TRILOGY (3 FULL-LENGTH PLAYS = 4 HOURS, 30 MINUTES TOTAL). THE BRONXVILLE TRILOGY, or Marriages of Inconvenience, presents the stories of three married couples in Bronxville, NY, an affluent suburb of New York City in Westchester County. All three husbands are closeted gay men whose wives don’t know the truth of their situation. The play spans the years 1971 to 2000, a time of sweeping social changes for gay people.

In Part One (ROOMMATES), Graham Walker and Dan Carlsen—two best friends and lovers since college—struggle with their desire to be together in a world where marriage to women is the unquestioned norm, and the AIDS epidemic makes living out of the closet a frightening option. Their solution is to marry women, start families, and live as next-door neighbors while continuing their relationship in private. This strategy works surprisingly well—until Dan dies in a plane crash.

In Part Two (MARRIAGE), a college student on the verge of committing suicide because he fears he might be gay decides to marry his girlfriend instead. Eight years later, Chip and Sally Miller seem to lead a perfect life in Manhattan, but a secretly tormented Chip considers walking out on their marriage until Sally announces that she’s pregnant and convinces him to move out to Bronxville, far away from the city’s temptations. As the Miller clan grows over the years, so do Chip’s despair and desperation as he secretly acts out in increasingly dangerous ways, ultimately almost dying after being attacked at a gay sex club, his story splashed across the front page of the tabloids. MARRIAGE is told through excerpts from the therapy sessions they attend when their marriage starts to fall apart.

In Part Three (AFTERMATH), the two stories introduced in Parts One & Two come together when newly-out Graham Walker and Chip Miller embark on a challenging relationship. In the aftermath of divorce, Graham is juggling his new identity, his relationship with an ex-wife who can’t make sense of what happened, his desire to come out to his young sons despite her objections, and the news that she is already getting remarried. Chip Miller faces similar challenges, although his family has moved away from Bronxville after the embarrassment of his scandal. While their common circumstances and mutual attraction bring Graham and Chip together, their very different histories and conflicting approaches to navigating their new gay lives diminish their chances for success as a couple. AFTERMATH is about trying to create a new life after your old one is snatched away from you.

NOTE: THE BRONXVILLE TRILOGY, or Marriages of Inconvenience, consists of three full-length plays—ROOMATES, MARRIAGE, and AFTERMATH—which may be performed individually as “standalone” plays or as a series of three plays. The plays have a running time of approximately 90 minutes each. The full trilogy (attached here) runs approximately 4 and a half hours. The full trilogy is also available as a single 3-hour play—THE (Abridged) BRONXVILLE TRILOGY, or Marriages of Inconvenience. (Note that when not performed as a trilogy, the three plays do not include the PROLOGUES or EPILOGUE included here.)