Tanya O'Debra

The real action in the last game of the 1995-96 North Quincy High School Hockey season isn’t on the ice with the players—it’s in the stands with their girlfriends. Wendy is a new transfer from Catholic school and thinks she’s amongst friends, but she quickly learns that everyone is in the attack zone. Kerry, the self-appointed leader, thinks Wendy's a stuck-up poser. How far will Wendy go to be accepted by this clique? How far will Kerry go to stop her? Teenage girls can be brutal.

When Judith arrives at her brother-in-law’s doorstep to attend her estranged sister’s memorial, the mushroom casserole she brings as a gift turns out to be a Trojan Horse. She has a score to settle with Hagan, for her dead sister Annie and for herself. By the end of this relentless night, someone stands to lose what they hold most dear.

Set in West Virginia, Them What Brung You is a full-length southern gothic horror story. Ruby and Alex are on their way to the hospital when their car breaks down, so Ruby gives birth in a nearby pond. When the baby is not what they expected, they must deal with the consequences of this unusual child as well as the problems that arise when they finally get to the hospital. Ruby is faced with parallel realities: a nightmare scenario too terrible to be real, or the perfectly reasonable explanation.

Emily Dickinson: poet, recluse, a**hole. Loosely based on her Master Letters, Shut UP, Emily Dickinson! is a pseudo-historical, quasi-biographical, hysterically existential, sadomasochistic psycho-romance about America's most brilliant and annoying poetess. Holed up for all eternity in the bedroom of our minds, the “woman in white” stretches into a projection screen for truths, half-truths, truthiness, and truth-less-ness. She’s whatever you want her to be and nothing you imagined. Emily Dickinson is the definition of a difficult woman.

René Descartes discovers that he's real.

Baby Jessica, now an adult, grapples with the legacy of her childhood tragedy.

Once upon a time, a young brother and sister quietly try to survive their evil stepmother's abuse.

*This is the description I used when I wrote these plays during the height of COVID while I was stuck in my apartment in Brooklyn.

What is theater in the age of COVID-19? Is it foolish to try to cater to this moment? Is it foolish not to? As in any time, artists should only make what they feel is necessary and what they are interested in making – not what other people or institutions think they should make. As for me, serious times call for silly measures, and necessity is the fairy godmother of invention. So, how can I make theater in a world where no one is allowed to gather? Then I remembered the absolute best, most dramatic performance genre of all time: the neighbor fight. And just like that, the Apartment Plays were born.

Friends, I wrote these short plays, these neighbor fights, for you to perform in your homes for an audience of your unsuspecting neighbors. They should not be streamed on the internet. Your audience should not know a play will be happening. These plays rely on the energy of their live-ness. For ten blessed minutes, your neighbors’ cups will runneth over with enough juice to drink for a lifetime. These plays are free to read and to perform, so please enjoy them.

Please accept the most appropriate gift I can give you during this time: soap.

RADIO STAR is a filthy, filthy, dirty 1940s radio detective spoof. In The Case of the Long Distance Lover, Nick McKitrick: Private Dick, is hired by femme fatale Fanny LaRue to find her husband's killer.