Faye Sholiton

Justin Bachman, 18, is giving a speech about living with Tourette Syndrome. It's a speech he's presented hundreds of times. But recently returned from supervising kids at Camp Twitch & Shout, he is reminded how challenging the journey from learning about his diagnosis to making a difference in how people treat each other.

Playing Dirty is a 65-minute piece that explores the aftermath of a racial incident at a suburban high school football game. The kids who provoked it must take responsibility for their actions and (in the absence of adult support) rely on their own devices to right the wrong they've done.

An American geologist visits her brother, a Catholic priest, in Panama to resolve end-of-life decisions for their terminally-ill mother. Somewhere along the way, Mother's own wishes have been hijacked. As her children spout pat answers in their winner-take-all debate, they soon learn from the endangered local landscape that perhaps it's time to reframe the questions.

Set on the front porch of James A. Garfield's Mentor, Ohio home, we meet our docent, a high school senior (and history geek) who has troubled to learn every detail of his hero's life. He meets his match, when an older man arrives with a clear need to keep that narrative honest and truthful.

Inspired by the true story of a 26-year-old civil rights activist who was killed during a 1964 protest over racial segregation in Cleveland. Bruce Klunder, a white Protestant minister, was crushed by a bulldozer that was clearing land for yet another inferior inner-city school. Our African-American storyteller, who plays all the roles in this drama, examines an important lesson from Klunder's sacrifice: segregation can become destiny. She knows whereof she speaks, having been shuffled through ten different Cleveland elementary schools over that same troubled decade.

It's October 1973. Two Air Force officers have reported to work at their Launch Control Center concrete bunker 60 feet underground. Hours earlier, the DEFCON alert dropped from IV (slightly elevated) to III (Heightened)> Lt. Marc Garfinkle, whose usual concerns revolve around earning his CPA and starting a family, faces much bigger challenges this day. He and his fellow crew officer, Vietnam veteran Major Darren Whitley, could be called upon to destroy a distant city. And then, God willing, live with what they've done.

Ruth Garver, an 80-year-old widow, asks her daughter, Geri, to proofread her secretly written memoir, hoping she'll fix any spelling or punctuation errors. Geri, a copy editor, is drawn instead to editing her mother's life, as the manuscript glosses over the painful episodes in the family lore. Geri's daughter, Rachel, an aspiring playwright, is eager to mine these stories - as she perceives them - for her dark comedies. Over the course of a weekend, the three women discover the truth about memory: it is not only imperfect, it hangs on by a thread.

The Good Times is a newsroom comedy set in the fictional Good, Ohio, where bad things happen to Good people. A sleepy newsroom run by four women comes alive with the arrival of a newly minted journalism school graduate. Before long, they are at odds with the First Amendment, a special prosecutor, advertisers and each other. Can this paper be saved? Can any?

Shaker Heights, Ohio native Howard Mechanic never dreamed his presence at a campus ant-Vietnam War rally would prompt his false arrest on federal charges and subsequently turn him into a fugitive for nearly 30 years. At age 52, when he decides to run for public office in Scottsdale, Arizona, his past catches up with him. Once he surrenders to federal authorities, he begins an indeterminate sentence in an Arizona prison. Now behind bars, this aging idealist struggles to stay whole while trying to reclaim his freedom and his life. Adapted from "Fugitive Candidate: The Autobiograpy of Howard Mechanic, the Last Prisoner of the Vietnam War," by Howard Mechanic.

Two tenured social studies teachers (one Jewish, one African-American) find their friendship tested after one of them is laid off during an economic downturn. When it is revealed the the school board made its decision based entirely on their skin color, it puts two friends on opposite sides of the racial divide. Set during the 1970s-early 1990s, the play was inspired by a lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

It's May 8, 2003 and Evelyn Bergfeld, 79, opens her door to a visitor from the past. He brings a box of newsletters that she once edited and circulated to hometown servicemen and women. The visit stirs a pot of old memories, including a reminder of the one love of her life that she let slip away. As the couple revisits the heady days of World War II through occasional flashbacks that feature their younger selves, they explore what might have been. A still greater gift: Evelyn's care-taking daughter is able to imagine her mother young again, for one day.

Bracha Weissman has transformed herself into an emotional recluse - her identity defined by the loss of her family in the Nazi death camps she miraculously survived. Her attachment to the past has estranged her daughter Rifka, who wants to get on with the life of a modern day mom in California. Bracha's armor begins to crack when Ann Meshenberg appears one day to take her oral testimony for a video archive. Ann, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, has her own agenda: the need to ask a stranger what she could not ask her parents. What begins as a simple history project becomes a story of mothers and daughters forgiving and being forgiven. THE INTERVIEW won three national new play contests, and Ohio Arts Council grant and has had more than 30 readings and productions around the U.S.