Jon Marans

At a community college in Silver Spring, Maryland, spring of 2022, Caitlin Harding, a strong-willed, always seemingly anchored music teacher, suddenly feels lost after the covid death of her anti-vaxxer husband. And yet she must go back to school and teach her adult sight-singing/ear-training class. She and her diverse group of students end up being forced to deal with fears of theirs above and beyond sight-singing. "Spoiler alert": act one ends with shooting sounds heard down the hallway from the class. The second act deals with these adult ed music students now truly on edge. Their fears and truths come out in expected ways -- both truths of their past and Silver Spring Maryland's past as well.

In this dramedy, two strong-willed sisters from Jersey return to their old, run-down family home now that their parents have died. Finally they're ready to deal with the horrific events that happened there. Or did it? As this mystery unravels, "home sick" is really about memory: what we remember, what we think we remember, what we've made up, what we conceal and what we may have chosen or need to forget.

1986 Vienna. Kurt Waldheim is running for the chancellorship of Austria despite his Nazi past. Stephen Hoffman, a young gifted American pianist has come to Vienna in hopes of regaining his shattered confidence. Much to his surprise, he discovers the unlikely teacher who is to help him--the eccentric Professor Josef Mashkan--a vocal coach. Mashkan tells his arrogant student he cannot expect to play the piano with passion and sensitivity until he learns to sing. Through studying Schumann's "Dichterliebe", the cycle of songs adapted from the love poems of Heinrich Heine, Hoffman slowly rediscovers his love of music.

Set in the summer of 1973 in Staunton, Virgina, in the middle of the Watergate hearings, everyone in the Taggert-Lipper family is in the middle of their own cover up. Seemingly innocent 18 year old Lissa owns an illegal blue box which allows her to make free calls around the world. At the same time, Portland (Lissa's mother) has invited her ex-husband whom she hasn't seen in five years to the house. The reason: Lissa's older sister, Floye Marie, had a breakdown in college two years ago and became schizophrenic, hearing voices (specifically the voice of Richard Nixon.) Portland -- the mother -- has been helping Floye Marie get through these last two years of college -- covering up her mental illness to the university. However, unable to pass the final class, Portland now enlists Ronner, her brilliant pot-head ex-husband back into their lives to help tutor Floye Marie. During all of this Floye Marie -- who is still hoping to be the first female president -- literally conjures up Richard Nixon for guidance. The two of them hang out, play cards, talk about politics and the struggles of life which only increase for both of them as the Watergate hearings continue and Floye Marie's impending graduation hangs over her life.

THE WRATH OF CONNIE (a 2018 Eugene O'Neill Finalist) is a Front Page-like dark comedy taking place in 1991. The play revolves around beloved TV icon, African-American Connie Frederick, who had a television variety show in the '60s and '70s, but not much success since then. So the network hires a bunch of edgy, raunchy twenty-something mostly male writers to try and make Connie just as edgy and political and outrageous/offensive as they are. Connie clearly draws the line of comedy in a very different place than they do, and she draws the line between what is appropriate behavior between men and women in a very different place as well. The play is specifically set in the fall of 1991 right as Anita Hill testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee as to the inappropriate behavior of Clarence Thomas.

"Temperamental" was code for "homosexual" in the early 1950s, part of a created language of secret words that gay men used to communicate. THE TEMPERAMENTALS tells the story of two men—the communist Harry Hay and the Viennese refugee and designer Rudi Gernreich—as they fall in love while building the first gay rights organization in the pre-Stonewall United States.

A mother, son and daughter furiously throw out what they can from their mother's house before her difficult demanding tyrannical husband returns from physical rehab. The place is a hoarder's paradise with all of the horrors that entails. As they are forced to be around each other and work together for the first time in years, their perceptions of each other start to change. The son, who hadn’t been at the house for quite a while, sees that his mother is behaving differently but unsure if it’s her mind – or if as an older woman she is finally asserting herself. As more and more things are thrown out, it almost appears as if the mother is throwing things out not so much for her husband to return, but for her to finally take control and find peace and joy in her home.

A young modern Orthodox Manhattan couple finds their world shaken when a gay doctor's passion for his new religious beliefs challenges theirs and questions the meaning of love.

An older man in a wheelchair -- accompanied by his daughter -- and an older woman in a wheelchair-- accompanied by her son -- arrive to get their Covid shots at Rite Aid: one at 10:30, the other at 10:45. Will any of these four people have a second shot to make things right?