Dionne's House: Ecstacy and Primal Agony (Mostly) on the Michigan Riviera

by Paula Kamen

Offers prime comic role to older actress. A 2022 O'Neill NPC finalist!

World-famous libertine philosopher Dionne advocates for polyamory, but her younger friend Judith argues that she's not that ambitious.

Two-act comedy/drama about two generations of feminist writers with terrible taste in men, battling same invisible disability in very different ways.

The play has a modern take on a still-under-dramatized...

Offers prime comic role to older actress. A 2022 O'Neill NPC finalist!

World-famous libertine philosopher Dionne advocates for polyamory, but her younger friend Judith argues that she's not that ambitious.

Two-act comedy/drama about two generations of feminist writers with terrible taste in men, battling same invisible disability in very different ways.

The play has a modern take on a still-under-dramatized core struggle of the ambitious woman: to sacrifice career or family -- with the added challenge of dealing with an invisible disability.

The story is about a complex friendship between two generations of ambitious women writers -- including Dionne, a groundbreaking feminist philosopher obsessed with dieting. The O'Neill judges singled out this role for its "complexity of character" and their "delighting in her eccentricities."

At first, Judith, a young author, doesn’t know what to make of Dionne. In her first visit to Dionne’s almost-magical cottage in Michigan, Judith even fears that Dionne is trying to recruit her into an orgy. But soon Dionne and Judith bond over their shared struggles, and Dionne becomes Judith’s valued mentor, helping her overcome a major career crisis, caused by disabling chronic pain. But clashes how to achieve their other goal in life – domestic bliss — rip them apart. Judith is suspicious when Dionne decamps to Kankakee, Illinois with a longtime boyfriend on parole; Dionne is more upset when Judith choose a traditional route of marriage and kids in suburban middle-class Buffalo Grove.

Meanwhile, they both struggle with the need to be alone to create -- and questions about how to control the unruly body: its fertility, its weight, its pains, its addictions, its wayward lusts.

Also made first cuts for ScreenCraft Stage Play and Gary Marshall New Works Festival competitions in 2022, ranking highly as a comedy.

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Dionne's House: Ecstacy and Primal Agony (Mostly) on the Michigan Riviera

Development History

  • Type Reading, Organization Chicago Dramatists, Year 2021

Awards

  • New Works Festival semi-finalist
    Garry Marshall Theatre
    Semi-Finalist
    2022
  • Quarterfinalist
    ScreenCraft Playwrighting Competition
    2022
  • O'Neill National Playwrights Conference
    O'Neill Center
    Finalist
    2022