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By Jorge Albertella
During WWII, when the Germans took over the city of Rome, Doctor Israel Zolli, Chief Rabbi of that city, d
isappeared. Later on his congregation found out that he had sought refuge at the Vatican. Nine months later,
once Allied Forces expelled the Germans, Rabbi Zolli reappeared and asked for his job back and for his
salary during the nine months of German occupation. He was informed that he had been terminated. However,
due to his good relationship with the Vatican and the mediation of the head of the American Forces, who was
a Catholic, the Rabbi was reinstated in spite of the opposition by the Jews of Rome. A few months later,
Rabbi Zolli resigned, converted to Catholicism and changed his name to Eugenio, the Pope's name.
By Rob Anderson
On September 13, 1916, in Erwin, Tennessee, they hung Mary by the neck ´til she died. She had killed a
man, his head splattered along the street in Kingsport. Mary´s execution was a media event. Mary´s
execution was long and drawn out. Mary was an elephant with the Sparks World Famous Circus. Today Erwin,
Tennessee lives with the stigma that it was the town where Murderous Mary the Elephant was hung by the neck
from a railroad derrick until she died. Erwin gained this notoriety through chance. Mary did not kill
there. Mary killed in Kingsport, Tennessee. But, Erwin had the rail yard and the derrick so Erwin became
a legend—a legend it has tried hard all of these years to escape from.
By Forrest Attaway
This disjointed piece of drama focuses on the lack of will in one man´s life. A squandering of talent and
an overall lack of ambition that leads to his destruction. A RAZORBACK is an animal that is ferociously wild
and cunning, but also rolls around in it´s own bile too stay cool.
By Kyle Bass
Wind in the Field in set in the mid 1950s, in Georgia, and tells the story of Milton Millard, a
successful but unhappily married white man who is devoted like a son to Ruthie Mimms, a seventy-five year
old black woman, a still-practicing midwife/abortionist whom Milton has known since he was a child. Milton
and his wife, Dolores, have been married for some forty years. Theirs is a barren marriage, devoid of
passion, shrouded in near-silence, and disappointments. Throughout their childless marriage Milton has kept
a secret of a child he fathered in his youth, a child aborted (by Ruthie); a child which Milton buried with
his own hands. The play opens forty years later when Milton´s world begins to unravel as his unstable wife,
pressuring mistress, possessive mother-figure, the mother of his long-ago aborted child, and his own sense
of guilt and parental longing force him to confront truths too unbearable to name.
By Tim Bauer
Beyond Words is a multilayered drama-with-comedy set in modern-day Chicago. The play centers on a
marketing consultant named Kevin who believes he knows everything there is to know about communication. Then
one day, on a flight to a million-dollar presentation, he´s seated next to a woman speaking a language he´s
never even heard—and he´s thrown into a crisis. Maybe he´s never really communicated with anyone. As
he struggles to uncover the mystery of true communication, he finds himself in the midst of family struggle,
job troubles, artistic doubt, and an unexpected romance.
By Robin Byrd
It is the turn of the 21st century, in a Midwestern town. Huron, the Morris family patriarch, has lived
through wars, the deaths of two sisters and a wife. He has functioned beneath the heavy scrutiny of a
mother, Mama Lee, until the death of his best friend, Willie Big Spirit. A self professed shaman, Willie,
holds Huron under his spell even after death. Unable to live without him, Huron sets on a journey to bring
Willie back to life; thus, he begins a five-night ritual of the Ghost Dance. Trying to stop the dance, the
family begins to reveal secrets about Willie Big Spirit and his part in the death of Huron's sister, Bit.
During the five nights of the Ghost Dance, the past and the present collide to make room for the future.
With the truth about Willie revealed, Huron must decide if this aberration deserves to live again or how to
kill it if it does not.
By William Campbell
In the future, childbirth is easy. For expecting parents Ashlyn and Rupert, deciding how to program the
first twenty years of their daughter's life is hard. Aided by Doctor Ogg, a specialist with the bedside
manner of a used car salesman, they learn that sometimes the best choice is no choice at all.
By Vincent Carlson
A closer look at Shakespeare´s minor characters from Twelfth Night. Curio and Valentine are servants
to Master Orsino, the Duke of Illyria. Curio has been sent away to protect Orsino´s land from The Hart, a
horrible beast that lives near Illyria. At the same time Valentine has been sent to woo for the Lady
Olivia. As Valentine comes back to the Master empty-handed, Curio returns with devastating news. The Hart
has killed more men. Curio left the battle prematurely, just barely escaping with his life. Orsino
redoubles his efforts for Olivia, paying no mind to Curio´s urgings of the hunt. Curio unsuccessfully
attempts to convince Valentine of the dire situation, despite presenting a prophecy left by Feste (the
Angel of Death) that reveals Curio is the One Who Will Kill The Hart. Meanwhile, Olivia runs away from
her home, her brother killed by the Hart. Curio and Olivia meet. Not knowing who the other is, they fall
in love. However, they part unexpectedly after Curio´s guilt for abandoning men to die overtakes him.
Mistaken identities and near misses fill the play as Orsino pursues his Lady, Olivia searches for her One,
Curio runs from his demons, and Valentine dutifully woos for his Master, encountering Olivia´s handmaid
Maria and Olivia´s cousin Fabian in the process. In the end, Valentine makes a choice between his duty to
Orsino and loyalty to Curio. Orsino finds love in Maria. Curio and Olivia find out each others´ true
identities, and Fabian reveals the fulfilled prophecy; Curio has returned to the battlefield and killed The
Hart, sacrificing his life for his friend, Valentine. Feste closes the play by collecting the dead Curio
to the Twelfth Night folksong "Come Away Death."
By Audrey Cefaly
The setting is a front porch, Autumn, late evening in the Florida panhandle. Fin and Euba are friends and
co-workers at a paper mill in Cantonment, Florida. They also share space in a rooming house, which they are
desperately trying to escape, due to the tyrannical landlady who has a penchant for strict rules and tacky
yard art. Unbeknownst to Euba, Fin submits some of Euba's amateur photos to Life Magazine.
Euba receives a reply from Life, but is reluctant to open it for fear or rejection, or worse…acceptance. Fin and Euba sit on the porch drinking, smoking, flicking ashes into a coffee can, and contemplating their lives and their plans for escape.
By Clarence Coo
It is 1901 and the United States has just declared victory in its war against the insurgents of the
Philippines. Edmund and Margaret, fresh from teacher´s college, have been sent by the American government
to teach English in a small town in the Philippines. In this scene from the full-length play, they have
just arrived on the island to which they´ve been assigned.
By David Crespy
By John Crews
Three couples, who haven't seen each other in years, gather at a Florida beach house for a weekend of
reminiscing, eating and drinking, and shelling and fishing. Short-tempered Harry, who uses a cane, is a
discordant element in this otherwise happy mix, putting his wife especially under a strain. Rich offers a
sympathetic ear to an unhappy Mona. A beatufil sea shell becomes a source of contention between Mona and
Harry.
By Wayne Crome
An ancient Crone hires a young male prostitue for sex, with disastrous results.
By Jim Dalglish and Lynda Sturner
A widow and a clerk working the grave-yard shift discover the secret to life might be as obvious as a box
hanging on a rack at the local Wallgreen´s.
By Jeanne Drennan
Waxworks is the story of Izzie Parschak, a plodding and weak-willed novelist in a vaguely eastern
European country in transition from paternalistic dictatorship to chaotic democracy. With his seventh
novel, Izzie has become a celebrity but finds that suddenly nothing is what it seems. Is he being
interviewed by a talk-show host or the secret police? Has he been put in a green room or a holding cell?
Why are his apparently powerful friends unconcerned when a youth organization called the Patriots demands
his prosecution under the Decency Statutes? During that apparent detention, Izzie falls in with an
idealistic young editor, Roger, who has developed a system, an elaborate dance, for taking a few knocks and
negotiating the chaos while publishing the truth. When conditions worsen and the Patriots gain the upper
hand, Izzie is put through a charade of a trial, confessing to whatever he must and watching almost
silently as his sister (and attorney) skillfully shifts the blame to Roger, who has edited Izzie´s new
novel. Izzie expects Roger to stand firm, to continue to shout the truth from the trenches. But when he
sees that Roger has cracked under new pressures and threats, he finds the will to take Roger´s place, to
become that voice crying out the truth. And in the end he and Roger are linked in a common struggle,
finding beauty and connection in a wholly new dance as the world continues mad around them.
By Adrienne Earle Pender
Christine Blair readies for a day at work. It´s her first day as a newly promoted manager. It´s also her
birthday. And, her mother calls.
By Laura Emack
Upon the unexpected demise of her college fund, valedictorian Joan Sanford refuses to accept lower horizons
and attend Central State University. Instead, she vows to win Columbia's "Junior Journalist" competition
by writing an expose about hardball recruiting tactics. To get the full-court comeone, Joan poses as a
potential recruit. Book-smart she may well be, but JOan is overmatched by skill recruiting Sergeant Sam
Milner and his boss Captain Victor Walton. After Sam discovers Joan's deception, the two make a deal. Sam
will answer all her questions on the record for her article. But if she doesn't win the scholarship, she
must enlist in the Army. Joan loses the competition with tragic consequences.
By Florence Gibson
How Do I Love Thee? is a play about the language of love, and the love of language. It spans the
sixteen year arc of the courtship and marriage of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning, and
ends with the death of Elizabeth from drug abuse and addiction. How Do I Love Thee? explores the
disparate, desperate lives of two poets whose love for each other ultimately existed on paper.
By Karen Gray
Right On The Money is a comedy that explores the life hopes and failures faced one summer by
middle-aged men living in a working class neighborhood in a small town in Western Pennsylvania. Two
friends, Blake and Pudge, one divorced, the other never married, spend many of their evenings and weekends
sitting on their respective porches, pondering relationships and remarking on the goings-on of the
neighborhood. When a new woman arrives and takes up with one of their older neighbors, her presence stirs
a strong reaction, recollections, and ultimately, personal renegotiations for what life might yet hold. The
submitted piece represents the first several scenes of the play.
By Kendall Gray
These are two scenes from And to All a Good Night, an unproduced Christmas script. The entire story
deals with a young widower's crisis of faith. The scenes given are the beginning of a story that his mother
tells him, in an effort to ease him through it. Set on Christmas Eve, 1963, they concern the ill-fated live
broadcast of the popular radio show The Second Story Man, when the lead actor, affected by his own
crisis of faith, went nuts—live and on the air.
By Deborah Greenhut
Staggering Girls begins during the dawn of the Roe v. Wade era of reproductive freedom. The play
depicts choices made by protagonists Tamar McCabe and Blaine McKay during 1973. In Act II, unexpected
consequences will rock their worlds in the much-changed world of 1993. The excerpt comprises flower child
Tamar´s confrontation of her professor, Mesmer Khalid with the results of her choices. The revelations that
begin at the end of Act I will have to be processed later in the much-changed world of Act II.
By Frank Higgins
Set at the Hermitage Stage Museum during the siege of Leningrad in World War II. A starving young woman
tries to barter her knowledge of art to some near-starving Soviet soldiers in exchange for food. Will she
be able to show them that art matters even when people are reduced to the basics of life and death?
By Jakob Holder
Haven left his family suddenly, in the middle of the night, for the climes of Western Canada. Having found
himself thousands of miles from home, he built a cabin by hand and burned all the remains of his past. Eight
years have gone by. Hunter, his fraternal twin, arrives just as suddenly, in the middle of the night, in
the middle of a blizzard. Plagued by ghosts from the past, and Hunter´s admissions of his growing
schizophrenia, the reunion is interrupted by the arrival of a beautiful girl, freshly wracked from a car
accident, equipped with the sudden use of French, popping of brightly colored pills, and unnerving
familiarity with a small stuffed horse. And she seems to know something about that drawing of a storage
facility hanging on the wall.
By Amy Lynne Holland
This is a dark journey of life and lust in 1888 London, where five unsuspecting women are linked by fate
(and the newspapers) to horrible happenings on the streets of Whitechapel.
By Tom Horton
In the black comedy, Motivations, a recently deceased man encounters the frustrations of being
processed through the endless maze of paperwork known only to the dearly departed.
By David James
A woman hires a small-time director to live with her for a week; she is taking an acting blitz, intense
training to be a famous actress. The play highlights the first day's trials, tribulations, and successes of
such an arrangement.
By Lynn-Steven Johanson
On a sunny morning in Judea in the year 30 A.D., Moe and Ira meet at a crucifixion—their own! Each has
been condemned to death on the cross. Moe, a clown, is being executed for telling irreverent political
jokes while Ira, a Samaritan, was sentenced for urinating on a mosaic. As they hang from the cross awaiting
their deaths, they discuss their crimes and perhaps find a way to avoid some of the suffering and agony
that await them.
By Shayne Kennedy
Michelle is hosting her annual Christmas cookie exchange in a house in which she does not live.
Unbeknownst to her (few) guests, Michelle and her husband Ken have split, and their hostess has moved in
with her sister. The women gather, cookies are exchanged, stories are told, secrets are revealed, and
animals are murdered. Well, one animal is murdered. Accidentally. Sort of.
By Norman Kline
Two strangers meet on an early morning commuter train and share suburban realities and wish lists.
By Hannah Koslosky
This is a play about the different facets of our personality that we show to the world. Taylor is an
average teenager represented by five different actresses who portray her various personality traits. Her
Geeky personality clashes with her Snobby one, while her Funny side contrasts with Whiny and the Sunny
personality just wants to be nice to everyone. All five Facets find themselves in agreement, however, when
a boy named Josh asks Taylor out for "not really a date, you know, but just, you know, dinner." Can Taylor
put on a good face for Josh, or will her true colors show?
By Kevin Lawler
As a rainstorm stretches out for days on end, Isabel, a young woman, struggles to hold onto her sense of
time, family, and life itself.
By E.M. Lewis
Rachel, a pre-med college student, takes a job as a research assistant on a psychological experiment being
conducted at the local hospital. When someone involved in the study is badly injured, the inquiry focuses
on Rachel—and whether she is responsible for what went wrong. Inspired in part by Stanley Milgram´s
study of obedience to authority in the late sixties, Reading to Vegetables is an inquiry into both
medical ethics and personal responsibility.
By Myla Lichtman-Fields
The Scandalmakers is a play about Mary Shelley and her notorious entourage—which included
the poets Byron and Shelley. The playwright traveled to Geneva to research the work and has brought a
uniquely feminist view of the scandalous group and the bet that helped Mary to exorcise her Frankenstein's
monster.
By Marilyn MacCrakin
Matilda, as her mother Joyce would say, "has a warped view of sex." She also has a warped view of herself
and the world around her. Was this caused because she grew up in the last throes of the sexual revolution?
Or is it because every time she looks in the mirror she wishes she would see a sexy movie star instead of
herself? Her mother is obsessed with beauty magazines and Matilda wants to be a racecar driver. The only
common ground the two women can find is in the dressing room. Dressing Matilda is about the cycle
of a woman´s life from early puberty to menopause.
By Mark Manhart
Mike and Lou recount their initiation into manhood. Sixty years later they are still consumed with guilt
that has left them scratching and spiting ever since.
By Doug Marr
When All the World Goes to White is a play about a young couple stranded in a blizzard in a western
state. Based on the true story of a couple who perished in their car in a Colorado blizzard, the fictional
couple are taken on a journey of discovery about the true nature of love, commitment, and the importance
of family in their final hours on earth.
By Ben Marshall
In the play, To Go, two guys are about to commit a crime with the help of a portable computer when
they get an email promising even more riches.
By Kim Matthews
After years on the entertainment circuit, Honey Harlow and Ruby opened The Pink Kitten to put down roots,
create a low-key life for themselves. Take it easy. They settled in on a menu of steaks and cheeseburgers,
sewed some lacy curtains for the windows, and built a stage with a vertical dancer´s pole. A couple years
later, in ´67, they hired Cupcake to add some youth and variety to their show. Everything was going
relatively smooth, until the morning they woke up to Hank, Honey´s ex-husband, sitting in his truck outside
the club dead from a heart attack. They brought Hank into The Pink Kitten to try to figure out what to do
with him. Why was he there? The answer was simple in theory. Hank was trying to outrun Sally, who was on
her way up to Minnesota from Nebraska to meet her Momma for the first time since birth. Honey is Sally´s
Mom. So, Honey, Ruby and Cupcake hid Hank in the broom closet. Sally found her way into the club. Honey
took to denial like a fly to dog poop. Ruby took to drinking. And Cupcake was just tickled blue about
having a new girlfriend her own age, especially after living with those crazy old women for the past two
years. Nevertheless, Sally isn´t budging an inch until she gets what she came for: a mom.
By Michele Merens
The Lion's Den focuses on one evening in the Ryder home—one particularly fierce battle a
Iraqi veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome is willing to wage against his wife adn son.
While Daniel Ryder approaches his demons with anguished resignation, his wife, Gail, finally summons up
her own surfeit of "ghosts" to combat the tortured "beings" that plague her husband, once and for all.
By Laura Morrissey-Foronda
A young middle school teacher struggles to come to grips with his attraction to one of his students. His
decision on how to deal with these feelings reverberate through all those he has come in contact with.
By Lee Myers
Over the winter, spring and summer of 1877, Crazy Horse and his band of Sioux Indians (numbering over 1,500
people) tried to deal with—all at the same time—harsh weather around their camps on the high western
plains of North America, diminishing buffalo herds giving diminished food and clothing, increasing U.S.
Army attacks following the Battle on the Little Big Horn with General Custer, increasing sicknesses from
the whites for which they had no immunity, conflicts among their own people over the future benefits of
going to Canada (Sitting Bull"s choice), or to the U.S. government controlled agencies (Red Cloud and
Spotted Tail"s choices), or to the most empty lands remaining (in the Powder River country, Crazy Horse´s
choice). These forces give dramatic consequences to the choices made by Crazy Horse for his wife´s health,
his family´s future and for his own sense of moral purpose for himself and for his people. These forces
also give dramatic consequences to the choices made by General George Crook, commander at Fort Omaha of the
U.S. Army department charged with dealing with Crazy Horse and his remaining free Sioux—leading up to
the time when Crazy Horse gets bayoneted by an Army soldier and dies on the grounds of the Army´s Camp
Robinson in what will become northwest Nebraska.
By Mary Jane Nordgren
Water and the Word, based on the World War II conversion experience of an elderly Christian friend,
is distanced enough from the pain and anger and fear experienced today in the Middle East to allow for
observation and analysis. But the emotions in this one-act, thinking play, raw and true as they are, reach
out to help express the universal ordeal of those caught in war.
By Kay Noyes
Someone in the University of Rhode Island alum office has wickedly placed three elderly couples, former
spouses, on a sailboat together for the "kickoff" cocktail party of their fiftieth class reunion.
By Ann Marie Oliva
Scat enters a methadone maintenance clinic to get his medication, but the nurse, Paula, tells him he must
speak with his counselor, Eugene, first. Scat is angry and suspicious. He is a proud man who has ruined
his health and wasted years of his life with drug addiction. Even his beloved music can´t obscure that
fact. Scat doesn´t want to see Eugene for good reason. He doesn´t want to talk about Alma and what
happened to her. Because Eugene has a good relationship with Scat, he is able to find out the sad facts of
Alma´s fate. Scat is left with one connection that can offer him some hope and separate him from the
heroin addiction that has depleted his life—Eugene and the methadone clinic.
By Glyn O'Malley
Set in the summer of 2004, A Heartbeat To Baghdad is a tandem journey of Claire and Dan—a
therapist and a conflicted soldier in The 101st Airborne Division—as they work to understand the tolls
of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" both ´in country,´ and on the soldiers who did and did
not come home to families in Clarksville, Tennessee. Dan—a retiring Sergeant First Class hails from
an Army family—is torn by between loyalty to the men of his Unit returning without him and the
realities of war. Claire—born and bred in Clarksville—has—like many "good
girls"—given the huge Post of Fort Campbell wide berth, only to discover that she really does not
know who these men and women are or how to truly assist Dan. With the "help" of
"JD"—a retired General"s wife known as "The Mother of The 101st Airborne
Division´—she is "recruited" to help and facilitate at Family Readiness Group Meetings
where she moves along the razor´s edge of waiting with them; discovers that there´s an
"inside" and an "outside" in the military; and is profoundly impacted by other soldiers
she comes to know.
By Andréa Onstad
Terminaton Aberration is for all practical purposes, a one-woman show. It is opinionated. It is an
indictment against cancer and the cancer industry. It is cultural criticism. It is designed to promote
thought, inspire debate, to question the health industry's practices. It does not promote warm and fuzzy
feelings. It is not "nice." It is, as the Woman character says, a snug show. Instead of allowing the cancer
to run its course, the cancer industry try to kill her with chemicals, the Woman kills herself onstage after
describing her encounter and experience with the disease. This play is not for the weak or faint-hearted.
By Judith Pratt
In a shabby college in a rundown city, a mysterious crate of masks appears in the office of anthropology
professor Meredith Bailey. With her graduate assistant Jill, Meredith tries to discover the story of these
artifacts. As Jill becomes obsessed with copying and wearing the masks, she and Meredith argue about the
uses of tribal culture adn the nature of the research. With the help of their discoverer, Emma, the three
masks teach Jill and Meredith about the mythic and mundane roles of women, and about their own
twentieth-century difficulties.
By Lonn Pressnall
This close knit Nebraska family of mixed heritage are dealing with grief and suicide, Native American
identity, and religious and political issues. Tid Northgate and Eddie Nightbear square off in a race for
major of Blue Springs where an important aquifer and its commercial potential is a course of conflict.
Wintergale's role as a gifted athlete and troubled teen and the elderly, food obsessed grandfather vie
for center stage. Leila Mae, Granny to most all who know her, strives forcefully to maintain peace and order
in the often tempestuous household. How this particular family uses humor and compassion to cope with
grief and the apprehensions of living weaver a complex and colorful blend of the ordinary with the
extraordinary.
By Kimberly Pritchard
Having followed a map home to his own apartment, Peter arrives for a visit after spending three months away
in an assisted facility. He and his wife, Matie, struggle to reestablish their roles with regard to each
other and the household. Peter is surprised to discover that a bottle of pills belongs to Matie and not to
their handicapped daughter Anabel. Matie fantasizes that Anabel is not in a wheelchair, but instead wears
a glorious "motordress." Matie attempts to communicate her own illness, but Peter does not understand.
Their argument draws Anabel from her room, but when her efforts to control the household also fail, she
announces her solo departure to purchase fruit from the market. Anabel becomes furious when Peter and
Mabel bet their wedding rings on whether or not she will return, producing a chaotic scene that leaves the
family unsure how to proceed.
By Calvin Ramsey
Canada Lee is an every person´s story. Are you a citizen or not? If you are, then what rights do
you have and who stands with you when you are accused of being a subversive against your own country? The
play shows how a few powerful people in government can stop you from working in your profession by
spreading fear and half-truths among the masses.
By Ronald Rand
A rogue agent is visited by a younger CIA agent at his remote cabin in the North Woods. Why is she
there? What has he done? What has happened to bring her there at this moment in time? There are
consequences to everyone's actions, especially in the world of intrigue and deceit.
By David Robson
Robin and Michael are fed up, what with the house, the kid, and modern life to manage. Their solution: Hire
a wife. And in Mary, a small town girl with little life experience, they find the perfect nurturer and
caretaker. Or do they? Before long, Michael finds he´s attracted to Mary; Robin finds a new girlfriend that
she can mold. Throw in a nosy, peeping-Tom-of-a-neighbor and a smart-aleck fourteen-year-old, and the
perfect modern family unit begins falling apart.
By Daena Schweiger
A bittersweet story of a romantic couple celebrating their wedding anniversary.
By Mark Scott
A grandson and his grandmother talk in her nursing home room. The grandmother tells her stories, perhaps
for the last time, and the grandson, listening and prompting her, and occasionally surprised by her new
additions, wants to know more precisely where he stands in his grandmother´s estimation. The grandmother
wants to makes sure that the grandson inherits the best of her, and that he cultivates only the "good part"
of the inheritance from his alcoholic, philandering grandfather. Between the two falls the figure of the
grandmother´s son, the grandson´s father—for whom the grandmother seems at moments to mistake the grandson.
The grandson keeps trying to draw his grandmother out about the "bad part" of that inheritance, but she
won´t let him.
By Jerry Seifert
Based on true oral stories of WWII vets, Dachau Dreaming is about an aged army veteran in a nursing
home haunted by his experience as one of the first American soldiers that liberated the Dachau concentration
camp, outside Munich, Germany, in May, 1945. After a lifetime of experiences, Dachau still haunts this
forgotten hero, now imprisoned by age, neglect and abuse, as he waits for his own liberation.
By Timothy Siragusa
Jane Self, a student at Mania High, gets sucked into a funnel cloud during gym class. Soon after, she
begins to appear to her friends in their dreams. It becomes apparent she has been possessed by an evil
spirit. Her boyfriend Wesley, recovering from a failed suicide attempt, is likewise possessed. Their
story is told side by side with a (seemingly unrelated) Native American Creation myth. Soon the two stories
converage at the Twineball Memorial, home to the world's largest ball of twine.
By Paul Smolens
The fugitive Pope Peter the VII, disguised as retiree Harry Blanford and holed up on Cape Code, Massachusetts,
is about to grant the interview of the century to an anonymous and unwitting reporter. Icky finds himself
in a race against the clock to record accurately and for all posterity a story of reunion and revival, of
reversion and rebellion, of reclamation and reconstruction, of revelation and redemption. It's a love
story.
By Max Sparber
Buddy Bentley is a blackly comic thriller detailing the deteriorating relationship between two
brothers in the Hollywood Hills in the 1960s, one a psychotic former-child star, the other a pill-addled,
neurotic homosexual.
By Geoffrey Stienblock
Conversations with Ducks is a monologue play that revolves around three characters during a great
period of change that will affect each differently. As they work towards resolutions, their view of
themselves and those around them begin to dramatically change over the course of the play. Some of the
themes involved in the play include self concept and worth, effects of divorce and the efforts required in
both hope and despair.
By Nora Vetter
Two strangers in a coffee shop admire one another from afar. They don't say a word to each other but the
audience gets to listen in on what they are thinking. Find out if their attraction is real or all in their
heads.
By Connie Whitt-Lambert
Set in 1954, Second Coming tells the story of Rachel Sims, a fifteen-year old girl raised in the
mountains of West Virginia. Ready to graduate from high school, she is eager to become the first Rocky
Step girl to attend college. Her family's reluctance to allow her to leave the mountain 'and go stay with
strangers' fuels her questions about her family, her religion and her future. The meteor shower on the
last night of the church revival brings more questions in the form of the mysterious Jacob, a man from her
mother's past who seems to know more about Rachel than she does.
By Dawn Wilson
The Café des Erreurs is not the ideal family restaurant, nor is it a good place to take your girlfriend on
a date. Shady characters hang out here and bad things tend to happen to the customers and the employees
alike. In Make Your Own Soup, the Waiter and the Cook thwart an attempt by the owner to bring in more
evil customers. While they fight the owner, another battle takes place in the Café between a mild-mannered
accountant and three criminals hell-bent to kill a kiwi-hating thug who has recently had to fake his own
death.
By Ruis Woertendyke
Ivan's Way Out is the story of a humble man (Ivan) who confronts his wife's lover (Boris) in a
public coffee shop on Christmas Eve. Unlike most confrontations, however, Ivan seeks help from his rival
rather than revenge.
By Nick Zadina
The Day Omaha Exploded is a short, fast paced comedy written about Omaha for Omaha. The story begins
with the arrival of a nephew from Scottsbluff who moves to Omaha in search of a more fast paced life. This
same day that he arrives, so does a U-haul full of explosives at 72nd and Dodge set to detonate in a half
an hour. During this half hour each character journeys Omaha coping with their own problems that life has
thrown their way. The play explores the difference between living a drama and living a comedy, making the
safe choice and making the strong choice, living life and LIVING LIFE.
By Aaron Zavitz
Set on the dangerous and unpredictable Yangtze River in China, Flooded River is an exchange of
dialogue heard in one of the river´s victimized villages. With the building of the Three Gorges Dam and
after being flooded almost every other year, Xiao and An, have been told they will be evacuated from their
village, leaving their past memories of their homes to be flooded over forever.