Margaret O'Donnell

Full-Length (2020). In 2037 in America, poverty has been nearly eliminated, carbon emissions are reduced by 80% over 2018 levels, all are covered by comprehensive health insurance, and every high school graduate is eligible for free tuition at the nation’s colleges and universities. All due, the government trumpets, to the federal funds freed up for social investment by the Quality of Life Act, which mandates death at age 75. When a tiny group of elderly fighters in small town Illinois take on the law, the government reacts with fury. Who prevails may depend on the tactics each are willing to use. Do the ends justify the means?

A housing corporation is getting ready to clear-cut the old-growth forest next to Livvy’s house for a new luxury development, and some forest beings and their city-slicker allies seem to think Livvy can do something about it. She’s heart-broken about her beloved forest, but her dad is working for the corporation! Should she be loyal to the forest, or to her dad?

Full-Length (2021). Squaring off for the soul of Mexican immigrant Lucia Beltran, Star Spangle and Santa Lucia punch it out as Lucia makes her way in her new country, the United States. Spangle pushes assimilation, Santa Lucia counsels integrity, and Lucia’s ensnared between them. Only Lucia can determine who will prevail.

One-Act. (2020)The monster of climate crisis is staring eleven year old Savannah right in the face, and she’s petrified. She is convinced she’s too young, too ignorant, and too powerless to help stop the destruction, and she despairs in her attempts to write poetry and make videos calling for change. When the non-human beings of the Earth – animal, plant, and mineral -- call a council to inspire humans to take action, though, it’s Savannah they invite to sit in the seat reserved for humans. The trees, forest deities, and the council of all beings shower their pledges of help on Savannah, but it may not be enough to convince her of her own abilities. That’s where a little forest magic may come in handy… A play for young audiences.

One-Act. (2018) Immigration courtrooms hidden away in detention centers throughout the United States decide the fate of hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year. Immigration judges, appointed as employees of the federal government’s Department of Justice, are the sole decision-makers for the detained, eighty-four percent of whom don’t have lawyers to represent them or explain the process to them. The public is definitely not welcome to observe. Outcomes vary wildly depending on the judge assigned to the case, and the most recent Administration-mandated interpretations of the law.

The Detention Lottery, written by an immigration attorney, provides a first-hand look inside one such courtroom, as audience members are detained upon entry, assigned identities as immigrants, and must defend themselves against deportation as best they can in court, without preparation. The real-time immersive experience is followed by a question and comment period and is best conducted by experienced immigration attorneys.

The script and all production materials are freely-licensed in Creative Commons: http://globallawadvocates.com/immigration-in-the-arts/the-detention-lot….

Full-Length. (2019) The locked steel-enforced prison doors of a US immigration detention center open and the audience walks inside to see the judge, clerk, Department of Homeland Security attorneys, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officers, guards, detainees, and private immigration attorneys in their daily routine of preparing for court, moving detainees from cells to court to meetings, and court itself. Eight detainees, including a child, reveal details of their lives, in the midst of great confusion, in the hope of winning release from detention. Those who work in the detention center also reveal themselves, their motivations, their hopes and fears, and sometimes, their own suffering.

Full-Length. (2016) A brush with police spins out of control for undocumented immigrant Fredy Lopez, when he’s arrested on suspicion of domestic violence and detained in immigration jail. The life he’s built after more than a decade in the U.S. shatters, and friends, social workers, lawyers, employers, pastor, immigration judge, and guards flood into the formerly private life he lived with his wife and daughter. What happens next depends on factors no one seems to control.

Full-Length.(2021) Over sixty, newly jobless and about to be homeless, Alison see no future for herself worth living. She’ll have to give up her beloved art – photographing and printing photos of the vanishing orcas of the Pacific Northwest – without money for supplies. When she strikes up a conversation with the orca she’s been photographing for years, things just might turn around for Alison. And then again, they might explode.

Full-Length. (2017) How deep are the divisions between the working class and elites in Appalachia? Between men and women? Between blacks and whites? It is 1939, the waning years of the Great Depression. Samuel Lowe has died in a mine collapse, and his rudderless widow and two nearly grown children must vacate the company cabin and find a home and work in a land ravaged by a decade of poverty. The family’s secrets unearth fissures no one seems to be able to bridge.

Ivan Petrovich (UncleVanya) Voynitsky, Alexei Fydorovich (Alyosha) Karamazov, and Mildred Lathbury meet in a Surrey tea shop just after the tourist season in the mid-1950s. As fictional characters released from their novels, they are free to do anything they want. Aren’t they?

Inspired by Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, and Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women, and Afterplay by Brian Friel.

10 minutes. (2020) Things are looking grim at the face mask factory. Long-timer Kel refuses to help the new kid learn the ropes, and the factory cat seems to have some serious delusions of grandeur. Productivity quotas most definitely won't be met. This is a situation only a local deity can save. But first, you have to believe...

One Act. (2020) Life on Earth is headed for extinction, and the powerful god Blore is delighted. He goads humans to indulge in their worst instincts of greed, envy, and distrust of the other. But the god Shimmer, who delights in the Earth’s beauty, is determined Blore won’t succeed. The trouble is that Shimmer isn’t powerful at all. She can accept the help of the mischievous god Haki, who she suspects of ulterior motives, or she can go it alone with her flawed humans. The fate of the Earth hangs in the balance.

One Act. (2020) Cherry’s beloved Woodhaven is a nationally-celebrated sanctuary for rare and endangered plants and animals. But she’s getting older, and there’s no one to take on the sanctuary. A hungry housing developer is waiting to bulldoze it. When a young woman running from the law stumbles into the sanctuary and Cherry’s life, her desperation collides with Cherry’s hopes. She may be the answer to Cherry’s dilemma. Then again, she might blow the sanctuary apart. A modern retelling of the universal myth of the Earth goddess and her lost daughter.

One-Act Radio Play. (2020) Shouldn’t grown siblings be friends? Or at least friendly? Ann thinks it’s disgraceful that she
and her brothers are estranged, and sets out to correct the situation. But Dave and Jim resist her
efforts. Can’t they just dislike one another in peace?

10 minute radio play. (2020). Lyle and Kerry are software engineers and work friends at the Healthy and Fresh Table company. They have lunch together every day. But when a promotion opportunity for one of them comes their way, it’s time to test the meaning of ‘work friends.’

5 min. (2020) Helen was sentenced to life for a knife attack. Eager recent college grad Moira’s been assigned to help get Helen ready for her third parole hearing. But there’s a problem. Helen may not want to go…

10 min. (2020) Two migrants, strangers to each other, sit on the side of the road, waiting for the smuggler they each hired to pick them up and take them from Mexico to the US. When one gets hit by a car, what level of care is the other called upon to provide? Especially when they both will miss their one, expensive chance to cross the border?

10 min. Zoom/radio play. (2020) Ever think about going back in time to your own young self to prevent a major mistake you made? An elderly woman calls upon other-worldly help to do just that, and the message is just about to be delivered when…see the play to find out!

One-Minute Play. (2020) Two anarchists with opposing philosophies, strangers to each other, meet on a train platform on their way to a protest rally. Can friendship follow?