Writing Projects
Plays
JOEY LATINO AND FRANKIE Z
Full-length play. Seven characters, five roles (one actor plays three parts); multiple sets.
Synopsis:
Finding out who we are and why we are may be the fundamental questions. Joey Latino and Frankie Zamboni are best friends turning thirty and stuck in dead-end jobs as an auto mechanic and a bartender. What triggers the turning point for Joey is a series of dream-visitations from his dead father and a cascade of pennies bearing the year of the father’s death—“He’s trying to tell you something,” asserts Immaculata, Frankie’s feisty mother. Then Frankie’s boss insults him as “nothing but a wrench,” inspiring him to grab his toolbox and leave. What happens next is a denouement driven by a pair of women—Immaculata and Liza, the sassy server in Joey’s bar.
Production history:
THE VANISHING POINT
Full-length play. Four characters, one set.
Synopsis:
Loss and renewal, natural and human. In the summer of 2005, just before Hurricane Katrina, the coastline of Louisiana is at risk, and so is the St. Pé family. The marsh grasses in the wetlands are dying; the rich silt that held them is sinking, vanishing. And the Cajun way of life that has been sustained by this land and this water for hundreds of years is also in peril. Pierre St. Pé is an environmental engineer who has been away from home for some time, in several respects. He returns to work on an experimental program planting grasses in the endangered wetlands. His father, stubbornly independent Paul St. Pé, is a shrimper, deeply loyal and committed to family. Paul has raised two boys: T-Paul, his biological child, and his orphaned nephew, Pierre, from whom he’s been estranged for years, ever since Pierre learned he was adopted and began blaming Paul for not telling him the truth about his identity. Pierre discovers that Jolie, a strong-minded Cajun woman and the girl everyone had once assumed he would marry, is looking after Paul and commands the house—and is now engaged to T-Paul. For his part, T-Paul refuses to shrimp any more, preferring the good pay on the oil rigs, but he dreams of escaping with Jolie to begin life over in the excitement of the big city, in his case Lafayette. Alienation and restoration, displacement and home, hope—and humor—in the face of what seems inevitable defeat: these four characters grapple in a microcosm of what we all face in our relationships with each other and with nature.
Production history:
WASH, DRY, FOLD
Full-length play. Five characters, one set.
Synopsis:
The time is July, the city is New Orleans. The setting is Magazine Street, where anything can, and often does, happen. For most of their forty-plus years, sisters Trudy and Enola have been arguing or talking at cross purposes, each a master at dredging up old resentments. Enola has always been the rock, the responsible sibling, ever since at age 14 she spent several months away at summer camp and returned a religious fanatic fixated on sin rather than redemption. Years later, Trudy also spent some time away, but in prison for killing her no-account husband. Now the sisters are stuck with each other, trying to keep the deteriorating laundromat they inherited from their mother, Grace’s Place, going. Another challenge is their Uncle Slackjaw, a damaged Vietnam P.O.W whom fate has made their responsibility. Into this mix of complex family relationships comes Arlene, a confident and compassionate twenty-eight-year-old artist. Arlene’s decision to waste her talent at the VooDoo Tattoo, an inking parlor next door to Grace’s Place, perplexes Mick Mahoney, a forty-five-year-old friend of her late father’s, and Slack’s lawyer. Mick’s law office is adjacent to the VooDoo Tattoo, each business occupying one side of the duplex shotgun dwelling next door to the laundromat. But Arlene knows exactly what she is doing and why.
Production history:
WRONG NUMBER
Full-length play. Six characters, one set.
Synopsis:
Cassie Hobson is thirty-five, single, and desperately wanting to be pregnant. Her best friend Mike and his partner Dan want to start a family. The solution seems simple enough when Cassie offers to be the surrogate for their child, but life intervenes. The fetus Cassie is carrying turns out to be twins, Dan decides he can’t cope with that much responsibility and leaves Mike, and Cassie realizes she can’t give up her babies after all. From the time they were toddlers, Mike and Cassie have been as close as family; suddenly, they actually are family—the parents of twins. Now these friends have to find a way to share the new lives they’ve created: not just the lives of their twins but also their own unexpected connection as gay dad and single mom.
Production history:
RIGHT
Full-length play. Five characters, five sets.
Synopsis:
Love and loss, crime and punishment, achievement and failure—several of the Big Themes come together here. Jake is a journalist who wants to re-open his Pulitzer Prize-winning story on an oil scam to discover who the whistleblower was. Abe Fineman, Jake’s editor at the Gazette, is proud of the young newsman he mentored, but wants his protégé to move on to other stories. Darcy, the girl Jake loves, is the daughter of the man found guilty of engineering the oil theft; her father apparently committed suicide in the face of humiliation and prison. Margaret, Darcy’s aunt, wants to protect Darcy from any further pain. Her determination to shield Darcy from Jake’s renewed probing leads her back to an old friend—Jazz Connor. Jazz is a wily, opportunistic lawyer who rubs shoulders with the power brokers in politics and the oil industry. The collision of wills and cross purposes finally reveals to Jake the secret Margaret has desperately fought to keep from Darcy, that her father was himself the whistleblower. Now Jake must grapple with an even bigger question: whether doing the right thing is always the right thing to do.
Production history:
THEY MUST BE WOMEN NOW
Full-length play. Six characters, one main set.
Synopsis:
Charleen, alias Sweet Tea, has a big mouth. And like her ancient precursor Sophocles’ Antigone, that mouth gets her into trouble—especially in her high-powered tech job in Atlanta where she bristles under men interrupting her in meetings and taking credit for her ideas. But then she discovers that men in her department got raises while she did not. In her performance review, she slams a dildo down on the desk and demands of her boss, “I’m demonstrating this firm’s unspoken requirement for advancement. That’s my penis. Now do I get a raise?” What she gets, of course, is fired. Unemployment sends her back home to Half Way, Georgia and to her mother, the feisty owner of Miss Althea’s Bridal Boutique and Bail Bonds. Althea’s business partner is Olivia, a black woman who is master of alterations in the Bridal Boutique—alterations both literal and metaphorical. Two minor roles are the imperious Lurleen and her shy-ish daughter Betsy, customers preparing for Betsy’s upcoming wedding. What bigoted Lurleen does not yet know is that Betsy is pregnant and her fiancé Trey is “passing.” (The lone male character, aside from the Boss in the opening flashback, is Althea’s long-haul trucker husband, Skip.) The play’s title, taken from Sophocles, emphasizes the sisterhood of women transcending time and place. Like Antigone, this play’s women are coping with diverse prisons forged by their own time, culture, and individual journeys. It is their job and their lot to discover themselves—and become women now.
Production history:
WAKE ME WHEN IT’S OVER
Full-length play. Four characters, one set.
Synopsis:
Three sisters return to their childhood home in New Orleans to bury their mother and sell the house they have collectively inherited. Nostalgia and laughter quickly descend into confusion and consternation as the women begin to realize that the subjectivity of memory has led each of them to conjure up a different mother. In an emotion-driven quest to discover the woman who gave birth to them all, the sisters are forced to uncover their own identities and make peace with the past.
Production history:
VOICES
One-act play. Two characters, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Joan of Arc and George Bernard Shaw are no strangers to each other. As a matter of fact, they have spent more than a few “time out” periods together in the therapist’s waiting room of heaven’s Department of Remedial Celestial Adjustment. Eternity, it would seem, is not as “heavenly” as we might believe, especially with these two incorrigibly blunt inhabitants speaking their minds to a host of acquaintances they encounter there. But on this day, as GB and Joan gleefully poke away at each other’s prejudices, they inadvertently enter into a joint examination of the “voices” that shape today’s events, and venture a sober speculation about mankind’s future on earth.
Production history:
COLOR ME SCREWED
Ten-minute play. Two characters, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Preparing for his employment interview over drinks with E. M. Blake, Brad strikes up small talk with a woman at the bar. Emily thinks he is trying to hit on her, but he is merely nervous. After the initial awkwardness, Emily draws Brad out about his present work and the job he hopes to score. Finally Brad says Mr. Blake must have stood him up and makes a disparaging comment about his prospective boss. Emily reveals that her name is actually “E. M. Blake.” Embarrassed and assuming he has blown his opportunity, Brad is about to slink away, but Emily has a surprise.
Production history:
CATATONIC
Ten-minute play. Three characters, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Tom and Harry are no longer in a relationship, unless we count their shared custody of Sophie Tucker, their female cat that turned out to be male. Tom is an airline pilot, and his frequent travel leaves his new partner, Rick, to deal with Harry when the cat changes hands each week. And that’s not so easy. Tom has a restraining order against Harry, and Harry regales Rick with an unending list of concerns about Tom’s parenting skills. When Rick finally gets fed up with the emotional tug-of-war between Tom and Harry, he takes matters into his own hands. And the solution he proposes just might turn Tom, Rick, and Harry into allies instead of adversaries.
Production history:
SPEED DATING
Ten-minute play. Two characters, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Awkward and inexperienced Art needs to develop his social skills. He signs up for a speed-dating event. There he meets confident, approachable Iris. A double surprise ensues when she realizes that Art is actually an artificial-intelligence robot—and we realize that so is she. But Iris is programmed to interface only with humans. What is the future of this relationship?
Production history:
PERFORMANCE REVIEW
Ten-minute play. Two characters, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Charlene sits down with Mr. Walters for the job performance review from hell. He sees the evaluation as a one-way street, but she wants two-way traffic. Any woman in the audience who has ever held a job will recognize the dramatic situation; she might even turn to the man sitting next to her and slap him upside the head. Some men will understand, others might wonder what all the fuss is about.
Production history:
JUST IN TIME
Ten-minute play. Three characters, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Sophie’s employer responded to the Covid crisis by switching to remote work. Rather than working from home, Sophie took her computer and temporarily moved in with her parents. But she did not anticipate interruptions like her mother wanting to show her a cell-phone video of kittens or her father turning off the Internet to reset the router. Poor Sophie can hardly wait to return to the office.
Production history:
MISS AMERICA 2.0
One-minute play. Two characters, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Satire: Two women in a dressing room selecting what one will wear in the next Miss America pageant, now that contestants are no longer to be judged by their appearance.
Production history:
COVID CONFINEMENT
Monologue. One character, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Helen tells how she coped with the 2020 shut-down occasioned by the novel coronavirus. Funny, aggravating, ultimately uplifting.
Production history:
Textbooks
THE PLAY’S THE THING: AN INTRODUCTION TO DRAMA (Independent School Press, 1981).
EXCELLENCE IN ENGLISH: PREPARING FOR ENGLISH ADVANCED PLACEMENT (Longman, 1987).
©2021 Nedra Pezold Roberts
JOEY LATINO AND FRANKIE Z
Full-length play. Seven characters, five roles (one actor plays three parts); multiple sets.
Synopsis:
Finding out who we are and why we are may be the fundamental questions. Joey Latino and Frankie Zamboni are best friends turning thirty and stuck in dead-end jobs as an auto mechanic and a bartender. What triggers the turning point for Joey is a series of dream-visitations from his dead father and a cascade of pennies bearing the year of the father’s death—“He’s trying to tell you something,” asserts Immaculata, Frankie’s feisty mother. Then Frankie’s boss insults him as “nothing but a wrench,” inspiring him to grab his toolbox and leave. What happens next is a denouement driven by a pair of women—Immaculata and Liza, the sassy server in Joey’s bar.
Production history:
- Staged reading, Merely Players, Atlanta, GA, 2022.
THE VANISHING POINT
Full-length play. Four characters, one set.
Synopsis:
Loss and renewal, natural and human. In the summer of 2005, just before Hurricane Katrina, the coastline of Louisiana is at risk, and so is the St. Pé family. The marsh grasses in the wetlands are dying; the rich silt that held them is sinking, vanishing. And the Cajun way of life that has been sustained by this land and this water for hundreds of years is also in peril. Pierre St. Pé is an environmental engineer who has been away from home for some time, in several respects. He returns to work on an experimental program planting grasses in the endangered wetlands. His father, stubbornly independent Paul St. Pé, is a shrimper, deeply loyal and committed to family. Paul has raised two boys: T-Paul, his biological child, and his orphaned nephew, Pierre, from whom he’s been estranged for years, ever since Pierre learned he was adopted and began blaming Paul for not telling him the truth about his identity. Pierre discovers that Jolie, a strong-minded Cajun woman and the girl everyone had once assumed he would marry, is looking after Paul and commands the house—and is now engaged to T-Paul. For his part, T-Paul refuses to shrimp any more, preferring the good pay on the oil rigs, but he dreams of escaping with Jolie to begin life over in the excitement of the big city, in his case Lafayette. Alienation and restoration, displacement and home, hope—and humor—in the face of what seems inevitable defeat: these four characters grapple in a microcosm of what we all face in our relationships with each other and with nature.
Production history:
- 2007 Southern Women Writers Conference, dramatic reading.
- Finalist in the 2011 Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference.
- 2011 winner in the Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre’s 30th annual ScriptFEST competition, reading at the Reuter Center, University of North Carolina-Asheville.
- Semifinalist in the 2013 Dayton Playhouse FutureFest competition; semifinalist at Raven Theatre, Chicago, 2013; semifinalist at Wordsmyth Theatre, Houston, 2013.
- Winner, 2013 American Association of Community Theatre NewPlayFest competition, with production at California Stage Company in Sacramento, 2014.
- Winner, 2013 Southern Playwrights Competition, with production at the Stone Center, Jacksonville State University in Alabama, 2014.
- CalStage production of “The Vanishing Point” swept the 2014 Elly Awards from the Sacramento Area Regional Theatre Alliance (SARTA), winning 7 of the 8 categories for which it had been nominated, including Best Script. SARTA includes 78 theatres covering nearly one-sixth of the state of California.
- The Autumn Players at Asheville Community Theatre in Asheville, NC, mounted a series of staged readings in June 2015.
- Publication, Dramatic Publishing, 2014.
WASH, DRY, FOLD
Full-length play. Five characters, one set.
Synopsis:
The time is July, the city is New Orleans. The setting is Magazine Street, where anything can, and often does, happen. For most of their forty-plus years, sisters Trudy and Enola have been arguing or talking at cross purposes, each a master at dredging up old resentments. Enola has always been the rock, the responsible sibling, ever since at age 14 she spent several months away at summer camp and returned a religious fanatic fixated on sin rather than redemption. Years later, Trudy also spent some time away, but in prison for killing her no-account husband. Now the sisters are stuck with each other, trying to keep the deteriorating laundromat they inherited from their mother, Grace’s Place, going. Another challenge is their Uncle Slackjaw, a damaged Vietnam P.O.W whom fate has made their responsibility. Into this mix of complex family relationships comes Arlene, a confident and compassionate twenty-eight-year-old artist. Arlene’s decision to waste her talent at the VooDoo Tattoo, an inking parlor next door to Grace’s Place, perplexes Mick Mahoney, a forty-five-year-old friend of her late father’s, and Slack’s lawyer. Mick’s law office is adjacent to the VooDoo Tattoo, each business occupying one side of the duplex shotgun dwelling next door to the laundromat. But Arlene knows exactly what she is doing and why.
Production history:
- Finalist, Kitchen Dog Theatre, Dallas, TX, 2014.
- Finalist, 25th Annual FutureFest, Dayton Playhouse, Ohio; staged reading, 2014.
- Finalist, Chicago’s Strange Sun, Greenhouse 2015.
- Finalist, The Bridge Initiative: Women in Arizona Theatre, 2015.
- Semifinalist, HRC Showcase, 2014.
- Staged reading, Nora’s Playhouse (NYC), in Montgomery, AL, 2015.
- Staged reading, Essential Theatre, Atlanta, 2015.
- Staged reading, St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, Atlanta, 2016, with Nedra herself directing.
- Winner, 2015 AACT NewPlayFest, with production at Chicago Street Theatre, Valparaiso, IN, just outside Chicago, 2016.
- Publication, Dramatic Publishing, 2016.
WRONG NUMBER
Full-length play. Six characters, one set.
Synopsis:
Cassie Hobson is thirty-five, single, and desperately wanting to be pregnant. Her best friend Mike and his partner Dan want to start a family. The solution seems simple enough when Cassie offers to be the surrogate for their child, but life intervenes. The fetus Cassie is carrying turns out to be twins, Dan decides he can’t cope with that much responsibility and leaves Mike, and Cassie realizes she can’t give up her babies after all. From the time they were toddlers, Mike and Cassie have been as close as family; suddenly, they actually are family—the parents of twins. Now these friends have to find a way to share the new lives they’ve created: not just the lives of their twins but also their own unexpected connection as gay dad and single mom.
Production history:
- Honorable Mention in annual New Play Contest, Ohio State University at Newark, 2015.
- Black-box production run, The Gallery Players, NYC (Brooklyn), June 2016.
- Internet podcast production, 12 Peers Theater, Pittsburgh, 2016.
- Staged reading, Hudson Shakespeare Company, NYC, 2015.
- Winner, New Works Competition, Hudson Shakespeare Company, NYC. Production run in the Manhattan Theatre District, 2016.
- Winner, 2016-17 Texas Nonprofit Theatres TNT POPS! New Play Project competition, with production at Baytown Little Theater near Houston, 2017.
RIGHT
Full-length play. Five characters, five sets.
Synopsis:
Love and loss, crime and punishment, achievement and failure—several of the Big Themes come together here. Jake is a journalist who wants to re-open his Pulitzer Prize-winning story on an oil scam to discover who the whistleblower was. Abe Fineman, Jake’s editor at the Gazette, is proud of the young newsman he mentored, but wants his protégé to move on to other stories. Darcy, the girl Jake loves, is the daughter of the man found guilty of engineering the oil theft; her father apparently committed suicide in the face of humiliation and prison. Margaret, Darcy’s aunt, wants to protect Darcy from any further pain. Her determination to shield Darcy from Jake’s renewed probing leads her back to an old friend—Jazz Connor. Jazz is a wily, opportunistic lawyer who rubs shoulders with the power brokers in politics and the oil industry. The collision of wills and cross purposes finally reveals to Jake the secret Margaret has desperately fought to keep from Darcy, that her father was himself the whistleblower. Now Jake must grapple with an even bigger question: whether doing the right thing is always the right thing to do.
Production history:
- Staged reading, Synchronicity Theatre, Atlanta, 2016.
- Staged reading, Sundog Theatre, Staten Island, NY, 2016.
- Winner, 2018 Southern Playwrights Competition, with production at Jacksonville State Univ., Jacksonville, AL, 2019.
THEY MUST BE WOMEN NOW
Full-length play. Six characters, one main set.
Synopsis:
Charleen, alias Sweet Tea, has a big mouth. And like her ancient precursor Sophocles’ Antigone, that mouth gets her into trouble—especially in her high-powered tech job in Atlanta where she bristles under men interrupting her in meetings and taking credit for her ideas. But then she discovers that men in her department got raises while she did not. In her performance review, she slams a dildo down on the desk and demands of her boss, “I’m demonstrating this firm’s unspoken requirement for advancement. That’s my penis. Now do I get a raise?” What she gets, of course, is fired. Unemployment sends her back home to Half Way, Georgia and to her mother, the feisty owner of Miss Althea’s Bridal Boutique and Bail Bonds. Althea’s business partner is Olivia, a black woman who is master of alterations in the Bridal Boutique—alterations both literal and metaphorical. Two minor roles are the imperious Lurleen and her shy-ish daughter Betsy, customers preparing for Betsy’s upcoming wedding. What bigoted Lurleen does not yet know is that Betsy is pregnant and her fiancé Trey is “passing.” (The lone male character, aside from the Boss in the opening flashback, is Althea’s long-haul trucker husband, Skip.) The play’s title, taken from Sophocles, emphasizes the sisterhood of women transcending time and place. Like Antigone, this play’s women are coping with diverse prisons forged by their own time, culture, and individual journeys. It is their job and their lot to discover themselves—and become women now.
Production history:
- Staged reading, 5th Wall Productions, Charleston, WV, 2019.
- Workshop and reading, Pegasus PlayLab, U of Central Florida, Orlando, 2019.
- Workshop and reading, Barter Theatre, Abingdon, VA, 2020.
- Staged reading, The Bechdel Group, NYC, 2020.
WAKE ME WHEN IT’S OVER
Full-length play. Four characters, one set.
Synopsis:
Three sisters return to their childhood home in New Orleans to bury their mother and sell the house they have collectively inherited. Nostalgia and laughter quickly descend into confusion and consternation as the women begin to realize that the subjectivity of memory has led each of them to conjure up a different mother. In an emotion-driven quest to discover the woman who gave birth to them all, the sisters are forced to uncover their own identities and make peace with the past.
Production history:
- Staged reading, Pumphouse Players, Cartersville, GA, 2019.
- Workshop production, AcTworth Theatre, Acworth, GA, March 2020.
VOICES
One-act play. Two characters, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Joan of Arc and George Bernard Shaw are no strangers to each other. As a matter of fact, they have spent more than a few “time out” periods together in the therapist’s waiting room of heaven’s Department of Remedial Celestial Adjustment. Eternity, it would seem, is not as “heavenly” as we might believe, especially with these two incorrigibly blunt inhabitants speaking their minds to a host of acquaintances they encounter there. But on this day, as GB and Joan gleefully poke away at each other’s prejudices, they inadvertently enter into a joint examination of the “voices” that shape today’s events, and venture a sober speculation about mankind’s future on earth.
Production history:
- 2013 semi-finalist, Drury University One-Act Playwriting Competition
- Production, Gallery Players, NYC (Brooklyn), 2014.
COLOR ME SCREWED
Ten-minute play. Two characters, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Preparing for his employment interview over drinks with E. M. Blake, Brad strikes up small talk with a woman at the bar. Emily thinks he is trying to hit on her, but he is merely nervous. After the initial awkwardness, Emily draws Brad out about his present work and the job he hopes to score. Finally Brad says Mr. Blake must have stood him up and makes a disparaging comment about his prospective boss. Emily reveals that her name is actually “E. M. Blake.” Embarrassed and assuming he has blown his opportunity, Brad is about to slink away, but Emily has a surprise.
Production history:
- Production, Boiling Point Players, Houston, TX, 2015.
- Production, Carrollwood Players, Tampa, FL, 2015.
- Production, Gallery Players, NYC (Brooklyn), 2015.
- Production, Open Hydrant, NYC (Bronx), 2015. Reprised 2016.
- Production, Actors’ Theatre, Santa Cruz, CA, 2016.
CATATONIC
Ten-minute play. Three characters, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Tom and Harry are no longer in a relationship, unless we count their shared custody of Sophie Tucker, their female cat that turned out to be male. Tom is an airline pilot, and his frequent travel leaves his new partner, Rick, to deal with Harry when the cat changes hands each week. And that’s not so easy. Tom has a restraining order against Harry, and Harry regales Rick with an unending list of concerns about Tom’s parenting skills. When Rick finally gets fed up with the emotional tug-of-war between Tom and Harry, he takes matters into his own hands. And the solution he proposes just might turn Tom, Rick, and Harry into allies instead of adversaries.
Production history:
- Staged reading, Atlantic Stage, Myrtle Beach, SC, 2016.
- Production, The Group Rep at the Lonny Chapman Theatre, Hollywood, CA, 2016.
- Production, Gulfport Community Players, Gulfport, FL, 2016.
- Production, Blue Pearl Theatrics, at The DeSotelle Theater, New York, 2016.
- Internet production, Onstageoffstage Theatre, Ithaca, NY, 2016.
- Production, Open Hydrant, The Bronx, NY, 2016.
- Publication, The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2017, ed. Larry Harbison, Smith and Kraus, 2017.
SPEED DATING
Ten-minute play. Two characters, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Awkward and inexperienced Art needs to develop his social skills. He signs up for a speed-dating event. There he meets confident, approachable Iris. A double surprise ensues when she realizes that Art is actually an artificial-intelligence robot—and we realize that so is she. But Iris is programmed to interface only with humans. What is the future of this relationship?
Production history:
- Production, Center for the Arts, Bonita Springs, FL, 2019.
- Production, New Jersey Rep, Long Branch, NJ, 2019.
- Production, Durango Arts Center, Durango, CO, 2019.
- Production, Orange Players, Orange, CT, 2020.
- Publication, Some Like It Hot, Smith and Kraus, 2019.
- Publication, Best New 10 Minute Plays 2019, ed. Larry Harbison, Applause Theatre and Cinema Books (Rowman & Littlefield imprint), 2020 projected.
PERFORMANCE REVIEW
Ten-minute play. Two characters, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Charlene sits down with Mr. Walters for the job performance review from hell. He sees the evaluation as a one-way street, but she wants two-way traffic. Any woman in the audience who has ever held a job will recognize the dramatic situation; she might even turn to the man sitting next to her and slap him upside the head. Some men will understand, others might wonder what all the fuss is about.
Production history:
- Production, New Jersey Rep, Long Branch, NJ, 2017.
- Production, New American Theatre, Los Angeles, CA, 2017.
- Production, Fantastic.Z Theatre, Seattle, WA, 2017.
- Production, InspiraTO Theatre, Toronto, CAN, First Prize Winner, 2018.
- Production, New American Theatre, Los Angeles, CA, reprised for Hollywood Fringe, 2018.
- Publication, Smith and Kraus, 2017.
- Winner, Little Black Dress Ink’s 2018 Female Playwrights Onstage Project, with nearly a dozen staged readings coast to coast in conjunction with International Women’s Voices Day, 2019.
- Staged reading, Itinerant Theatre, Lake Charles, LA, 2018.
- Staged reading, Chameleon Theatre, Bloomington, MN, 2018.
JUST IN TIME
Ten-minute play. Three characters, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Sophie’s employer responded to the Covid crisis by switching to remote work. Rather than working from home, Sophie took her computer and temporarily moved in with her parents. But she did not anticipate interruptions like her mother wanting to show her a cell-phone video of kittens or her father turning off the Internet to reset the router. Poor Sophie can hardly wait to return to the office.
Production history:
- New.
MISS AMERICA 2.0
One-minute play. Two characters, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Satire: Two women in a dressing room selecting what one will wear in the next Miss America pageant, now that contestants are no longer to be judged by their appearance.
Production history:
- Production, Actor’s Express Theatre, Atlanta, GA, 2018.
- Staged reading, Merely Players, Atlanta, GA, 2022.
COVID CONFINEMENT
Monologue. One character, minimal set.
Synopsis:
Helen tells how she coped with the 2020 shut-down occasioned by the novel coronavirus. Funny, aggravating, ultimately uplifting.
Production history:
- Publication, Alone Together, ed. Clayton Ramsey (Southern Fried Karma Press, 2020).
Textbooks
THE PLAY’S THE THING: AN INTRODUCTION TO DRAMA (Independent School Press, 1981).
EXCELLENCE IN ENGLISH: PREPARING FOR ENGLISH ADVANCED PLACEMENT (Longman, 1987).
©2021 Nedra Pezold Roberts
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