Karen Sunde

At the moment she is irrepressibly seized by love, Anton Chekhov's sister Masha fears to confront her brother with news that will drastically alter his domestic tranquillity - when last night was the disastrous opening of his first major play, The Seagull. Masha must decide whether to give her life to marriage and a family, or to her brother's work, and posterity. In her tender, funny, passionate fashion, she shares their vibrant existence, pitting life against art.

Anton Chekhov talking to his audience from his study as he struggles with his writing and private life on two memorable days, years apart. His thoughts dart like lightning, from hilarity to despair. First, the morning after the disastrous opening of his first major play, The Seagull, in which he decides to never write another play. But then, years later, during final rehearsals for his last, perhaps greatest play, The Cherry Orchard, he decides he must take this play away from actor-director, Konstantin Stanislavsky - who refuses to play it as a comedy! But finally Anton relents, and tells us why…he lives at the mercy of theatre artists.

The “battle of the sexes” is laid bare and examined by an American family in the wake of a national event. Parents, concerned for their daughter's future in our current world, are challenged to their core, and grow.

For HELEN, a vibrant communications professor, and her husband BOB, an engaging cultural anthropologist, a Supreme Court nomination becomes the fulcrum to unearth and challenge their own relationship to Patriarchy when they are confronted with an injustice that enrages their daughter.

HELEN traces female subordination, though it rocks her beliefs - personal and religious - in both herself and her life. BOB, whose submerged fury at patriarchy had been supressed by love of, and confidence in, his women and their spirits, now partners Helen’s journey - however traumatic, her awakening can release them all.

Daughter JOY, who, as a child idolized Joan of Arc, is politically “woke”, and phones from prep school. She trusts that her parents share her outrage, and will answer her demand to know why the world she’s about to enter is skewed against her. Joy also trusts that together they will undertake to right that world. And so they will.

VERSIONS - Stage & Zoom both available
This is the Zoom version, a reading of which was produced by Karen Sunde in May 2021. IMAGES included at its end may serve, and music and sound cues are also available.

The “battle of the sexes” is laid bare and examined by an American family in the wake of a national event. Parents, concerned for their daughter's future in our current world, are challenged to their core, and grow.

For HELEN, a vibrant communications professor, and her husband BOB, an engaging cultural anthropologist, a Supreme Court nomination becomes the fulcrum to unearth and challenge their own relationship to Patriarchy when they are confronted with an injustice that enrages their daughter.

HELEN traces female subordination, though it rocks her beliefs - personal and religious - in both herself and her life. BOB, whose submerged fury at patriarchy had been supressed by love of, and confidence in, his women and their spirits, now partners Helen’s journey - however traumatic, her awakening can release them all.

Daughter JOY, who, as a child idolized Joan of Arc, is politically “woke”, and phones from prep school. She trusts that her parents share her outrage, and will answer her demand to know why the world she’s about to enter is skewed against her. Joy also trusts that together they will undertake to right that world. And so they will.

VERSIONS - Stage & Zoom both available
This is the original (stage) version, but I have also reimagined it for Zoom with the same text but Zoom directions of this play for Zoom production. I include Images that could serve either version at the end.
(Brand-new play - with IMAGES)

A story of the rebirth of a family through a mother's fierce trust in her child’s mind. Kate, once vibrant anti-war protester, has rejected the world, and drawn into her laboratory’s cocoon - as a neurologist studying dreams - which her publisher husband, Alan (old family newspaper), and her children, Jen, 19, and Jamy, 13, tolerate.

But when the city fathers send war-time buddy resurfaced as prominent lawyer, Mike, to ask Alan to run for Governor, Jen, eager for power politics, and Jamy - who hangs out in a disputed redevelopment excavation and brings home an unstable vagrant - both lobby Alan to run, and Kate, finding her passionately guarded isolation in danger, won't cooperate...

…until a furious Jamy runs away, falls in the excavation, and is carried home unconscious, and in threat of succumbing to a permanent coma. The evolution of the family during this crisis, as Kate stubbornly refuses to give up care of Jamy, certain that reviving him depends on following his dreams. And while Kate tracks his dreams, they each grapple with generations of greed and betrayal, to learn that embracing their child’s desire will not only bring him back, but rekindle and empower them all.