Selected Plays

Kiss

Characters
Patti: Former beauty queen in her 40s, she has always relied on her looks to move ahead in life.
Christy: Patti's daughter, 19-years old, looks like a classically beautiful pageant contestant.
Carey: Former engineer turned professional organizer in his 30s.
Diana: Former beauty queen in her 40s, she combines quick wit with competitive spirit.
** Actors of any race can play the characters. It can also be cast non-traditionally.

Synopsis
Patti and her daughter get their new male assistant to take part in their game of revenge. After several failed attempts, the assistant, a former engineer, devises the ultimate plan. Will it cause their nemesis to change her ways?

Setting
The entire play takes place at Patti’s house. It is a one set play with minimal requirements.

Timing
A one-act comedy that should last about 45 minutes.

Description
“Kiss” is a light, breezy satire with no profanity.

Background
The play was a semi-finalist in the 2012 Warner International Playwriting Festival.

Notes
Kiss was my first play back after a five-year hiatus from playwriting. I wanted to match the energy of the breezy entertainment stories I wrote at my job. Men in drag could play the female characters. 

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Absence of Light

Synopsis
The narrator is in New York City, rushing through a life that has no meaning.  In Part One, she is depressed but is also aware of how quickly things could change.

In Part II, she travels through a nightmare of violent imagery. “Ladies with slashed breasts wait to be found.” In a dream-like state, she confronts exterior and interior darkness. A baby is born, but she doesn’t remember being pregnant.

Part III is the calmness after the nightmare. It is morning, and it turns out that has had a breakdown. People tell her rest. They go about their lives, as she used to do. She recalls her own darkness and how life doesn’t always go according to plan.

Description
“Absence of Light” is a prose poem in three parts. Each part is self-contained.  There were no stage directions, giving the choreographer/director maximum freedom.

Background
It was performed at Venue 9 in San Francisco and at “A Voice of Her Own” Women’s Theater Festival in California. The choreographer/performer taped herself reciting Part II and created movements to illustrate the nightmare scenario.

Notes
When I started writing this poem at the age of 20, I didn’t realize that it would become a panoramic view of a violent relationship, hospitalization and recovery. The bulk of the writing took place in my early 20s, when I was blocked from writing plays. T.S. Eliot and author John Bradshaw somewhat influenced the poem and are referenced in Part One.  

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Everybody In This House

Characters

John Turner - "Papa". In his fifties. A man from the old school.
Father Joseph O'Donnell - Catholic priest. In his fifties.
Dennis Turner - Seventeen. A sensitive boy in a man's body.
Terry Turner - Sixteen. Naturally pretty with long, reddish unstyled hair. She already has a woman's body.
Mary Margaret Turner - "Nina". Eleven years old with long dark hair. She is  petite and speaks well beyond her years.
Mary Turner - "Mama". In her late forties. She looks similar to Nina. A woman who is chronically exhausted.

** Actors of any race can play the characters. It can also be cast non-traditionally.

Synopsis
Everybody In This House is about a family wrecked by violence and the crisis of faith that follows. Father O’Donnell turns a deaf ear to Mary Turner’s pleas about her marriage. Several weeks later, she is dead. What happened to Mary Turner? Is Father O’Donnell responsible in some way?

The Priest soothes his own conscience by visiting the family, only to have his fears justified. He finds the reality of domestic violence, and confronts his own powerlessness in the face of evil.

Mary visits Father O’Donnell to ask about her troubled marriage. He sends her back home to pray for a resolution. Soon after, her husband John comes home drunk and wakes up his children: Dennis, Terry and Nina. After Mary and John have an argument, John forces Dennis to brutally attack Nina.

Several weeks later, Mary Turner has committed suicide. Father O’Donnell visits the children after Mary’s funeral. He would like to speak with John. Terry and Dennis scheme to get rid of Father O’Donnell so he doesn’t find anything out. When Father O’Donnell meets up with John he tells John that he would like to have a talk with him. John agrees. Terry, Dennis, and John prepare to have dinner with Father. They talk about Mary’s death. Father O’Donnell notices there is something wrong with Nina. He confronts Terry about what could possibly have happened to Nina. Terry nearly tells him, but runs out of the room before she can.

When Father O’Donnell corners her, Terry tells the story of Nina’s attack at the hands of her brother. Horrified, he runs down to the basement to check on Nina. Nina stays down in the basement because that is where Mary died. Nina decides she would rather be with her Mother than be with the violence upstairs. Nina decides to kill herself. Father O’Donnell tries to stop her, but Mary appears as a ghost. Coming up from the basement, Father O’Donnell has seen enough. With a heavy heart, he leaves the house to go seek help from the authorities.

Setting
The entire play takes place at the Turner house. There is a living room, kitchen and basement area.

Timing
A one-act drama that should last about 50 minutes.

Description
“Everybody In This House” has been called deeply disturbing and edgy. There is profanity and violence in the story.

Background
It was produced at San Francisco State University. A producer saw the show and subsequently brought it City College of San Francisco and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. Reviewed by The Stage (Edinburgh, Scotland), this play was called "superbly written" and "totally uncompromising".

Notes
I wrote “Everybody In This House” when I was 22 years old. My intention was to shine a light on misogyny. The play was my BFA thesis project at New York University. I received the John L. Golden Award for Playwright with Most Potential and the Rod Marriott Senior Playwriting Award through this play. It also got me into the one-year MFA program at NYU Tisch Dramatic Writing.

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