CAPTAIN L-RAC ON MARS!
A sci-fi psychological comedy. Available at Heartland Plays, Inc.
A noted scientist is forced to undergo a series of psychological evaluations after a colleague exposes her private journals that reveal she has been having adventures on Mars in the distant future.
TO THE MOON
Available at Heartland Plays, Inc.
A couple and their chaotic divorce crashes into the ordered life of their grandfather, a scientist building a rocket ship designed to dive into a black hole and reunite him with his late wife.
THE YOUNG MAN
Available at Heartland Plays, Inc.
A battle of wills ensues when a notorious community theatre director, holding callback auditions for A Streetcar Named Desire, is confronted by a young actor determined to audition for the lead part of Stanley Kowalski, even though he’s better suited to play The Young Man.
BURNING VONNEGUT
A desperate young Hispanic woman trapped by an abusive past uses Kurt Vonnegut’s books as a classy way to commit suicide.
Burning Vonnegut was first produced at the Limelight Theatre in St. Augustine, Florida, as part of their 2nd Annual Playwrights’ Festival, a two week AEA production.
HISTORY:
Limelight Theatre’s Dramaturge Susan Rowland worked on the pre-production edit with Mr. Houseman and they continued to work together afterwards, fine-tuning the script.
Adrian Holguin, Assistant Director at Impulse Theatre, a comedy improv group based in Denver, collaborated on an edit after the initial production, and then Playwrights’ Round Table held a workshop in Orlando, Florida. Following that, the play has had two professional staged readings: The Center House, Studio C (Seattle) in partnership with the Redwood Theatre in Redmond, Washington, produced and directed by Teresa Widner Hicks, and The Inn at Arrowhead & Casey’s Irish Pub, based in Colorado, for one of their A Staged Reading with Guinness events.
DARK AGES
After a tormented actor murders his corrupt Hollywood agent, he holds two struggling actors who witnessed the crime hostage, forcing them to tell their stories about how the agent used Shakespeare, sex, and power to control and compromise them – unaware that death is just a minor inconvenience for a true Hollywood monster.
In the tradition of Grand Guignol and Titus Andronicus, Dark Ages is a timely “…story about a witch-like Hollywood agent and three bruised and battered souls so desperate for fame they allow her to demean and humiliate them in the hopes of becoming a Hollywood star. This lust for fame at any cost is not a new concept, but the bloody nightmare of Dark Ages is a different telling of it… Each character speaks with a distinct voice (using) Shakespeare’s characters with dialogue that is a mix of Shakespeare’s words, interjected statements, and some funny aberrations of the Bard. …a very bold and interesting piece.” – Austin Film Festival Stage Play Reader Comments, 2017.
HISTORY: Undergrad production, numerous table readings, Playwrights’ Round Table workshop and professional staged reading in Orlando, Florida.
SKIN
HISTORY: Playwrights’ Round Table workshop and professional staged reading in Orlando, Florida. The Center House, Studio C (Seattle) in partnership with the Redwood Theatre in Redmond, Washington, held a professional staged reading, produced and directed by Teresa Widner Hicks. Scripteasers, a San Diego-based playwrights development group, held a Zoom Reading Friday, June 25, 2021.
CAST PARTY
Dejected actors throw a cast party after a critic calls their play a cliche of bad experimental theatre and closes the show, hoping some booze, drugs and an improvised beat poetry reading inspired by Allen Ginsburg’s Howl and Beowulf, the epic Anglo-Saxon poem, will revive their muse, unintentionally awakening a monster of truth that reveals lies, hangups, secret loves, sexual fantasies and even a vampire.
HISTORY: Numerous table readings. Playwrights’ Round Table workshop and staged reading.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN CRASH TEST DUMMIES (10 minute play)
After a wealthy woman from Texas hits a young hippie bicyclist with her Prius, instead of taking him to the hospital, she returns to her secluded Colorado mansion, pulls him from the windshield and leaves him in the garage to die.
HISTORY: Numerous table readings.
BLACK IRISH (10 minute play)
Black Customer Service Telephone Operator D-von James and white Client Caller Peter Butane’s conversation goes off the rails when race is brought up.
Black Irish was produced and performed at the 9th Annual Columbus Black Theatre Festival (CBTF), July 9-11, 2021 at the Abbey Theatre of Dublin, Ohio, Mine 4 God Productions: https://mine4godproductions.com/9th-cbtf-2021. https://www.facebook.com/events/1031007727305173.
SHORT MOVIE WORLD PREMIERE: Jabari Cole and his Columbus based production company, Restless Multimedia, produced Black Irish as a short film. Principal photography began in October, 2021. The shoot wrapped February, 2022. Postproduction concluded December, 2022. Black Irish had its world premiere January 21, 2023 at Hooleys Public House, an Irish Pub in La Mesa, California.
