. Each play stands alone as well.
I produced this cycle of four 10-minute plays at the 2011 Capital Fringe Festival; it was also my directorial debut. Each play stands alone as well.
|
Opening Day, 2050: O's at Nats
2 M, 1 W Self-proclaimed superfans “Baby Bill” Murkovski and his wife, Sharon, have been regulars at Orioles and Nationals games for forty years, finding reasons to believe despite each team’s annual slide to the cellar. Fireworks 1 M, 2 W Stuck in traffic en route to the beach, Maygin and Jenifer strike up a conversation with a roadside fireworks vendor who turns out to be Maygin’s estranged cousin, ’Remy. The Critic 2 M, 1 W For nearly twenty years David has been panning Turner’s plays. The latest review is the final straw. Plunge 1 M, 2 W For years Jo has been holding her own, private Polar Bear Plunge. This year she invites Max, a cute guy who seemed interested … until he brings another woman to the icy beach. | ||
|
Wandering Poles
1 M, 1 W, 1 M/W Thala and Ursu are captive polar bears. Piho is a wild bear fleeing climate change. When Piho’s quest for sea ice leads past Thala and Ursu’s enclosure, the captive bears experience unfamiliar longings for fresh seal—and freedom. |
| ||
|
Another Saturday Night
2 M, 2 W A nuclear family becomes increasingly dysfunctional while sitting in traffic on a Saturday night. |
| ||