Buttdial (10M) was selected for production in the Lowell Arts Playbytes by Playwrights: Things That Go Bump in the Night Festival in October 2022. The set-up: God, who appears very un-godlike, has a new phone and he’s not very good with it. Then, the person he buttdials picks up.
Hand-Clubbed Baby Seal (10M) was a Top-10 finalist in the 2022 Veterans Repertory Theater play competition, and was selected for the Short&Sweet Festivals in Dubai (2023 and 2024) and Sydney (2024). The set-up: At a wedding reception guests learn that the wonderful canapés they’ve been eating are made with hand-clubbed baby seal… or is it a carpaccio of spotted owl?
My play with songs, Trying to Catch Amnesia (as a 1A), had a staged reading by Dare Arts in November 2022, a workshop (as a full-length, 2A play) with Heartwood Regional Theater in February 2023, and a table read at Fairfield University in July 2023. Trying to Catch Amnesia was a semi-finalist in Syracuse University’s New Works New Voices initiative for 2023.
Come Dawn (10M) was selected for Salem State University’s 2023 Veterans’ Play Festival and for the 2024 Maine State Playwright’s Festival. The set-up: The Somme, 1916. Private Harry Farr has been condemned to death for cowardice, and will be shot at dawn. We wait for dawn with Harry and the men who will conduct his execution.
The Inn at Little Bethlehem (2A) is a comedy set at a small-town inn in rural Maine during a nor’easter at Christmas. There are Elvis impersonators. We’ve just held a table-read and are thinking about next steps.
I’m adapting my novella Love, Orchids, and Red Mercury into a screenplay—my first. The working title is Red Mercury.
I’m sketching out the plot for a play called Square Tuna that takes place at a down-at-the-heels motel in Cocoa Beach, Florida in 1977. Look for bad haircuts, inter-planetary spacecraft launches, military deserters, dope washing ashore, and Rumspringa.
And I’m just starting research on a play about Kate Richards O’Hare (Red Kate) and Emma Goldman (Red Emma) serving time together in the Missouri State Penitentiary at the end of the Great War.
Image: View from the stage of The Waldo Theater in Waldoboro, Maine.