performance | writing | direction

Early Plays 3

etta7

COME HOME FOR DINNER (one act)- Laura in her mid forties prepares a surprise gourmet meal for her husband Michael in attempt to keep their frail marriage together, her worst suspicions may be true. As the couple’s secrets are surfaced they face a future with newly found fears.

LAURA- Damn it! How the fuck did I become my mother?

MICHAEL- Don’t worry I became my mother too.

2 characters

 

DEAD END RACKET (one act)- Mira- early forties in Queens, New York is a mafia associate who is looking to leave the rackets and as much money to her dying mother. Her final assignment gets complicated when her jailbird husband Larry shows up to even an unsettled score.

MA- He was your father. That had to mean something to you, I know it did, just a little bit. Just wanting it to be right.

MIRA- I never saw him as anything. He was…he was like a germ in the air. I couldn’t see him but I felt him inside me and he made me sick. I can’t make out his voice. I can still hear it and it made us jump. I was never -right- around him and so he never was. And whatever you did, forgiving him, I just can’t do it.

3 characters

 

HOLDING SOIL (one act) – Set against the Depression era, The Glenn couple cling to false hopes of holding onto their home. Their lost faith in God and the fear that their daughter Lilly will start a life with the work hand Paul threatens to destroy the family.

MARTHA- When Lilly was born I thanked God. (Pause) I don’t why but I did, I thought he is responsible for everythin’. He brought this to me as he brought the soil on our farm. And I thought God, is the most beautiful thing but not as beautiful as my baby. Not like my Lilly. She’s so grown. She’s a woman now and I want her to have somethin’ I didn’t have. And it no longer seems as beautiful as it once did.

JOSEPH- I have followed my life very well Martha. And I believe in faith, in God. I believe that he will receive us. That….that we will have back all that we had.

4 characters

 

POUNDING ON DEATH’S DOOR WITHOUT AN INVITATION (full length)- Amera Clay, a Hollywood has been actress in her fifties, attempts to commit suicide in her off-off-off Broadway dressing room. Only to be stopped by the ghost of her three dead husbands who reel her into her glorious past, deception, true love and mysterious baby that destroyed her marriages.

JACK- Praying for everyone to leave so we could sit in the theatre waiting for the ghost to speak to us.

AMERA- A kind of old, young man who keeps living but you see me as something gone. Long over due. (He reaches for her again.) No! (Rises. X’s to dressing table.) You can disappear to wherever you are but I have to stay.

5 characters

 

TOM AND MARTHA (one act) – Right outside of Phoenix, Arizona, Tom and Martha, estranged middle aged rebel lovers reunite at Lula’s 24 hour diner, after a twenty year hiatus. They recant their wild past, what lead them to their stable lives and the unyielding desperate longing for one another that still binds them together.

TOM- And when we got lucky we’d find a lake. And it would be like it was ours. The surprise kisses. Right in the middle of a silent treatment you’d kiss me like and angel and back away like the devil and continue your starring out the window.

MARTHA- Every time I was driving alone and think, I’ll go home and he’ll be there to hand me a drink, maybe massage my feet, if you were in the mood. But the green light would turn on and that quick thought I had of you at the stop light would end. I’d see an old couple, the kind we use to imitate.

3 characters

 

WHEN CAN I DIE SO I CAN START LIVING? (full length) – Two brothers are surprised with the sudden death of their grandfather in their New York City apartment. As Jake thirty-two, tries to get the younger Bobby twenty nine, to pull away from his dreams in art and resign to pursue the basic American Dream. Bobby forces Jake to realize the façade that has made him a success and what has always been pulling him away from the family.

BOBBY – I can see you after the hundreds of screaming people have died away. The cleaning guy’s tray is chugging along the carpet. The huge office is quiet. No light on except that wonderful computer screen shinning on your face. And poor little Farmer Joe’s figures just are not happening. And then the computer screen dims just enough to reflect your face and it’s the face of a rat. A little ant that squirms his way in and out of a cubicle. They say the rats are as big as dogs in this city but we’ve got the biggest ants I’ve ever seen. Can you imagine how you look like from an airplane. A bunch of tiny ants squirming around.

2 characters

 

MAKE IT A DOUBLE (full length) – Angelica, an alcoholic lounge singer stumbles into her performance bar to celebrate her forty fifth birthday only to delve deep into her mid life crisis; inability to understand men, love, and inevitable aging.

Solo show

Angelica- I am not drunk. Only alcoholics get drunk and I am certainly not an alcoholic. I deserve a drink for acknowledging that. (X’s to bar.) And I hate my birthday, always have, always will. Want a drink? Want to guess my age? Really? I can be anyone I want to be. I can be Lana Turner. You can be pretty all you want but it takes a certain air of strength to be attractive. Something I wish my mother would have understood.

Once a month…the bleeding… even though it’s such a pain in the ass it was a reminder that I could give life. Now I don’t know how good that life would have been but I’m just saying I could have. I made the decision of not getting married in the shower. I think people make the most important decisions of their lives doing stupid, ordinary everyday things. Like eating a bagel, taking a dump or sweeping or something…