Yasodhara, wife of Siddhartha (the Buddha), introduces herself and her 2500-year-old story alongside Diane, a contemporary PhD candidate and rising star in feminist studies. Their stories interweave as both women are trapped at home with newborns, abandoned by their husbands who leave home to pursue a greater purpose. Moving fluidly through time and place, THE BUDDHA'S WIFE juxtaposes the women’s struggles, expectations, and choices, explores the meanings of love and friendship, and crosses their paths in ways they could never have foreseen. Finalist, The Landing Theatre Company's New American Voices Playwriting Festival, 2020.
“MOM” is dying. Represented by a small tv that silently broadcasts archetypical tv mothers, she lies in a hospital bed on the last day of her life, as her two daughters (the NARRATOR and her SISTER) journey though family memories within a spiraling, non-linear narrative to understand their mother’s choices and her untimely death. By engaging dance and poetry within the tragicomic framework of naturalistic scenes and magical realism, THE MARRIAGE OF MOM & DAD explores the emotional landscape of a 39- year marriage that begins in 1950 and is dissolved by death. JOY (OF COOKING) and MONTY HALL provide social commentary; perspectives shift and temporal lines blur; and multiple versions of MOM and DAD vie for “the Truth.” In the end, the NARRATOR of this poetic drama unearths deeper human truths about love, memory, and absence – for the benefit of them all.
Currently in development, ANSWER KEY is a musical comedy about a bee-loving teenager, his two tutors-slash-actresses who would rather be on Broadway, and the lengths his helicopter parents will go to get him into the Ivy League. Set within the world of high-stakes standardized testing, ANSWER KEY was commissioned by Road Less Traveled Theatre Productions as part of their Regional Playwright Residency Program, and had an initial reading on March 17, 2018 at their theatre in Buffalo, NY.
Lyrics: Allison Weiser Strout. Music: Griffin Strout
Confined in an undefined time and place, a young man attempts to write his "Book of Life" amidst the interruptions of an old man. As their needs and personal philosophies collide, underscoring the significance of memory and the consequences of an undocumented life, an unforeseen crisis arises, ultimately causing them to give each other two versions of the same gift in the play's shocking, poignant resolution.
Produced at the Pittsburgh New Works Festival, Pittsburgh, PA, 2017,
Runner-Up Donna Award for Outstanding Playwright
Honorable Mention, One-Act Contest,
FirstStage Theater, Los Angeles in 2006
What is real? What is permanent? An estranged couple attempt to find their way back to each other after the loss of their only child.
Produced at the Samuel French Short Play Festival, NYC, 2007. Finalist.
Originally titled RICORSO, IT IS WHAT IT IS is a play that delights in the malleability of language and subtext. Three different vignettes use the same words in the same order, broken up into completely different meanings to create three entirely different outcomes. Can be played with as few as two and many as six actors.
Produced at the Turnip Festival Company's 15-Minute Play Festival, NYC in 1995.
Finalist.
DEAR ONE is a dark tale of moonlight, mistaken identity, and hidden artifacts. Will the two young lovers find happiness? Can the old woman make things right? And what is the shocking secret that lies at the heart of it all?
Staged Reading, Buffalo History Museum One-Acts, 2017.
RETURNS skewers the election process in America through a deceptively simple encounter in a department store: a woman attempts to return something she's bought to a customer service representative. He refuses to take it back, then interrogates her unsympathetically about her poor decision to buy it in the first place. His arrogance evaporates at the end, when he and the audience discover she is blind.
In a middle-class living room, in a middle-class home, somewhere in middle-America, an evening at home turns surreal for an older married couple when the power goes out.
A woman of a certain age falls in love with a just-hatched beetle. To win him over, she undergoes plastic surgery, but his life span is dwindling...
Inspired by Kafka, and the true story of one of the first plastic surgery patients in 1920s Paris as reported by The New York Times.
Sent by their parents to Firebird Canyon, an Outward Bound-type wilderness camp for "difficult" teens, three teenage delinquents (Mozart, Einstein, and Shakespeare) wrestle with getting each other over "The Wall," a team-bonding challenge. Their eventual solution reflects their deep need for freedom from a one-size-fits-all educational system that relies on pharmaceuticals to "normalize" students who don't fit the mold.
A one-minute play that explains how power and loyalty at the highest levels really work.