November 2011 - Ave Atque Vale performed by Lorenzo Montanini via Skype from Rome, Italy for an audience at the TACT Studio in NYC, part of the Around the World in 24 Hours event produced by The Internationalists. I was thrilled to collaborate with this global collective after getting to know some of the directors when my play Termitary, set in an immigration detention center, was named by them last year as a finalist in their worldwide playwriting competition.
Plays listed below:
Excerpts for most of these (and full scripts in some cases) are available for download by typing in my name at the script catalogue section of the website of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights (ALAP).
10-minute plays:
Hesitation
Genre: Drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 7 - 10 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 2/2/1
Synopsis: A teenage girl and a middleaged alcoholic in an East Texas roadhouse -- and a mystical question.
Interrogating the Power of Art
Genre: Sociopolitical
Runtime (Min/Max): 10 - 10 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 2/1/
Synopsis: She's picked up by the police. But was it murder, or was it art?
Notes: Finalist, Heideman Award, Actors Theatre of Louisville; production premiere at Ten by Ten Festival, ArtCenter, Carrboro, NC
One-Act Plays:
American Buggery
Genre: satirical play with music
Runtime (Min/Max): 40 - 60 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 5/3/0
Synopsis: Based on true court records from colonial New England about men condemned to death for bestiality, this satirical play with music features highflown dialogue paired with ridiculous staging to explore how we Americans live our ideals.
Notes: The music is simple and folk-based, performed with tin pail drums and kazoos. American Buggery premiered at Trustus Theatre, Columbia, SC, Artistic Director Jim Thigpen.
Angle and Grip
Genre: Dark Comedy
Runtime (Min/Max): 35 - 40 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 3/3/
Synopsis: A young widow invests in a sex doll factory.
God's Flea
Genre: Broad Social Satire
Runtime: approx. 30 minutes
Cast of 4; 2 Male, 2 Female; cross-dressing
Synopsis: Inspired by and adapted from the classic (19th-century) Colombian short story, En la diestra de Dios Padre by Tomás Carrasquilla Naranjo, so that it now takes place on the US-Mexico border but raises the same questions about how we treat our fellow human beings (including the use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques).
Commissioned by Grupo Ta'Yer and workshopped at the Frida Kahlo Theater under the direction of Rubén Amavizca-Murúa.. A much condensed version produced by New Carpa Theatre Company at the Border Justice Conference, Arizona State University and on the lawn in front of the Arizona State Capitol.
Majikan
Genre: Dramedy
Runtime (Min/Max): 30 - 40 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 2/0/1
Synopsis: Need money for a good cause? A conservationist is asked to make a deal with the devil. See, there's a new technology to aid in the war on terror, but the final say on its use is up to an orangutan.
Notes: Premiere June 2007 by Ciona Taylor Productions at Summit Rock, Central Park, NYC.
Nightwind
Genre: performance art
Runtime (Min/Max): 30 - 40 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 1/0/
Synopsis: Collaboration with Héctor Aristizábal, about his arrest and torture by the U.S. supported military in Colombia and his brother's abduction and murder. Unlikely anyone but Hector could perform this! It's done in different lengths and sometimes with live sound by musician Enzo Fina.
Notes: First version premiered at REDCAT in 2004. The performance has toured the US and internationally ever since.
No More Romance
Genre: Drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 20 - 25 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 1/4/
Synopsis: A young Latina and an elderly German immigrant end up in jail in Los Angeles -- the former for taking part in a labor demonstration, the latter for feeding the pigeons -- and their lives reveal changes in Los Angeles.
Notes: Premiere by Three Roses Players at the Luna Playhouse, Glendale, CA, directed by Maggie Grant as part of The Writer Speaks series. A 10-minute, 2 character version is available under the title "La Paloma."
Tell Me Which Way a Hanged Man's Feet Will Hang
Genre: drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 35 - 45 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 2/1/
Synopsis: An embittered mother faces the suicide of her police officer son by joining the anti-abortion movement.
Notes: First produced by Triumvirate Pi at the Secret Rose Theatre.
Woman with a Hobby
Genre: historical drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 35 - 45 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 4/2/
Synopsis: Speculative play about how Helen Hunt Jackson, 19th century advocate for American Indian rights, came to write the romantic novel, Ramona.
Full-length plays:
Brave New Tiger
Genre: Speculative science
Runtime (Min/Max): 80 - 110 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 1/3/
Synopsis: Jen has fallen in love with an endangered Siberian tiger. They can't marry, but maybe she can have his baby.
Notes: Staged reading at Los Angeles Jewish Theatre
Corrugated
Genre: Drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 90 - 110 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 1/3/
Synopsis: A Los Angeles love story about race, class, gentrification, and baboons.
Darwinville
Genre: Drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 100 - 110 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 4/3/
Synopsis: A frustrated high school teacher who once expected to be the next Jane Goodall turns her home into a party house for favored students, some of whom get all sorts of favors. But the world she has created is about to come apart.
Harvest
Genre: Drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 90 - 110 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 3/5/
Synopsis: An upper class young Chinese woman from Hong Kong signs on to work the potato harvest to get to know a typical American family...and gets more than she bargained for.
Notes: Premiere in 2005 by Playwrights' Arena under the direction of Jon Lawrence Rivera.
Find an excerpt here.
Pablo Escobar Packs His Bags for Heaven
Genre: Fact-based Drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 90 - 110 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 7/2/
Synopsis: The story of Colombian cocaine cartel boss, Pablo Escobar, and Rambo, a kid from the barrio, and what becomes of a society when the rich and powerful (not just the drug traffickers) violate the law and human rights with impunity.
Notes: Originally commissioned by Grupo Ta'Yer and workshopped at the Frida Kahlo Theatre in LA.
For an excerpt: please go here.
The Parting Glass
Genre: Drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 110 - 120 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 5/4/
Synopsis: in the backroom of an Irish bar In the Bronx, cops are holding a retirement party for a hero--or is he?
Penalty Phase
Genre: drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 75 - 90 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 0/4/1
Synopsis: Renee spent ten years of her life demanding that her mother's killer be executed. Once he's dead, she has nothing left--till she begins a relationship with a teenage girl who is in prison for killing her own mother.
Notes: Workshop productions by Indie Chi (as a benefit for the JusticeWorks campaign, Mothers in Prison/Children in Crisis), development by Quantum Theatre Company, Rogue Machine Theatre, and Theatre of NOTE. A finalist for the Leah Ryan Prize.
Excerpt at this site.
Power Grab
Genre: Dark Political Comedy with music
Runtime (Min/Max): 45 - 60 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 3/3/2
Synopsis: LBJ is on the toilet, George Bush has a song to sing but he's off somewhere getting the lead sheet from Dick Cheney, the moral beacon has a blinking light, and two young women have big decisions to make; an agitprop musical about US foreign policy.
Refugium
Genre: dramedy
Runtime (Min/Max): 100 - 120 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 3/3/1
Synopsis: What happens when an artists colony is transformed into a refuge for post-release serial sex offenders?
Notes: Staged reading at Theatre of NOTE.
Find an excerpt.
The Still Point
Genre: drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 80 - 100 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 3/4/
Synopsis: A surgeon whose spiritual quest went awry with fatal results tries a new life in rural Maine.
Notes: Cast of 7 includes lots of doubling. Larger cast would be great.
Staged reading by Syzygy Theatre Ensemble, Los Angeles
The Tangerine Quandary
Genre: drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 75 - 90 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 1/2/
Synopsis: A former Los Alamos physicist has been living in obscurity till a young science writer publishes a biography that suggests she is the Messiah.
Termitary
Genre: non-naturalistic drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 90 - 100 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 2/5/1
Synopsis: Magda was a woman imprisoned in a man's body. Now she's just a woman in prison. An INS detention facility to be exact.
Notes: Staged readings by Playwrights Arena at Los Angeles Theatre Center; Cup of Culture series at California State University-Los Angeles; e.a.r.th at Tia Chucha's Cafe Cultural, Symlar, CA.
Plays listed below:
Excerpts for most of these (and full scripts in some cases) are available for download by typing in my name at the script catalogue section of the website of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights (ALAP).
10-minute plays:
Hesitation
Genre: Drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 7 - 10 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 2/2/1
Synopsis: A teenage girl and a middleaged alcoholic in an East Texas roadhouse -- and a mystical question.
Interrogating the Power of Art
Genre: Sociopolitical
Runtime (Min/Max): 10 - 10 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 2/1/
Synopsis: She's picked up by the police. But was it murder, or was it art?
Notes: Finalist, Heideman Award, Actors Theatre of Louisville; production premiere at Ten by Ten Festival, ArtCenter, Carrboro, NC
One-Act Plays:
American Buggery
Genre: satirical play with music
Runtime (Min/Max): 40 - 60 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 5/3/0
Synopsis: Based on true court records from colonial New England about men condemned to death for bestiality, this satirical play with music features highflown dialogue paired with ridiculous staging to explore how we Americans live our ideals.
Notes: The music is simple and folk-based, performed with tin pail drums and kazoos. American Buggery premiered at Trustus Theatre, Columbia, SC, Artistic Director Jim Thigpen.
Angle and Grip
Genre: Dark Comedy
Runtime (Min/Max): 35 - 40 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 3/3/
Synopsis: A young widow invests in a sex doll factory.
God's Flea
Genre: Broad Social Satire
Runtime: approx. 30 minutes
Cast of 4; 2 Male, 2 Female; cross-dressing
Synopsis: Inspired by and adapted from the classic (19th-century) Colombian short story, En la diestra de Dios Padre by Tomás Carrasquilla Naranjo, so that it now takes place on the US-Mexico border but raises the same questions about how we treat our fellow human beings (including the use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques).
Commissioned by Grupo Ta'Yer and workshopped at the Frida Kahlo Theater under the direction of Rubén Amavizca-Murúa.. A much condensed version produced by New Carpa Theatre Company at the Border Justice Conference, Arizona State University and on the lawn in front of the Arizona State Capitol.
Majikan
Genre: Dramedy
Runtime (Min/Max): 30 - 40 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 2/0/1
Synopsis: Need money for a good cause? A conservationist is asked to make a deal with the devil. See, there's a new technology to aid in the war on terror, but the final say on its use is up to an orangutan.
Notes: Premiere June 2007 by Ciona Taylor Productions at Summit Rock, Central Park, NYC.
Nightwind
Genre: performance art
Runtime (Min/Max): 30 - 40 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 1/0/
Synopsis: Collaboration with Héctor Aristizábal, about his arrest and torture by the U.S. supported military in Colombia and his brother's abduction and murder. Unlikely anyone but Hector could perform this! It's done in different lengths and sometimes with live sound by musician Enzo Fina.
Notes: First version premiered at REDCAT in 2004. The performance has toured the US and internationally ever since.
No More Romance
Genre: Drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 20 - 25 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 1/4/
Synopsis: A young Latina and an elderly German immigrant end up in jail in Los Angeles -- the former for taking part in a labor demonstration, the latter for feeding the pigeons -- and their lives reveal changes in Los Angeles.
Notes: Premiere by Three Roses Players at the Luna Playhouse, Glendale, CA, directed by Maggie Grant as part of The Writer Speaks series. A 10-minute, 2 character version is available under the title "La Paloma."
Tell Me Which Way a Hanged Man's Feet Will Hang
Genre: drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 35 - 45 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 2/1/
Synopsis: An embittered mother faces the suicide of her police officer son by joining the anti-abortion movement.
Notes: First produced by Triumvirate Pi at the Secret Rose Theatre.
Woman with a Hobby
Genre: historical drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 35 - 45 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 4/2/
Synopsis: Speculative play about how Helen Hunt Jackson, 19th century advocate for American Indian rights, came to write the romantic novel, Ramona.
Full-length plays:
Brave New Tiger
Genre: Speculative science
Runtime (Min/Max): 80 - 110 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 1/3/
Synopsis: Jen has fallen in love with an endangered Siberian tiger. They can't marry, but maybe she can have his baby.
Notes: Staged reading at Los Angeles Jewish Theatre
Corrugated
Genre: Drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 90 - 110 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 1/3/
Synopsis: A Los Angeles love story about race, class, gentrification, and baboons.
Darwinville
Genre: Drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 100 - 110 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 4/3/
Synopsis: A frustrated high school teacher who once expected to be the next Jane Goodall turns her home into a party house for favored students, some of whom get all sorts of favors. But the world she has created is about to come apart.
Harvest
Genre: Drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 90 - 110 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 3/5/
Synopsis: An upper class young Chinese woman from Hong Kong signs on to work the potato harvest to get to know a typical American family...and gets more than she bargained for.
Notes: Premiere in 2005 by Playwrights' Arena under the direction of Jon Lawrence Rivera.
Find an excerpt here.
Pablo Escobar Packs His Bags for Heaven
Genre: Fact-based Drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 90 - 110 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 7/2/
Synopsis: The story of Colombian cocaine cartel boss, Pablo Escobar, and Rambo, a kid from the barrio, and what becomes of a society when the rich and powerful (not just the drug traffickers) violate the law and human rights with impunity.
Notes: Originally commissioned by Grupo Ta'Yer and workshopped at the Frida Kahlo Theatre in LA.
For an excerpt: please go here.
The Parting Glass
Genre: Drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 110 - 120 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 5/4/
Synopsis: in the backroom of an Irish bar In the Bronx, cops are holding a retirement party for a hero--or is he?
Penalty Phase
Genre: drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 75 - 90 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 0/4/1
Synopsis: Renee spent ten years of her life demanding that her mother's killer be executed. Once he's dead, she has nothing left--till she begins a relationship with a teenage girl who is in prison for killing her own mother.
Notes: Workshop productions by Indie Chi (as a benefit for the JusticeWorks campaign, Mothers in Prison/Children in Crisis), development by Quantum Theatre Company, Rogue Machine Theatre, and Theatre of NOTE. A finalist for the Leah Ryan Prize.
Excerpt at this site.
Power Grab
Genre: Dark Political Comedy with music
Runtime (Min/Max): 45 - 60 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 3/3/2
Synopsis: LBJ is on the toilet, George Bush has a song to sing but he's off somewhere getting the lead sheet from Dick Cheney, the moral beacon has a blinking light, and two young women have big decisions to make; an agitprop musical about US foreign policy.
Refugium
Genre: dramedy
Runtime (Min/Max): 100 - 120 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 3/3/1
Synopsis: What happens when an artists colony is transformed into a refuge for post-release serial sex offenders?
Notes: Staged reading at Theatre of NOTE.
Find an excerpt.
The Still Point
Genre: drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 80 - 100 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 3/4/
Synopsis: A surgeon whose spiritual quest went awry with fatal results tries a new life in rural Maine.
Notes: Cast of 7 includes lots of doubling. Larger cast would be great.
Staged reading by Syzygy Theatre Ensemble, Los Angeles
The Tangerine Quandary
Genre: drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 75 - 90 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 1/2/
Synopsis: A former Los Alamos physicist has been living in obscurity till a young science writer publishes a biography that suggests she is the Messiah.
Termitary
Genre: non-naturalistic drama
Runtime (Min/Max): 90 - 100 Minutes
Cast: (Male/Female/Other): 2/5/1
Synopsis: Magda was a woman imprisoned in a man's body. Now she's just a woman in prison. An INS detention facility to be exact.
Notes: Staged readings by Playwrights Arena at Los Angeles Theatre Center; Cup of Culture series at California State University-Los Angeles; e.a.r.th at Tia Chucha's Cafe Cultural, Symlar, CA.
