Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally
The classic “Dick & Jane” characters from the ubiquitous 1950s children’s books are grown-up and struggling to stay afloat in a home fractured by grief. Newly widowed Dick (now going by Richard) is raising his two children, Dick Jr. and Sally (who's deaf), while trying to manage a terminal illness that will inevitably leave them orphans. When he calls home his estranged sister, Jane, the family must reconcile and make peace with their shared and misunderstood histories before it’s time for him to go.
You Will Get Sick
It starts with your balance, but it begins to spread, as these things often do. Your legs numb, your grip-strength weakens, your arms go limp and soft. Before long, you’re hiring a stranger to say aloud what you can't bear to say yourself: that you got sick. A recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, You Will Get Sick is a new play in second-person about learning how to live within your body as you find your way home.
The Juniors
A class of high school juniors are tasked with a simple Home Ec assignment: parent a sack of flour for a week or fail. When the flour babies begin dying one by one, the students stop at nothing to ensure that they, and the pretend children they bore, are the last ones standing. A play with war, carnage, and genocide, The Juniors is a pitch black comedy about the ambitious and cut-throat world of high school Home Economics and the lengths we'll go to in order to protect what we think is ours.
Rock Egg Spoon
It's 1804 and President Tommy J has ordered Louis N. Clark on a voyage to map America's uncharted territory. Aided by Bigfoot, Sacagawea, and his own bravado, Louis makes his way across America, discovering and rediscovering everything that has been lost and left behind in the unbearable hardship that we call These United States. Rock Egg Spoon is a modern American epic about privilege, deafness, and giving credit where credit is due.
The Swindlers: A True-ish Tall Tale
Marie is feeling discontent. Her boyfriend’s a dud, her bank statements are piling up, and her job at the local dry cleaners feels like a dead end. Oh, and the FBI has just seized her house and assets in their pursuit of her father, a notorious con man on the run for swindling families and businesses out of their money. When Marie is used as bait to lure her father in, she inexplicably finds herself stuck on a road trip with him to acquire the stolen funds. The Swindlers is a "memory farce" loosely inspired by the real-life exploits of the playwright’s mother and grandfather.
Commissioned by Baltimore Center Stage
All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me
When Ty’s wife learns that she can’t conceive a child, he makes the impulsive decision to work his way off his testosterone and carry the baby himself. But when men from their pasts inexplicably begin appearing in the rooms of their new home, the would-be father and mother’s preparations for parenthood begin to collapse.
Commissioned by La Jolla Playhouse
Brothers Enter a Forest
On the eve of his high school graduation, a young man follows his two estranged older brothers into The Cornucopia, a sleazy Midwestern diner patronized by uncanny figures from their past. After sharing a bag of pills over a plate of mystery meat, the brothers inexplicably find themselves on a journey back to the house they once called home. Drawing on folklore and fairytales from the American Midwest, Brothers Enter a Forest is an eerie, kaleidoscopic portrait of obligation, reconciliation, and how far we’ll go to follow our brothers into the forests of their own making.
Commissioned by Audible Theater