Kemuel DeMoville

When Maid Marian is told she has to marry the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, she and her ladies in waiting hatch a scheme to keep the Sheriff’s matrimonial plans at bay. To keep the Sheriff’s mind off of marriage, Marian and her friends sneak out and pretend to be bandits. Pretty soon things get out of hand, with the Sheriff hatching crazy schemes to catch the bandit’s leader “Robin Hood,” and Marian having to lead a double life as both Robin and Marian. It’s a wacky mixed-up comedy featuring mistaken identity, music, sword fights, and poorly trained attack ferrets.

This wacky comedy is something that the whole family can enjoy. The play would be appropriate for either a cast of child actors, or for adults performing for children.

Matty Heartshorn was born on the night of the Big Wind of 1880, and her Grandfather was one of George Wright’s soldiers who fought at the battles of Four Lakes and Spokane Plains, so the family has a connection to the land they call home. Matty is a girl with a bit of a rebellious streak, she has a touch of fire in her heart and would rather spend her days out in the wilderness exploring with her friends. She and her friends are fascinated by the old Native American legend of how the Spokane falls were formed by a great monster tearing through the land and breaking the banks of Lake Coeur d’Alene. The kids are always trying to find evidence of the monster, or discover where it might be hiding now (they imagine that if they do they will all be rich and famous, and all of their troubles will melt away). Matty’s father died a year earlier and now her mother has to work to support the family. Since Matty is getting older her mother wants her to get a job to help keep food on the table for Matty’s four siblings, but Matty would rather spend her time in the wilderness. When she was younger her father told her that she should whisper all of her secrets and dreams into stones, and then throw them away so that the earth around her would be seeded with her dreams. As the pressure from her mother mounts, she starts whispering her desire to be free from all of the pressures of growing up, and hoping that the monster that carved out the falls will crack open her secret stones and help her. Things come to a head when Matty’s mother finds an employer willing to take her on as a house servant, but when Matty learns this she runs into the wilderness to plead with the monster. As her mother and siblings are out looking for her, the Great Fire breaks out and burns down a huge portion of the city. When her family finally finds her, Matty is ashamed and blames herself for the fire - she imagine that it was somehow her fault and that the monster must have caused the fire. As both the city and Matty’s family settle into a new way of existing in the world, Matty learns that the things which hold us together are stronger than the things that try to tear us apart.

The play starts with a bunch of hooded Maids entering the space. They have gathered together to dispense “Maid Justice” on three wayward butlers. The Head Maid is new to the job, since her predecessors were killed. Are the butlers being framed for crimes they didn’t commit? The Maids hold “court” and as the first two butlers are found guilty and endure strange and hilarious punishments, more and more questions arise about who actually killed the Maid’s former leaders. The third butler uses some arcane bit of Maid doctrine to postpone call for further investigation into his crime. Lots of wacky wordplay and silly situations help make solving the murder a fun time all around.

The play is specifically written to be performed remotely through video conferencing (Zoom, Skype, Teams, Adobe Connect, etc).

The play is divided into eight segments called “stones.” All of the segments should be pre-recorded. Nothing of this will be presented live. Each recorded segment should be uploaded to a video hosting site. Then a QR code (or similar) should be generated linking the individual “stones” to a specific QR code. Those QR codes should be etched or engraved on to a metal surface, then attached to a stone that is then placed somewhere in an accessible yet remote location.

Adapted from source material from Thomas Middleton’s play "The Witch" and King James’ "The Annotated Dæmonologie"

When Becky Hagswater, an American tour guide in the upper highlands of Scotland, has her bus break down in front of spooky old Heelancoopoo Manor (ancestral home to the Peasantjabber family), strange things begin to happen. Becky and the American tourists soon learn that they have arrived on the eve of the Peasantjabber Curse: the one night of the year when all Peasantjabbers go mad. And then the first murder strikes. With a bumbling investigator bungling the case, a budding, forbidden romance in the air, and buried secrets comically clawing their way free, this farcical take on the murder mystery genre shines through its wildly inventive characters and Monty Python-esque flair.

When the magical clock that keeps all the fairytales on track suddenly breaks down, Janice the clock’s guardian, and Morton her loyal toadie, try to do everything they can to keep the stories on track. While Janice takes on the role of both Cinderella’s fairy godmother and the witch who curses Sleeping Beauty, Morton is forced to disguise himself as Snow White (since the real Snow White escaped as soon as the clock broke). A series of misguided magic and mistaken identities leave one handsome prince turned into a frog, Morton engaged to Sleeping Beauty (a real Beauty and the Beast), and Cinderella acting as Janice’s new apprentice. The play is written in the style of a French Farce and moves from one complication to the next with humorous results. Finally a dragon acts as a literal deus ex machina making everything the way it should be (which isn’t necessarily the way the stories traditionally end).

The play begins with a family moving into an old homestead trailer on the border of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. The family consists of Ruby and Earle, along with their adult son Sammy. All of them are fleeing the urban sprawl of Anaheim because of the recent terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. As the family begins to fix up the trailer and prepare for what they consider to be the imminent invasion of terrorists, they slowly begin to venture into the realm of the surreal. Soon the desert around them begins to comment on the history of violence within the Mojave itself. The family’s paranoia causes them to suspect their neighbor of planning a raid on their supplies. As the family shores itself up for the coming apocalypse a junkie breaks into the trailer and injures Earle. Sammy and Ruby think that this is a terrorist in disguise and the play climaxes with an execution tape being created in which the junkie is killed.

Throughout the play there are also radio broadcasts, the family’s only lifeline to the world, detailing the political jargon leading from the events of 9/11 to the war in Iraq. These are meant to function as a kind of white noise throughout various scenes.

"Something’s Wrong with the Foundation" is the story of two brothers dealing with the death of their father. One brother, Karl, blames his father’s death on his mother, suspecting she’s having an affair with the family contractor, Zak. He decides the best course of action is to try to kill the contractor. Using a local “day worker” from the homeless shelter as his accomplish (and alibi) he sets out to murder Zak. The other brother, Lewis, looks for father figures wherever he can find them, whether it’s in the form of Karl’s homeless drifter buddy, or the contractor his brother is trying to murder. Lewis abandons his own family, his career, and his brother in his desperate need to fill the void his father’s death created. All of the action is taking place while a kitchen is being built across the stage, eventually sealing both brothers inside its walls.

Structurally the piece is held together by expressionistic vignettes where the mother and Zak try to re-create scenes from "A Streetcar Named Desire."

When a young man returns to help his father sort through his recently deceased grandfather’s belongings, family secrets come back to haunt the men. The discovery of a worn photo of a picture bride drudges up memories that refuse to be erased. The spirit of the woman in the photo forces herself onto the young man’s consciousness in a desperate attempt to be remembered before the last trace of her life on earth is swept away. She forces the young man to relive the story of her arrival to Hawaii, and her subsequent murder in the sugarcane fields. As the young man unearths the truth about his grandfather’s past, he is haunted by his own guilt, and made to confront his father about his abusive tendencies. The family’s history of violence eventually comes to rest on the young man’s shoulders and he is forced to confront demons all his own. Utilizing the structure and conventions of traditional Noh theatre, the play blurs the line between memory, reality, and fantasy to examine the hereditary nature of abuse and destruction.

In this wonderfully imaginative play-within-a-play, student actors are on set to produce Hans Christian Anderson's classic fairy tale The Snow Queen. Like all great fairy tales, this play has everything including a self-absorbed narrator, orphans, talking flowers, robber children, guards that occasionally guard, and ditsy snowflakes who all try to help (and sometimes hinder) Gerda's efforts to save her brother from the evil Snow Queen. We're off to many different lands and meet many different characters to experience what many consider the worst production of The Snow Queen EVER!

Mobella & Proxie have recently purchased the old East-Motte from the city and decided to hold a fundraiser here for their new experimental theatre group: “Moxie Theatre Co.” They decide that the best way to get people to come out to the old space and see some of the company’s work is to have dinner and watch a theatrical reimagining of Tracey Dailey’s murder to try to summon the ghost. It’s all done with winks and nods until spooky stuff really does start to happen. They think that the ghost of Tracey Dailey is angry because her killer was never found - and suspect that the killer might be in the audience!

Drawing inspiration from - and responding to - Shakespeare’s Othello, as well as from the story of Tyke, a female circus elephant who in 1994 killed her trainer, gored her groomer, and horrified hundreds of spectators in Honolulu, Hawai’i, the play looks at a small family who has been torn apart.

A Brother and Sister remember Tyke. They were in the audience when the elephant rampaged. They witnessed firsthand the angry power unleashed by the elephant. Both remember the event as a child would: a massive grey beast out to destroy the world.

The Brother is caring for a Bound Man. The Bound Man is older than the Brother, but not by much. The Bound Man is kept alive through machines. He can only speak, and when he speaks it is full of bitterness and bile.

The Sister is a soldier, off to war. The Lover is a woman of Middle-Eastern descent but an American citizen born-and-raised.

Much like the family, the structure of the play itself is fragmented and lost - the show’s structure is based less on the conventional expectations of character and plot, and something more akin to a fragmented memory or dream (or nightmare). The play focuses on creating thematic expressions, rather than creating a typical narrative drama or comedy.

The play concerns a young man, Tennet, who returns home from college to help his stepfather, Harry, after the death of Tennet’s mother and younger brother. Tennet and Harry’s personalities are instantly at odds with one another. Eventually Tennet begins to suspect that Harry has murdered his mother, and tries seducing the truth about his mother’s death from him. As the play progresses the two men begin to spiral into memory and madness as Tennet tries to elicit the truth, eventually taking on the role of his dead mother to cross examine Harry and try to force him into confessing. The play also references The Bacchae and incorporates other mythic elements into otherwise mundane encounters.

The play deals with Angela Benson, a teenage girl who has trouble distinguishing what’s real and what isn’t. The play opens with Angela and her father watching TV, Angela’s mother left the family years ago and her absence is still felt by the remaining family members. No one in the family has moved on, they are stagnant. Angela wants to have a perfect family, and so she creates one. However, Angela fantasy world begins to take over. Her “TV Mom and Dad” begin to encroach on her everyday life. When her father tells her that he is going to have a woman he works with over for dinner, Angela is forced to chose between her fantasy life and the “real world.”

“Rejoice in the Lamb” tells the story of two women named Agatha living at opposite ends of the century, yet inhabiting the same rundown house. While neither woman has an awareness of the other, both are being forced into unwanted roles and situations by their respective societies. The women’s parallel existence highlight the historical and cultural cycles that, no matter how educated and enlightened we become, are still carried with us. While the Agatha of 1900 is forced into a “home for rest” to help her recover from “spells,” the Agatha of 2000 is confronted by the ideals and practices of her church which she does not share. When both women become pregnant, they are forced to confront social barriers and expectations that rival their own individual freedoms and happiness. The action on stage is manipulated by a dreamlike chorus of Church Women and Medical Men, who seem to be driving the Agatha’s down a path which they have somehow walked before. The play is loosely based on the life of Saint Agatha and is a response to Christopher Smart’s work "Jubilate Agno."

The story focuses on Bing Yongle, a notorious sex fiend who has become "medically impotent" after a freak moped accident. He has decided to leave behind his sexual escapades and focus on his studies with long-time girlfriend and robot builder, Kim. This changes when two desperate dudes, Tommy and Toby, seek his once god-like sexual prowess so they can woo the women of their dreams, Mary and Karky. The plan is to get Yongle into Wolfowitz House, a nun-run conservative college dorm for women, so he can allow entrance into the dorm for the desperados. It is there he meets Polynesian beauty, Fey, and feels his penis move. Yongle decides he must taste Fey’s sweet “love duck” to fix his broken manhood.