Melinda Gros

A weekly food bank line becomes something more when the ladies waiting on line for vegetables realize their regular coffee guy - always smiling, always kind, who they think was a former U.S. Army translator in his home country - is no longer there and the guy in the coffee truck which replaced his truck may be doing more than serving coffee and fried egg sandwiches (which he makes badly)

A memory play: Rose as a child, watching her mama pack a trunk to send with her daughters Rose and Ana as the two girls leave home to live with relatives in America; as a young woman mourning her sister, dead in childbirth; and as a grandmother, going through treasures with her grand-daughter Laure as she packs to move once again

Mavaet - an Angel of Death - is looking for a specific client while filling in for a colleague, but there are two women, of similar heights, at the rendezvous spot. Which one is the Angel of Death's client and how can Mavaet entice the client to come on this journey?

Mavaet - an Angel of Death - is in therapy, bored with work and unclear what to do next although what Mavaet really wants is to be appreciated and to party - party - party

As Sam spars with Mavaet, the Angel of Death, negotiating for more time, Mavaet tests new comedic material, searching for the angle which will convince Sam to let go and journey to the next world. What finally works? The sound of Sam's nears and dears, laughing at their puppy.

Two Angels of Death banter about their work and this latest assignment - two widows playing chess - and the sudden glitch which impedes completing the job

What should Syd do when Mavaet, Syd's personal Angel of Death, will not help Syd die? Syd makes Mavaet an offer Mavaet should not refuse.

Mavaet - an Angel of Death filling in for a colleague called away for a natural disaster - is looking for a specific client but at the rendezvous spot - a bar - there are three people who each could be the client, named Sammy, Sam and Sami. Which one is the Angel of Death's client and how can Mavaet entice the client to come on this journey?

A woman entreats her friend not to sign her divorce papers but the woman's reasons are more complicated than simple friendship would suggest, as are the reasons the friend is divorcing

A young pregnant woman gets a dose of real-politik when she visits a playground expecting to poach someone else's nanny

A daughter goes home to see her mother and the old hurts re-surface

They knock and enter Grandma’s apartment with a key: Lia and her daughter Hannah are preparing seder at Grandma’s apartment. Lia made too much – she always makes too much - and they argue as to when Hannah will learn to make Grandma’s recipes. Grandma is resting and dreaming – and as always, her dreams of happier times are followed by the nightmare of what she lived through 52 years before, when a knock on the door led her and her pregnant friend, Elzbeta, to make a desperate decision. No-one knows this - no-one suspects anything - except Rosa, the neighbor, listening through the wall, hearing the dancing and screams which are part of Grandma’s nightly dreams and nightmares.

The seder preparations are interrupted by the delivery of a letter, postmarked a year earlier, from Grandma’s hometown, the town Grandma fled with her daughter Lia, a town no-one wants to remember. Lia and Hannah find similar letters, all hidden, all unopened, except for one holding an old snapshot of a mother and child. Rosa knocks, with a similar letter, misdelivered to her. Rosa knocks again, introducing a stranger, Mira, carrying another letter, which she promised her dying mother to deliver to a woman named Nomi who was Mama’s friend in the old country. Is Grandma this woman Nomi? And just like that, Grandma’s carefully constructed family history unravels, further undone by the last person to knock on the door, Mira's daughter Manya, filled with pain and anger. Love, betrayal and unspoken truths are confronted and a new family is born of loss, heartbreak and trauma.

DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES is about history and family ties and how friendship reaches across generations even as unspoken truths imprison us. The play is constructed to reflect events which happened 52 years before and how actions taken in fear have lasting repercussions. Because this story about Jews is not tied to any particular time or place, situating the terror 52 years before means it may have taken place in South America, or Eastern Europe or Northern Africa or Russia or the Middle East or . . . or any place where Jews lived amid chaos 52 years before. Ultimately, DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES is a play about resiliency and family and being Jewish across generations and across time. DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES, like Passover, is about freedom after oppression and new beginnings.

MS. OCTOBER is the tale of two developing personalities - one politically astute, one not - as they arrive as unfertilized eggs at their new studio, greet visiting sailors, go on first dates (sadly, the sailors' life spans are too short for a second date), are fertilized by two lucky winners, grow from one cell-wonders through nine months of mis-hearing and mis-understanding what they hear, until they are ejected from paradise and are born as burping, peeing, crying babies. They each develop distinct personalities, talents and world-views, and one of them - but only one - discovers that being born erases their memories and all the songs and stories they learned in utero - and even erases their intimacy as 'besties'. These developing personalities don't want to know their genders, are confused that their neighborhood (a studio with private pool) is changing, and only understand the outside world through their own form of fake news: mis-hearing and mis-understanding snatches of conversation. One is a party animal, the other politically astute, yet they have found a way to forge a deep friendship, even as the politically astute one is terrified to incorrectly self-define by choosing the wrong name. This is a view of the world as experienced by developing personalities, happy in their lives, not happy to be challenged by the outside world.

In the tender moments between a newborn's first and second cries, time stops as two experienced Counselors meet to debate what qualities should be gifted to this newly born baby, who in utero developed musical theatre talents. The Counselors represent totally different philosophies - Quix'n loves chaos and represents multiple dark sides (Quix'n counts Genghis Khan as an earlier client) while Shelby seeks to balance or eliminate the darkness with gifts of empathy, smarts and kindness. Another Counselor, The Kid, a smug, smart alec newbie, arrives early for a different client. There are rules to follow but the arguments about what makes a good life fly back and forth as Quix'n and Shelby negotiate gifting willpower, down-and-dirty street smarts, spirituality,
and desire. Just as Quix'n insists on granting this baby the gifts of unlimited desire, love and talent - which Shelby is sure will lead to personal chaos - another cry is heard: The Kid's client, the new-born's twin, has just been born. The Kid sheds its newbiness to reveal a hard-charging Counselor, ready to negotiate with a late arriving absolutely newbie counselor. This newly born twin, in utero a gifted storyteller, is a one-in-a-million newborn who understood that birth changes everything, that with birth a baby loses everything learned or experienced in utero, to be born as . . . babies. These twins, who pre-birth considered themselves besties, have also lost their connection, their friendship. How does one handle a one-in-a-million baby?
Very carefully.

Let the games begin: two newborn triplets vie for the dubious honor of being 'first-born' while the third cherishes the everything-is-gonna-be-all-right vibe of being third

Welcome to the balancing act when your child returns home and every word you utter can be the wrong word . . . and you so do not want to get it wrong . . . but you also need to keep your grandchild safe . . . Join us on the park bench for coffee and sandwiches as you search for the right words and for the hawk which you hope will return and maybe stay . . . a 10-minute play about grief and hope

Questions of love and responsibility clash at the first parent-teacher conference of the new school year: a grandmother's love for her estranged daughter versus the grandmother's responsibility - and love - for this daughter's own daughter, now in her and her husband's care. These two (maybe) opposing impulses are mediated by the teacher, reflecting on her own life and life choices. Where, in their small town, will Gramps find a big, white, fluffy dog that looks like the imaginary one the child included in her family portrait?

Tensions erupt as Hamlet’s Father’s Ghost, Banquo’s Ghost and Cleopatra await Paris, Romeo and Juliet’s arrival at the League for Dead Shakespearean Characters, an afterlife community for dead (poisoned, stabbed, self-inflicted death, etc.) and other ghostly Shakespearean characters.

The shiva following Stan's death provides an opportunity to reflect on Jewish tradition, friendship and food – especially food

A husband, a pregnant wife and a new robot which looks just like the wife only younger- so why is she angry?

A monologue, presented by a happily pregnant young woman, whose desire to share her happiness with her Momma and friends in her Texas hometown comes up against the reality of reproductive healthcare in Texas.

Kathryn, a Pulitzer-prize winning, COVID-panicked journalist, shares her panic with us – how she obsessively checks and double-checks her apartment, her backpack, her carry-on for her tampons, her chargers, her documents, and reminds herself – and us – that this is her first pandemic.

An idea pitched during a pre-Passover 2024 Israeli cooking show, featuring a chocolate cake, turns into an audacious push-back against despair

It's another weekend chez Peter and Marcy Cunningham, art dealers extraordinaire, where moonlight, skinny dipping and roast beef are negotiating tactics. Peter is displaying a new masterpiece to his guests, painted by the mysterious artist, Skylark. Roger brought an attractive brunette Outsider Art expert, Tracey, both to authenticate the picture and to warm his ego and bed. Tracey, curating an exciting new collection, wants arm candy when she meets with lecherous male collectors in Switzerland. Peter wants Tracey's authentication because he really, really needs the money from selling the Skylark to cover debts (and the painting may be fake). Marcy wants . . . Marcy wants her marriage and her role as Peter's charming business partner to survive Tracey. Lilibeth's unexpected arrival - the curator who got Tracey her job and is, by-the-way, Roger's wife - upends the careful calculus of desire, betrayal and art world shenanigans.

This is a story of women - Granny, her missing daughter, her pregnant grand-daughter Miche, her neighbor Bea, and the secrets and lies which shape their lives.

Granny, pregnant and alone when her handsome soldier doesn't return from his deployment, uses lies and half-truths to create a safe place. But it is not safe - she never escapes the grief of a generous act which then ripples through generations and leads to further pain and abandonment.

On Granny's birthday, Miche returns from traveling the world, duplicating Granny's adventures - in each place, she sought to conjure up a young-not-yet Granny, visualizing her as a young woman, smelling her perfume, seeing the world through her eyes. Under guidance from Miche, Granny also visualizes the past, conjuring a trip on the Blue Nile when she saw a girl who resembles the not-yet-born Miche, as Bea conjures up her late husband, on the happiest of happiest days in her life.

Tonight, Granny will come face to face with her own history - and it will free her as it frees Bea and Miche.

In the aftermath of the Hamas attacks of October 7th, two Jewish cousins consider how - and even if they should - re-position their soon-to-open kosher bakery to appear less Jewish on social media

A year after their star bowler, Nikki, disappeared and they forfeited the tournament, the Smokehouse Queens celebrate victory with their new star player, young SueAnn. As the beer flows and pictures are posted on social media, old loves, rivalries and unrealized dreams are revisited while SueAnn envisions a future away from this town. Nikki reappears to confusion: is she Margie or May, both of whom left town pregnant years ago and never returned. Once Nikki is recognized, J.J. and Deb tipsily press to know why she returned. The complicated answer - which also addresses why Nikki walked out on the team the year before - reveals a town with deep secrets. They all have secrets, even Charlie who keeps the beer flowing, but Bossman, with his taste for young women, has many secrets, including his many unacknowledged children. Nikki's embittered long diatribe, detailing harassment, humiliation, and the tedium of work in a small town which makes the attentions of a fat married serial seducer welcome, challenges her teammates' culture of silence which permitted Bossman to create a toxic workplace. Bossman's efforts to force Nikki to betray J.J. the year before was the turning point for her; she dares the others to create a new workplace reality. By the time they hoist their last beers, one woman will acknowledge and discard her painful obsession, another will start realizing her dreams and those who stay prepare to upend the status quo. Welcome to the world of the Smokehouse Queens.

ChiChi is a down-on-her-luck gourmand panhandling breakfast on a subway platform. Her wild food obsessions are interrupted by a newly employed pal from the homeless shelter, contacting Jade Blue’s overnight radio call-in show, meeting a pregnant woman who desperately needs a job, and being lured into employment by Jade Blue’s promise of FREE COFFEE AND DONUTS.
Along the way, a lucky sweater (see my play A PILE OF SWEATERS for background) gets passed around, Jade Blue cheers her loyal listeners on to success and through FREE COFFEE AND DONUTS, ChiChi may find her way back into society.

The COVID pandemic has not dimmed the enthusiasm of Bette’s bridesmaids, Taylor and Karlee – they are zoom celebrating! Not even the appearance of the third bridesmaid, Lauren – definitely not bridesmaid material – derails their remembrances of weddings past, although, really, why doesn’t she change out of her pyjamas into her bridesmaid dress? She never bought the dress? She’s definitely not bridesmaid material!
Each celebratory memory prompts other memories – a honeymoon shark attack, a jilted ex wearing only stilettos and a smile to the ceremony, a firebombed bridal suite. With high spirits and lots of wine, they greet the bride, whose binge eating has popped her out of her wedding dress. She has grand ideas about making her wedding more special, until her ideas sound a lot like Rita’s wedding and honeymoon, where a tipsy night of skinny-dipping ended with the groom drowning.
Is this a drunken fever dream of a fantasy wedding or a logical response to the groom’s retreat into the arms of a really cute mixed breed dog owner? Bring your own wine and join the party, but please, wear the bridesmaid dress Bette chose for you, ‘cause this may be your only time to wear it!

Two midwives, faced with an impossible directive, eat cold boiled onions and share tales of over-work, mothers who birth too quickly or too slowly, and how much their feet ache. And how Pharoah, who demands they kill male babies, faints at the sight of blood.

Who controls our dreams and nightmares? For Annie, it's Happy and Darkness, powerful rivals for Annie's attention and the sources of her writing inspiration, while Nada, the newbie, seeks to elbow into Annie's dream and nightmare rotation

Kim and Anna, divas and rivals, both perform the iconic role of the Queen in My Queen, My Queen on Broadway. When one is chosen to appear in the movie, young Judith fulfills her dream of playing the Queen.
Years later Kim and Anna meet pre-interview and scratch at old wounds. During the actual interview they pivot from sniping at each other to sniping at Judith, who reveals the play’s surprise ending along with her shocking interpretation. She further fans the flames by announcing her participation in a multi-platform presentation of My Queen, My Queen, threatening the end of their world and maybe the death of civilization.

At the intersection of privacy and technology, where does greed reside? And are the dynamics different when women, college friends working together, are involved?

Jordan and Kelly have been developing their new product - bio-feedback enabled leggings - since college. The fit is perfect, the fabric is fabulous and the technology - the tech has been fought over, with a careful eye towards maintaining users' privacy. Post-successful launch, post-appearance on The View, complications arise when a selling platform has a simple request: add location data to the health and wellness data points already collected, to help Alzheimer's families track loved ones. And maybe . . . just maybe, add additional health and wellness data points. Lola's dangling of success and wealth further fuels long-festering stresses between Jordan and Kelly, with Jordan seduced by Lola's promises. Kelly resists, interpreting the location data as both surveillance and capitulation: if they provide location data, it will be harder to refuse further tinkering with the source code.

THE BUY BUTTON looks at tech's imperative to succeed at any price magnified and manipulated by learned gender roles. Jordan doesn't just want to succeed - she wants to succeed as easily and cheaply as possible, leaning heavily on expendable boyfriends and Kelly's free labor; success will be worth the price. Kelly takes a measured stance in favor of privacy safeguards, in favor of supplying smaller sales outlets, in following their original vision. This conflict - long simmering but fueled by Lola's business proposal - bursts into view, revealing Kelly to have had a plan - and the backbone to make it happen - all along.

Don't judge Kelly and Jordan too harshly - the road towards success in the age of the internet is paved with bickering, manipulation and betrayal and maybe they're just better at it than we are.

Kathryn, a Pulitzer-prize winning, COVID-panicked journalist, shares her panic with us – how she obsessively checks and double-checks her apartment, her backpack, her carry-on for her tampons, her chargers, her documents, and reminds herself – and us – that this is her first pandemic. She returns to her hometown to report on COVID – the zoom classes, the shuttering of downtown, the prom-in-a-parking-lot – and finds herself caught between loyalty to the truth – the union colluded in closing the town’s largest employer, an industrial plant – and loyalty to her union family and the community. The closer she gets to the truth – and every conversation leads back to the union – the more the community splinters and the more estranged she becomes from her family. What she thinks she knows about her mother’s life – what has shaped Kathryn’s ambition – is based on what the teen-aged Kathryn could see and process and she learns is only partly true. Ultimately, she wrestles with multiple complicated truths, and how to best honor and serve the prove-able truth, her family’s truths and this community. Small town life is revealed in all its complexity as a lot of ice cream is eaten.

This tale of friendship and betrayal unfolds over a series of Mah Jongg games, as the four players - women of a certain age in an assisted living facility - and a deceased paramour's daughter grapple with aging, fur coats, hearing aids, finances, marriage vs. career, love, betrayal, broken promises, found opportunities and daily life in all its messiness. In a surprisingly touching ending, the women rely on each other and their deepening friendship as they bravely face the future.

Grandma is supposed to move into assisted living and she is not happy – she’d much rather go to Mumbai. Daughter Lily just wants to keep Grandma safe, but her idea of safe is Grandma’s idea of death. Grand-daughter Julie, packing Grandma’s bags with summer clothes, is suspicious but also intrigued that Grandpa Lou – beloved but long dead – still gives Grandma advice. If no-one’s happy if mama’s not happy is true, which mama – Grandma or Lily – should be happy? Grandma’s long-time friend and foil Ruth helps tip the balance in favor of Grandma’s happiness.

Another blursday during our pandemic, and these old friends, sheltering in place, are zooming as they do every afternoon. Amidst talk of beans sauteed in beer and the ubiquity of pajamas, Dylan discovers that John O'Connor, an older neighbor, has died (and Erin, of course, wants the apartment). Going through John's papers, retrieved from the trash - including publicity photos, communion notices, and bundles of letters addressed to John O'Malley, John O'Mara, John O'Connell, John O'Sullivan and Claire O'Connell - the friends untangle John O'Connor's complicated life and loves, as he reveals himself a much more interesting fellow than anyone imagined.

The keys Charlotte finds on her late husband’s key chain lead her to discover his secret, other life. Kind, upstanding, good citizen Paul had another apartment, an unfinished novel, a passion for gardening and a lover he met on Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons. Charlotte is devastated. In this meditation on love and betrayal, what does it mean that Paul and Suzanne had been lovers and parted before Charlotte and Paul met, only to passionately reconnect years later? The calculus of betrayal is further complicated when Charlotte learns what Paul surmised when he met Suzanne’s daughter: she is his child, born after that fateful summer. As Paul would never leave Charlotte and their children and grandchildren, he would never leave Suzanne and the daughter and grandchildren they have together.
TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS asks if this complicated history mitigates the lovers’ expected guilt and also whether a man can honestly, passionately love two different women at the same time. Charlotte must ultimately find a way to navigate her feelings of pain and betrayal while deciding whether and how to honor the emotional commitments the husband she adored made to his other family. TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS tests the boundaries of love in all its complexities.

Two women, strangers to each other, and a video of a man who wants to get married, meet on a subway station. He sounds perfect: he cooks chicken stew but will happily make it vegetarian, he has a good job with a good salary, he likes to clean, he gives great massages and he wants to live the white picket fence/urban co-op apartment American dream. All he needs is to get married to make his life perfect.
He sounds so much more perfect than any boyfriend these gals have had before. They banter, they dismiss the whole idea of a videoed proposal until . . . who’s that guy at the other end of the station? And who wants the guy more?

Several friends in an assisted living facility gather to celebrate their recently deceased friend, Julie, and to send her clothing to a woman's shelter. While organizing her clothing, they find a worn pair of child sized wooden shoes, stashes of money and, amongst Julie's many sweaters, an old US Army sweater. When Julie's granddaughter arrives, they find two matching fabric bags, made from a dress depicted in a war-time photo, and within the larger bag, photos and paperwork which offer clues to Julie's war-time childhood. One photo points towards an unexpected friendship with a US Army sergeant. Poignantly, unknowingly, this sergeant's widow is one of the women who befriended Julie in assisted living.

COLD CASH explores the shifting power dynamics between three hotel housekeepers: Carla, still distraught three years after her adult daughter’s disappearance; Ginny, who manipulates Carla’s anguish for her own perverse pleasure and financial gain; and Lulu, who, after being fired over a cashmere sweater, has returned as a successful Sadie’s Lady, ready to settle old scores. The discovery that a young couple birthed and abandoned a baby at the hotel further tests Carla’s sanity.
COLD CASH is an exploration of friendship, larceny, seduction, theft, pilfered mail, a lost child, an abandoned baby, fancy deli sandwiches and soothing foot cream – life becomes complicated for the housekeeping staff of the Sweet Hollow All-Suites Hotel when Lulu returns to visit her former colleagues (and to settle old scores!)

JENNIE AND THE JUDITHS, a girl-group on the brink of musical celebrity, find their futures undermined by Jennie's post-performance drunken encounter with the leader of a conservative political group. Their agent mistakenly books JENNIE AND THE JUDITHS into performing for this group, thinking he is booking them to perform for a similarly named environmental group.

While her foot-ball hero sweetheart played college ball, Debbie attended community college, nursed him after an injury, and married him. Now she is a grandmother setting up the Christmas cookie sale with Beth, a young mother newly arrived from that college town with her daughter. Beth carries a secret - uncovered while opening a box of snowball cookies - which ties her to the town. Debbie is forced to confront her own provincialism and the evolving diversity of their town - the cookies are not all stars and snowflakes - and what her sweetheart may or may not have done while he was in college. How will Debbie acknowledge both the past and the future?

A young woman volunteers at a soup kitchen to meet a cute guy to be her plus-one for a wedding where she is a bridesmaid. She also needs a fresh idea for the bachelorette party – they’ve already done tiki bars, the Russian baths, yoga and sex toy parties – and it needs to be on the cheap, since the last blow-out party blew-out the budget. In between checking out the male volunteers and buttering bread, she meets a working mom who regularly brings her children to the soup kitchen – they think it’s a restaurant – and finds her world-view upended. On that day, in those circumstances, she is pushed to reconsider what a bachelorette party could be: an opportunity to volunteer at the soup kitchen. Will the promise of great social media coverage – trending hash-tag-soup-kitchen-bachelorette-party, the cute volunteers and celebrity types who volunteer the early shift – and the cheapness of the event – convince her?

Also see script sample below for a version with only Becky and Grandma -
When Becky visits her bubbe in the hospital, Bubbe has one request: mentor the young woman who daily visits her own grandma in the next bed. Do for her what her zaydie, Grandpa Fred, did for Becky: offer a summer internship. Where young Becky wanted to buy a doll house for Bubbe, this young woman dreams of buying her grandma a real home. Crafty Bubbe goes as far as conjuring Grandpa Fred in a dream in support of her request.

Val says she wants to get married, she's fully dressed in her wedding finery but . . . but she's in the subway when she should be in a bougie stretch limo or at least an uber, rushing to the minister and her groom. Instead, she and Alice are deconstructing her former boyfriends, her mother, her father's divorces, ugly bridesmaids' dresses, her surprise pregnancy. And her groom, who wants to be a father, but who is abstaining from sex with her until their wedding night. Who will father her baby and does it have to be the biological father? Lots of choices - which will Val choose?

The hot new director just absconded with the school’s money without finishing 'Washington', his new hip-hop musical. The principal needs a Thanksgiving play pronto and the drama teacher just happens to have written a new YA play. Unfortunately, she’s been mining their recent affair for juicy tidbits for her other plays. Is the principal’s desperation severe enough to agree to her terms?

An apartment for rent, a woman dumped by her beau, another woman moving in with her beau, a real estate agent with a new beau, three identical birthday gifts from Inner Mongolia – are all the phone calls from the same cheating guy?