Marylou DiPietro

A daughter discovers something about the day she was born that she suddenly realizes she always knew.

When two sisters butt heads over dividing their inheritance, they discover what defines them and their relationship are the choices they've made and the transitions they’re going through, not what they decide to hang on the wall.

A breast cancer survivor takes us on a roller coaster ride of emotions ranging from disbelief to acceptance to comic relief to the realization that cancer gave them the strength to deal with what it took away.

Adapted from DiPietro’s solo play, In Love with Cancer for 4 Voices, tells the story of a breast cancer survivor through multiple perspectives and voices – an inner voice, the public persona and responses to the outside world. Much like someone working her way through the five stages of grief, in this intensely personal, surprisingly funny, universal, and ultimately optimistic tale, the breast cancer survivor takes us on an emotional roller coaster ride that leads us all the way back to the Garden of Eden and the realization that Shame is the real cancer that needs to be lopped off and thrown in the trash.

When a middle-aged woman stops at a roadside diner on her way to her fiftieth high school reunion, she discovers that the young waitress who lingers at her table is determined to serve up a lot more than the Early Bird Special.

It's 2026. WENDY & LAWRENCE are talking to each other via Zoom from their respective locations. LAWRENCE arrived in D.C. a day ago to be sworn in to his new job in the Trump administration. Part of the swearing in process includes a "truth detector" chip being surgically implanted into LAWRENCE'S neck. Because everyone in the administration is expected to lie at all times, the Truth Detector will shock the person if he/she/they tells the truth.

When Bill stops by to see his ex-wife in her new apartment, the couple, who had been married for thirty-five years, quickly find themselves trying to navigate the tumultuous waters that caused their marriage to drift off course in the first place.

A woman’s worst fear becomes a reality; she has dreaded the specter of breast cancer for her whole life. But she is shocked that what she learns - and even gains – from her new struggle far outweighs the turmoil and terror the disease had promised.
* In Love with Cancer was performed by the author in the 2019 United Solo Festival in NYC. Obvious adjustments must be made when an actor other than the author performs it.

The play opens with Linda, a talented and accomplished artist and aging feminist, downplaying, to Johnathan, her husband of thirty-five years, the significance of her recent reunion and past relationship with her mentor from art school. In this fast-moving romantic comedy, the gravity of Linda’s freshly realized “mid-life crisis” is lost to her prominent, New York lawyer husband, who has every reason to believe that not only are they happily married but that they support each other in what he sees as their equally successful, satisfying and fulfilling careers.

SYNOPSIS
Black Butterflies tells the story of Tennessee Williams’s sister
and muse.

In the play, as in her life, Rose Williams is a gifted, complex, and enigmatic person. The audience learns that Rose’s “true life story” is told not only in the innocent, self-conscious character of Laura in the Glass Menagerie but also in the desperate, seductive character of Blanche in
A Streetcar Named Desire. Unlike the many characters Rose spoke through in Tennessee’s plays, in Black Butterflies she tells her story from her own perspective.

As the older, more dynamic of the two Williams siblings, Rose creates a safe and idyllic childhood for herself and her shy and sickly brother, Tom. But the children’s world is suddenly changed when their father, a hard-drinking, womanizing, traveling salesman, moves the family from their peaceful home in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where they lived with their maternal grandparents, to the “dreadful” Northern city of St. Louis.

As Rose and Tom struggle to cope with their puritanical mother and tyrannical father, and their own emerging sexual identities, the very underpinnings of their symbiotic relationship begin to crumble. Tom eventually escapes the oppressive household through his writing, while Rose, who is has a lobotomy at age 34, remains imprisoned behind what will one day become a terminal wall of silence. The shared past profoundly shapes both their lives – hers tragically, his creatively.

Black Butterflies not only depicts the deep love and ultimate betrayal between a fascinating, silenced woman and her famous brother, it gives Rose the opportunity to tell her story for the first time.
Black Butterflies tells the story of Tennessee Williams’s sister
and muse.

In the play, as in her life, Rose Williams is a gifted, complex, and enigmatic person. The audience learns that Rose’s “true life story” is told not only in the innocent, self-conscious character of Laura in the Glass Menagerie but also in the desperate, seductive character of Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. Unlike the many characters Rose spoke through in Tennessee’s plays, in Black Butterflies she tells her story from her own perspective.

As the older, more dynamic of the two Williams siblings, Rose creates a safe and idyllic childhood for herself and her shy and sickly brother, Tom. But the children’s world is suddenly changed when their father, a hard-drinking, womanizing, traveling salesman, moves the family from their peaceful home in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where they lived with their maternal grandparents, to the “dreadful” Northern city of St. Louis.

As Rose and Tom struggle to cope with their puritanical mother and tyrannical father, and their own emerging sexual identities, the very underpinnings of their symbiotic relationship begin to crumble. Tom eventually escapes the oppressive household through his writing, while Rose, who is has a lobotomy at age 34, remains imprisoned behind what will one day become a terminal wall of silence. The shared past profoundly shapes both their lives – hers tragically, his creatively.

Black Butterflies not only depicts the deep love and ultimate betrayal between a fascinating, silenced woman and her famous brother, it gives Rose the opportunity to tell her story for the first time.

It's the fall of 1976. Twenty one year old Sarah has been living in New York City since August when her father stops by for a visit on his way from Florida to New Hampshire where he lives and where Sarah grew up. Sarah, who lives in a rent-controlled, cold water flat, is struggling to make ends meet. Her father, on the other hand, is naively impressed and enthusiastic about his daughter's situation, especially as it compares to Sarah's sister Stephanie, who suffers from manic depression is is currently hospitalized.

A chance encounter between a 49 Black man and 60+ white woman, in front of a Goodwill store New York City, reveals both an innate distrust and surprising commonality between two strangers from polar opposite worlds.

The Anatomy of Shame: little is known about the internment of Italian Americans during WWII. In this short play set in San Francisco during WWII, Giuseppe Antoinette, and Italian immigrant is brought into the INS officer for questioning. What ensues is something eerily similar to what we see happening again today.

Finish Line: a late night robbery ends across the street from the Boston Marathon finish line where two Boston Police Officers refuse to see anyone but themselves as victims.

Nina gets more than she bargained for when Betty, an old family friend and seemingly harmless curmudgeon, stops by for lessons on how to use her new-fangled diabetic testing equipment. In, Sweet & Low, Nina’s revered patience, dogged determination and innate good-heartedness are sorely tested when the literal drawing of blood turns into a convoluted, unexpected, and unwanted metaphor.

*An earlier version of this play was titled Sugar.