News

Need To Contact

If you know how to get in touch with Billy Crystal, please let me know by emailing me. I'd like to get Hardball in his hands. Thanks.

Recent Work

Block and Tackle Productions presented ThreeWays, part of the fall 2011 Fresh Fruit Festival. Three Ways is three plays that explore the love of men for men: The Body Electric (Walt Whitman as a male nurse during the Civil War); Sporting Goods (the pleasures of "sports-approved flesh"); and the long version of Click (the moral conflict between two companions when one murders a homophobe). We featured Edmund Wilkinson, John Blaylock, and Cory Shoemake in Click, directed by Elfin Vogel, and Giancarlo Osaben and James Parenti in The Body Electric and Sporting Goods, directed by Kelley McKinnon.

A reading of a new full-length play Light. Fantastic., on Thursday, November 17, 2011, at The Bridge Theater (Shetler Studios, 244 West 54th Street, 12th Floor - between Broadway and Eighth). Light. Fantastic. touches upon the weighty matters of addiction and depression, brain neurons and their synapses, two forbidden kisses, single-malt scotch, and the wonderful green dance of blue and yellow laser lights. Directed by Elfin Vogel and featuring John Blaylock, Lina Sarrapochiello, and Jon Krupp.

When The Phones Came To Liberty Creek was one of three plays selected as finalists for a reading in the Eighth Annual NJ Playwrights Festival, sponsored by Walter Paterson University. The reading took place on Tuesday, December 6, 2011, at 8 PM, directed by Ron Mulligan with a cast of nine(!).

Awards

• When The Phones Came To Liberty Creek was selected as one of three finalists in the Eighth Annual NJ Playwrights Festival (2011)
• Let Down The Rains was awarded first place in the Kernodle New Play Competition (2010)

Of Interest On The Site

• My plays are now available in collections on the Downloads page for anyone who wishes to use them, offered under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. I'll be adding collections as I create them. You can also still download individual plays from the Synopses page. To see how the license works, see this article on Nina Paley's Sita Sings The Blues, which is offered under same license, or go directly to her website.
• Five new short plays:Ear Bud, Leaf Meal, Burning Issues, Llorona, and Newyorkistan.
• A new full-length. In Shea Man, an anthropologist plants the bones of the "missing link" on his family's farm to generate hype and cash. But when the "evidence" falls into the hands of a P.T. Barnum-style promoter who sees gold in gullibility, all goes awry.
• A Flash presentation of my short play Equal. Separate., which can also be found on YouTube.
• A Flash presentation of Macbeth's Children, which can also be found on YouTube.
• Two short plays. In Frankie Is Dead, Gina has to suffer the bullying of Frankie because the adult world will not give her the protection she needs. She has only has one avenue left to end the torment: to wish for his unequivocal death. In Still Small Voice, the Swiss writer Robert Walser comes to the end of his latest literary production.
• A one-act play titled Samaritan. Based on two biblical stories -- the parable of the Samaritan [Luke, chapter 10, verses 25-37] and the meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well [John, chapter 4, verses 4-42] -- the play examines answers to the main question of the parable: "And who is my neighbor?"
• A full-length play titled Seven Ladies Macbeth. What happened before and after Lady Macbeth became Lady Macbeth? (Inspired by Howard Barker's Seven Lears.)
• New essays recently posted at Scene4

Of Recent Vintage

• Three Ways at the Fresh Fruit Festival, October 27-30, 2011.
• Performance of Undress Me with Blue Curtain Theatre's "Drinks for Words" on Sunday, September 25, 2011, at the Player's Theatre.
• A reading of the long version of Click at the Fresh Fruit Festival, Sunday, July 24, 2011, Bruce Ward, John Blaylock, and Cory Shoemake, directed by Elfin Vogel.
• Reading of Ain't Ethiopia on Thursday, February 24, 2011, at 7:30 PM at LaMaMa, 74 East Fourth Street.
• Two plays in Dramerotica in Chicago, running over Valentine's Day weekend 2011: Sporting Goods performed, and Undress Me as a short pre-show film running in the lobby.
• Production of Four Plays at the Turtle Shell Theatre, 300 West 43rd Street, 4th Floor, February 4 - 7, 2011
• Reading of Hardball by Boomerang Theater, Saturday, November 20, 2010
• An Affair of State, directed by Elfin Vogel, Turtle Shell Production's 8 Minute Madness Festival, April 1 - 18, 2010.
• A reading on March 4, 2010, of A Round of Slaughter for Reverie Production's Wet Ink Festival.
• On October 7, 2009, my full-length play Ain't Ethiopia, received a superb reading in the Multistages 2009 New Works Contest.

Columnist/Reviewer

I write a monthly on-line column for the theatre magazine Scene4. (The link will open a new window.)

Reviews at offoffonline.com