Jo Brisbane

"September Eleven Flyover" recalls the anxiety of a mother as she moves through the morning of 9/11. Written for the 9/11@21 project for Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre, Wellfleet, MA.

"Storm Fetch" is an other-worldly short play for young people who find themselves left (possibly forever) in a very odd summer camp situation. This is not the summer camp they were promised by their parents, and a mysterious head counselor adds to the ghostly atmosphere. The nine campers survive a fierce seaside storm, itself delivering chilling memories of the past. "Storm Fetch" was originally commissioned for The Young Company at Cape Repertory Theatre, Brewster, MA.

"Walking the Wrack Line" is a ten-minute dark comedy, written for The Walking Plays collection. This short adventure follows Mercy and Jet, who have made it their mission to daily walk the wrack line along the town beach of Provincetown, Massachusetts. Join them as they curate the daily debris left at high tide, discovering objects that lead them back to old memories. What they choose to keep, or toss back into the ocean, make them very discerning collectors indeed.

As the play opens, it is 1 a.m. on June 28, 1969, about twenty minutes before the reported start of The Stonewall Riots. Concurrently, on June 27 and 28 of 1969, radical feminists (led by the revolutionary Redstockings) flood into The New Left conference in New York City, to force a new agenda for women's liberation. As they labor to print position papers for the conference, Redstocking members Angela X and Jo-Jo X get word of the Stonewall police brutalities and must suddenly decide what solidarity really means.

I BAKED A BULLET (PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY AND THE IMAGINARY TELEVISION SHOW) is a short play with a long title. The year is 2016 and Phyllis Schlafly (killer of the ERA) has just died. Join Phyllis and her friends and family as they reminisce, in this scary spoof of early television biographical retrospective shows. Along the way, revisit Phyllis’ Cold War paranoia, her homophobia, her vicious takedowns of the feminist movement, and the stunning groundwork she laid to galvanize and mobilize the religious right movement. Anita Bryant makes a guest appearance, and yes, pies are thrown.

"Power = Resistance x Current" is a ten-minute play that foretells the survival of Tiff and Fluff -- sisters who are hiding out from the roving propaganda police. The sisters find strength in their own tech savvy and embark on a counter-revolution. A modified version of "Power = Resistance x Current" also serves as Act I in my full-length play "Endpapers".

Endpapers, a full-length play, begins in a city of rubble and shifts to a high desert plateau, where the characters of Tiff and Fluff (refugees and victims of an acid attack) survey the ruined world that stretches before them. Tiff and Fluff share the plateau with a cave full of banished books and a small flock of crows that serve as their scouts and companions. Both characters ponder the bits of memory that they have retained as they go about the daily tasks that give meaning to their lives. Drawing upon the banished books within the cave, Fluff and Tiff are compelled to perform theatrical pieces for the entertainment and guidance of other refugees who occasionally trudge past and below them. In this particular week of their lives, Tiff and Fluff combine passages from Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”, Andrea Dworkin’s “Porn”, an atheist-feminist’s take on The Bible, The Bible itself, and the re-enactment of their own banishment and disfigurement.

THE REVELATION OF JAMES HAMPTON is a full-length play inspired by African-American artist James Hampton’s life events (both real and imagined) and the fantastic assemblage he called “The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly.” Set in Washington, DC in 1964, the play shifts through time and place: from 1964 Washington, to early 1900s South Carolina, to the Pacific Theatre of World War II. The play incorporates the theatricality of his Trinidadian heritage, as well as the intensity of his Southern Baptist upbringing James Hampton’s throne assemblage, built over fourteen years of his life, is regarded as one of the finest pieces of religious visionary art ever created in the United States. A portion of his assemblage is on permanent display at the National Museum of American Art. The play’s characters are based on both real and imagined people in James Hampton’s life. The play’s words and thoughts are both recorded in public records and re-imagined, set down in this play to give honor to James Hampton. Within the play, James socializes with his old Army buddy (Isaac); bitterly recalls the abandonment of his mother and siblings by his itinerate preacher-father (Preacher Hampton); innocently entertains neighborhood children (Essie and Jewell); encounters the protective hostilities of their mothers (Evie and Iris); and finds mutual trust with his Jewish landlord (Meyer Wertlieb). Hampton’s imagined dreamscape is presented through elements of dance and shadow puppetry. Cast members and/or dancers appear in the dream sequences as traditional Carnival characters (which include the various gods of world religions).

It's 1977 somewhere on the outskirts of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and slaughterhouse worker Rex King has a fever for old school drag queen Calico Candy. He brings her home to meet Mama Zoe and her best friend Hazel one fine evening. There are many secrets and loves revealed in the course of their drunken evening when Smirnoff is mixed with Squirt, and a Porter Wagoner coat has a fashion face-off with the vestments of an Infant of Prague statue.

He/She/They has been forced to take shelter under a broken table in a room full of rubbish. He/She/They is a the only character in a very short play and that person may be insane or very wise or perhaps both things. The world beyond the broken table is struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Finding A Foundling" is a ten-minute dark comedy featuring a potato (not a speaking role) and two simple peasants named Umlaut and Glottis. Umlaut's sweet optimism is soon overrun by Glottis' pessimism and superstitions, resulting in a shocking murder. "Finding A Foundling" was written for the "2 Actors, 6 Feet Apart" virtual project of Cape Rep Theatre, Brewster, MA.

Christmas In The Covid is an extremely short one-person play. Mark is a 40-ish year-old man who has returned to his childhood home where he must begin to clear out his deceased mother's hoard of collectibles. In this two and one-half minute play, Mark makes an unexpected discovery.

ROSE JOHNSON AND THE CATHODE RAY TUBE is a one-act play that looks in on Rose and Tom Johnson, who live on an isolated mountain in rural America, in the year 1954. Their simple lives insulate them from worldly things. Rose is often confused and frightened by the stories she reads in her precious magazines, and she is obsessed by the amazing promises of magazine advertisements. Rose and Tom Johnson may be the last and final innocents in North America, until their cozy lives are blasted apart with the surprise arrival of a new television.

Eleven monologues featuring women of note in the theatre arts, including: Pat Suzuki, Ann Reinking, Sarah Ruhl, Zelda Diamond Fichandler, Maggie Smith, Adele Astaire, Condola Rashad, Deborah Joy Cheetham, Josephine Kermode, Maria Luisa Landin, and Betty Nansen. Monologues written for the 365 Women a Year/Women in Theatre project.

CRASH COURSE IN COSTUME is a compact historic trilogy. The short play is a comedic romp that shifts from the excesses of fashion, to the repression of fashion as expression, and back again to the excesses of window dressing. Time travel with Miranda and Ariel as they consider both Elizabethan-era costume and hockey goalie gear; then hear the dictates of a Puritan; and finally, suffer the whining of two window dressers as they assemble finery for a Restoration-era man-mannequin.

Homewrecker Honeymooners is a short play that follows four obnoxious renters as they spy on their landlord, building up grudges and resentments. Because they are offended by her political beliefs and blame her for their own miserable lives, they spend their days spinning conspiracy theories about her. Vengeful pranks escalate toward dangerous assault in this dark comedy.

DAKOTA MAN CAMP is a short play that visits four frustrated people as they face a tense morning, trapped together inside an old farmhouse, somewhere in North Dakota. In this dark comedy, a heavy blizzard has blown through as they slept, and there is very little food to share. The oil field boom has brought two of the characters together, during the previous night’s drunken one- night stand. The other two characters include an embittered ex-beauty queen who longs to escape the rough fields, and a senile senior whose memory loss entertains them all.