Trina Kakacek

On a dusty road between Backwards and Conspiratorial lies a town called Progress; where Ida, the mayor, hopes to create a utopia where the women are on top. Only – the water pump doesn’t work, the tumbleweeds have eyes, and the new citizens have other notions. Vivian wants to make a baby, Slim wants to make money, and Weed is up for anything as long as there is bacon. This modern day fable explores the stories we tell ourselves about gender, economics, and family.

NOTE: Rather than a script, what's attached is a podcast. The play was recorded in front of a live audience at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, as a radio play, in August of 2014. So rather than read - you can have a listen to the radio version. The link to the right, under "Music samples", will take you there. I promise you'll laugh at something.

Mercury Considers the Last Layer, a melodramatic romp set in the dualistic world of burlesque, follows the age-old quest of finding one’s heart and one’s self. Complete with music, movement and plenty of shtick, the story grounds itself in the ancient spiritual practice of yoga and the seven spiritual energy centers known as chakras.

We join our heroine on the eve of her release from the prison of her youth. Bearing a deep scar, her heart in hiding, Mercury is intent on starting fresh, and finding true love. Across town, Mickey Mars seeks the same. However, it seems Mickey has spent more time looking for a soul mate than tending to his bottom line. His show, Mickey Mars Cosmic Burlesque, Living Body Museum and Shooting Gallery, is in trouble.

Among its slide whistles, rim shots, puppetry and drumbeats, Mercury Considers the Last Layer explores the manifestations of love, self-discovery and beauty, and how we frequently expect love to come from without rather than within.

After a life spent planning her death, it’s Ingrid’s time to go heaven. But – it appears she might not make it through the gates, let alone take her seat next to Jesus. Not only is there an army of dead relatives blocking the gate, she can’t find the ring, and if she can’t pass down the ring – well, the earth will open up and swallow them all whole, won’t it? And mind you she ain’t no hoarder, that’s all good stuff in the room, could come in handy someday. The ring’s in there somewhere. Given no choice, Ingrid is forced to find her teeth, put them in, look deep into the hole in her dead husbands throat, and overcome the truth about her life before she travels to the great beyond. Full of humor and pathos, ELEGY takes on fate, death, life, family treasure, and the search for an all-important needle in a haystack of memory.

After sustaining a traumatic brain injury, Private Poole lies in a military hospital struggling to retrieve a song from among the ruins inside his head. Unable to make sense of the influx of visitors from the past, he has concerns about whether his wishes about his own fate have been carried out.

As he struggles toward consciousness, military personnel prepare him for a controversial surgery they hope will change the future of warfare – a surgery aimed at conserving healthy soldiers by recycling the wounded. As protocol after protocol is breached, those around him struggle, against their better judgment, to maintain their resolve.

SOMETHING ABOUT A BIRD considers the dilemmas we face when our personal concerns conflict with our ethical duties, and asks the question, in times of war, whose child is more important, mine, or yours?

On the day she completed her bucket list, Skater Girl's heart almost stopped beating, that is, until she added another item to her list, then another, and another ...

The Adventures of Skater Girl explores the possibilities of how our dreams and realities, and life and death, might cross paths.

The radio theatre version of this play can be found by listening to the mp3 below. The play was recorded live by Small Fish Radio Theatre, at Chicago Fringe, Chicago Dramatists and Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago.

What if the biological mother you’ve never met, and the and adoptive parent who gave you away the second time, showed up for your eighteenth birthday to make amends – and made amends - in cash. ATTACHMENT DISORDER explores family, forgiveness, nature vs. nurture, and the value of a human life.

The Tale of the Hungry Giant is a cautionary, comedic, and slightly bawdy tale about the food supply, and how even the best intentions can backfire when we tamper with nature.

Can a woman obsessed with right angles and a man who eats them, find love in the magazine section of the library? Two obsessive-compulsives meet in the public library and form an unlikely relationship.

A family bequeaths items in an unorthodox way.