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Story: Diana is the Queen Bee of her upscale Florida condo village, fighting fears of loneliness through endless rounds of golf and tennis. Kate is the new widow who joins Diana's team and breaks the rule about Jeff, the widower who takes turns dating all the team's ladies. A 1M4W comedy about how the competition never ends.
Idea: “I wondered why there are so few new plays with big roles for our wonderful stage actresses after they reach ‘a certain age?’ This one has them: all roles are for characters age 70 plus.”
Development: Staged Reading, Chicago Dramatists |
Story: Matt is the self-righteous older brother who resents how his parents always loved his reckless younger brother Billy the most. Matt jumps at the chance to drag Billy on a two-thousand-mile road trip across America and into alcohol rehab. Will that prove Matt is more worthy? Or will Matt discover that he is just as lost?
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Idea: “One of my brothers suffered from severe alcoholism for many years. He died from its effects in 2015. At that time, I found the Parable of the Prodigal Son to be comforting and instructive.” The play loosely adapts the parable into a contemporary 3M1W comedy-drama about two competing brothers, a stern but loving father, and six women in their lives (the women all played by the same actress).
Development: Staged readings at Chicago Dramatists, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center Theatre; an O’Neill National Playwrights Conference semi-finalist. |
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Story: It's the summer of 1968 in Chicago, a time when everything is spinning out of control. Charlie is an 18-year-old Gentile, a "shabbos goy," pushing a broom in a synagogue and wondering when he will get drafted for Vietnam. In the shul he meets the Kaplan family. They have fabulous plans to change Charlie's life. But his own father has a very different future mapped out for him. How will the boy choose? A 4M2W single-set comedy-drama about learning the meaning of "chesed" (loving kindness).
Idea: This is the first in the chronology of a projected five-play cycle of plays spanning 60 years of time telling the story of a Gentile man who marries into a Jewish family and shares their journey. Two plays in the cycle have been produced so far: The Invasion of Skokie and Paris Time.
Development: Chicago Dramatists; second-place winner of the Julie Harris Playwrights Award in 2014. |
Story: Set in 1917-19, the Swedish immigrant Lydia Lindstrom takes control of her family's construction business after her husband dies. But the jealousy of her eldest son, the war, a death, and a searing sexual scandal tear her family apart. Can Lydia put back the pieces? A 3M2W single-set drama about finding our way in a new world.
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Idea: “My family background on my father’s side is Swedish-American, from Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood. Now that we’ve hit the centennial of America’s involvement in World War One, I thought how that period is when my immigrant ancestors changed from feeling more Swedish to feeling more American. This play examines that sometimes painful change.”
Development: Raven Theatre under the prior title, Mother’s House. Extensively rewritten since then. |