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MY PLAYS>

1. Full-length Plays and Long One-Acts

The Trouble with Catherine

CAST: 3M, 3W (expandable casting)

LENGTH: ~110 minutes

 

The Trouble With Catherine traces the affectionate yet fraught relationship between the woman known to history as Catherine the Great and the younger friend who helped her take power. The Princess Catherine Dashkova joins the conspiracy to dethrone the future Empress’s universally hated husband. Side by side, on horseback and in military uniform, the two women lead the troops effecting the palace coup. Once in power, though, the new Empress keeps Dashkova at arm’s length from any real political influence. Eventually Dashkova wins a post worthy of her talents, as the director of the Academy of Sciences (a first for a woman in any country). But her loyalty to her dearest friend will clash with her broader sense of duty. Loosely based on the memoirs and letters of the two principal figures.

 

DEVELOPMENT:

  • The Trouble with Catherine grew out of an assignment with the 365 Women A Year playwriting project, for which a shorter (60-minute) version exists.  |  https://365womenayear.wordpress.com/2015-info/

  • Developed with the Monday Night Group of San Francisco

 

STAGED READINGS:

  • Staged reading: Dramatist's Guild, San Francisco Chapter, Footlight Series. February 2016.

  • Staged reading: San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of Dramatists Guild, Footlights Series. Jan 2016.

 

Daniil Kharms: A Life in One Act and Several Dozen Eggs

CAST: 2M, 2W 

LENGTH: ~60 minutes

 

We’re in Leningrad, at the intersection of the imaginary and the real. Stalin’s terror campaign is coming into full swing.  A rumpled cranky Muse emerges from her cupboard to toss eggs and dark stories at the writer Daniil Kharms. But who’s that listening in behind the wall? Based on the life and work of Russian absurdist writer Daniil Kharms (1905-1942).

 

STAGED READINGS:

  • Staged reading: Virago Theatre's New Play Series, The Flight Deck, Oakland. Directed by L. Peter Callender. June 2014. 

  • PlayLab staged reading: Great Plains Theatre Conference, Omaha, NE. May 2014.

  • Staged reading: Chameleon Theatre Center’s New Play Festival, MN. September 2013.

 

AWARDS:

  • Named finalist for Cutting Ball Theater’s Risk Is This Experimental Play Festival. 2013.

Anna and the Blackbird

CAST: 2M, 4W 

LENGTH: ~110 minutes

 

Young Anna lives in Brezhnev-era Moscow under the shadow of her late father, a writer of the “boy meets tractor” genre who fell into disgrace under Stalin. Rumors of hidden manuscripts lead Anna on a wild search. Lies, truths, half-truths, and a fatal typo emerge from the shadows. Along the way, Anna dreams of a silent blackbird, and learns more about herself—her own calling and what she’s willing to sacrifice for it—than about her elusive father.

 

DEVELOPMENT:

  • Developed with Will Dunne’s Dramatic Writing Workshops and the Monday Night Group in San Francisco. 

 

STAGED READINGS:

  • Staged Reading: The Blank Theatre's Living Room Series, The Blank's 2nd Stage Theatre. October 2015 

The Plumber

CAST: 2M, 2W , or 3W

LENGTH: ~30 minutes

 

A routine plumbing problem becomes a pipeline into the catastrophic imagination.

 

PRODUCTIONS AND STAGED READINGS:

  • San Francisco Fringe Festival, in "Assorted Domestic Emergencies", produced with Linda Ayres-Frederick. Directed by Joe Weatherby. September 2014.

  • Produced by Drip Action Theatre Company for the Arundel Theatre Trail,  Arundel, UK. August 2014.

  • Staged Reading: Nantucket Short Play Contest.  April 2014. 

 

AWARDS:

  • Best of Fringe, San Francisco Fringe Festival. 2014.

  • First Place Winner, FirstStage LA  One-Act Contest. 2013.

2. Shorts

An Announcement

CAST: 1M, 1W 

LENGTH: ~10 minutes

 

The Angel Gabriel is a bit of a ham, but at least he has his lines down pat. He’s had an eternity to rehearse. But he’s forced to improvise when his co-star, Mary, goes dangerously off-book. 

 

PRODUCTIONS AND STAGED READINGS:

One of 12 plays chosen for the final line-up for production in the Little Black Dress INK’s Onstage Female Playwrights’ Project, 2015, with showings as follows:

  • Semi-finalist and finalist round readings: Santa Barbara, CA; Waco, TX. 

  • Final line-up reading: Samuel French Bookstore, LA. July 2015

  • Production: Prescott, AZ. August 2015. 

 

Nancy Cooper Frank, Playwright
Nancy Cooper Frank, Playwright
An Alice of a Certain Age

CAST: 1M, 3W  or 2M, 2W

LENGTH: ~10 minutes

 

Decades later, Alice rediscovers the rabbit hole. She meets up again with the Caterpillar, eternally young—in his own mind at least. And the Duchess, whom age has certainly not improved. Will she let these two define the limits of growing older? Or will she, instead, rediscover wonder? 

 

PRODUCTIONS:

  • Produced by The Eclectic Company Theater, Los Angeles, in "Curious Conversations". May-June 2015.

 

Inexpressibly Blue

CAST: 2W

LENGTH: ~10 minutes

 

Dolores is bluer than blue; what is Felicity to do? In an out-of-synch exercise session, two old friends tackle mortality and the passing of time. Be careful when you try to cheer a friend up: you just might succeed.

 

PRODUCTIONS AND STAGED READINGS:

  • Produced in Bay Area One Acts (BOA). 2013.

  • Staged reading: "Margery & Friends," produced by Margery Kreitman, O'Hanlon Center for the Arts, Mill Valley, CA. 2013.

  • Staged Reading: Nantucket Short Play Contest.  April 2014. 

 

PUBLICATIONS:

  • Bay Area One Acts (BOA) 2013 Anthology, Exit Press.

In The Loop

CAST: 2M

LENGTH: ~10 minutes

​

PRODUCTIONS AND STAGED READINGS:

  • Staged reading: ONSTAGE Female Playwrights Project (semi-finalist), Vs Theatre, L.A.. April 2016.

  • Staged reading: ONSTAGE Female Playwrights Project (final line-up), Samuel French Bookstore, L.A. June 11, 2016.

The Suitcase

CAST: 2W, 1M

LENGTH: ~10 minutes

​

PRODUCTIONS:

  • Production: in show Abracadabra, San Francisco Fringe Festival. Sept 2016.

Eviction

CAST: 2W, 1M

LENGTH: 10 minutes

​

A too-good-to-be-true apartment, a control-freak landlord, a sketchy super... This is the story of the first ever eviction, as told by Eve to her daughter.

 

PRODUCTIONS:

One Loud Little Chicken (A Chicken-Little-For-Our-Times)

CAST: 2-4 actors, any gender

LENGTH: 10 minutes

 

​STAGED READINGS:

As of now: semi-finalist round in the 2018 ONSTAGE Female Playwrights' Festival sponsored by Little Black Dress INK, with readings as follows:

  • Samuel French Bookshop in partnership with Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative, L.A. January 21, 2018.

  • Bemidji State University in partnership with Mask and Rose Women's Theatre Collective, Bemidji, MN. January 21, 2018.

  • Magnolia, AR. January 21, 2018.

  • Sedona Hub in partnership with Red Earth Theatre, Sedona, AZ. March 10, 2018.

An Untimley Likeness| 2018 365 Women Festival, Rover Dramawerks, Plano, TX. Mar 2018. | Deborah Clark as Catherine, Melanie Doyle as Vigee-Le Brun
An Untimely Likeness

CAST: 2W, 1 person any gender

LENGTH: 10 minutes

​

St Petersburg, Russia. A winter evening in 1796. Famed artist Elizabeth Vigee-Le Brun, known for her portraits of Marie Antoinette and living in exile from France after the Revolution, confronts Catherine the Great with an untimely request.

 

PRODUCTIONS:

  • Part of the 2018 365 Women a Year Festival, Rover Dramawerks in partnership with international playwriting coalition, 365 Women a Year, Plano. TX. March 22-21, 2018

The Welcome Inn

CAST: 2M, 1W

LENGTH: 10 minutes

​

Strangers are always welcome at the Welcome Inn, Heartland, USA. Well, some strangers, some of the time. It depends. After all, you can’t be too careful. A modern fable of fear of immigrants, and its consequences.

 

PRODUCTIONS:

  • Directed by ShawnJ West, Cast TBA, as part of SHORTLIVED VII: ROUND 8 at PianoFight, San Francisco.
    August 2,3,4 at 8pm

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