Maria Brandt

Silvana goes to confession to relieve tension after fighting with her granddaughter about Rochester’s status as a Sanctuary City. She’s interrupted by the ghost of Progressive Era activist Jane Addams, whose Hull House provided “sanctuary” for Silvana’s family after their immigration to the United States in the early 20th century. Through their encounter, both women gain a deeper understanding of their respective histories and paths towards redemption.

An empty-nesting couple repeat and repeat again their often comical but always emotionally fraught positions about the ethics of kidnapping. The danger is that as long as their goal remains to win the argument, neither one of them ever feels heard. Inspired by "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," Thirteen Ways uses a kaleidoscopic structure to push through the junk of an argument in an effort to see more authentically the person on the other side.

Janet wants an ordinary life, one more like her sister’s, but she can’t shake the memories or secrets surrounding the day their childhood garage burned to the ground. When her childhood love returns just as she discovers she’s pregnant with another man’s baby, Janet has to figure out how to confront the ghosts of her past and also make more authentic choices for her future. Shooting Stars is about memory, autonomy, and the different ways sisters test and strengthen the bonds that connect them.

90-year-old Anna prepares Tony's favorite dinner as a step towards preparing herself to join him in a mutual afterlife.

In Something Else, Rachel programs an AI to be a younger version of herself with the goal of mending her relationship with her wife. At first, it seems Cynthia’s primary therapeutic function towards achieving this goal is to help Rachel address some past experience with “Mr. John,” a fictionalized version of a man she worked with twenty years earlier. As the play progresses, though, it becomes clear that something else is hidden in Rachel’s unconscious. It’s not until she uses an experimental electrode method of programming Cynthia that she confronts the consequences of her childhood mistakes and learns to deal directly with the woman she loves.

The Catholic Church’s ongoing struggle to recognize the agency of women’s bodies and the validity of women’s desires mirrors similar struggles in different communities around the world. Say the Words imagines the impact of this struggle on Sister Perpetua, a Catholic Nun waiting in a basement kitchen for the Pope to make an announcement she hopes will grant her the ability to serve God through priesthood. Through a series of scenes alternating with accelerating urgency between this basement, the cockpit of a commercial jet, and a path near the river, Sister Perpetua eventually wakes from the collective dreams that have kept her desires hidden behind metaphor and Church law until today. Ultimately, Say the Words is about all of us recognizing all forms of desire that have been pushed to the margins. It’s about women taking charge of their lives in a world where powerful people hide dangerous theological passages, brave teenagers use the internet to find alternative houses of worship, and a little bit of flour can turn miraculously into a cloud. It’s about saying Mass to a bunch of trees, and flying through the turbulence to get to a place where anyone can say the words.

When Paul’s mother returns after a ten-year absence, Paul is forced to confront the circumstances of her leaving as well as his own complicity in shaping a world where women are not always safe.

In Hearts, Harry launches an affair with Lisa while following the trail of a twenty-year-old environmental crime. By the play’s end, both characters wrestle with questions of accountability and exchange in a market-based economy, as well as with the relationship between personal loss and the stories we tell ourselves about the world.

This collection of 27 short plays set across New York State chronicles the cultural and geographical diversity of the state, exploring different histories and ideologies specific to different regions. Some employ straightforward, gritty realism; some employ choruses that function as ghosts or speak in poetry; some are experimental in their staging; some aim for lyricism; some have no spoken words at all. All confront the complexity and humanity of the dramatic form—as well as of New York State, its landscape, and its residents.

Revolutions tells the stories of Cody, Adele, Hugh, and Ellie in monologue form–first on the morning of July 4, and then later that evening. The four characters are connected not only by their celebrations of Independence Day, but also by their confrontations with the paradox of revolution: a word that means both to break out of and to persist in a pattern. Accompanying this theme are circular images and metaphors that infuse each monologue, inviting audience members to explore what it means to revolt as much as what it means to revolve.