Melissa Lucero McCarl

Bea and Althea are retired performers making good on a promise to spend their twilight years at a home for Retired Artists where they use their wit and humor to adjust to senior life. They spend their days exchanging barbs and reliving their glory days as actors. It becomes apparent that unwelcome changes in body and mind are occurring – for one of them faster than the other – illustrated by spirited conversations with inanimate objects. Bea and Althea’s younger selves appear during flashback scenes, then slowly throughout the play the younger and older pairs meld to form a harmonious quartet

The Humanity of Orangutans is a whimsical series of vignettes that take place at the zoo, exploring issues faced by man and beast alike.

Marlo and Walt are an affable, affectionate couple. When lights come up they are in their kitchen engaging in playful banter, but there is an undercurrent of unrest in the atmosphere, which comes to light when Marlo’s twelve-year-old daughter Nicole appears. It is the feeling of a slow gas leak in the house – something is clearly not right. Slowly through out the play we get more hints about what happened to Nicole and how it is affecting the family dynamic. One parent refuses to accept reality, the other is changed irrevocably by it. This full -length piece is to be performed without an intermission, and by the end of it we learn Nicole’s fate, yet questions remain and nothing about this controversial subject matter is simple or explicit.

“Lost Creatures” follows the evening in May of 1978 when British theatre critic
Kenneth Tynan met his long time cinematic idol Louise Brooks. He travels to her
dingy little apartment in Rochester, NY where she has sequestered herself over many decades. He is there ostensibly to write a profile on Brooks for the New
Yorker, but he discovers that they are kindred spirits, and in spite of an age gap
of twenty years, theirs becomes an unlikely love story discovered through a
marathon dialogue about sex, philosophy, art, and criticism. There is also a
silent third character, Lulu, (based on Louise's role in her most famous silent film
"Pandora's Box") who drives the action of the play.

A honky tonk angel named Carlene tells us about the quirky trials and tribulations of living in a place like Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. A one act that can be done as a one woman or two person show.

“Painted Bread” is a play in two acts about the tumultuous life of Frida Kahlo and her marriage to Diego Rivera. In the tradition of magical realism, a series of paintings come to life to reveal the story in a non-linear fashion, changing time and place swiftly and with fluidity. In the seven- person cast, every actor with the exception of those portraying Frida and Diego play multiple roles. The set is minimal, featuring picture frames that fly in and out, and a few generic set pieces (i.e. a bench, stool, etc.,) that are painted in the colorfully detailed Mexican style. Other than these multi-use set pieces, Frida is the most colorful thing on stage.