Alli Hartley-Kong

FULL LENGTH DRAMEDY- Irreverent livestream comedian Natalie and her husband Josh struggle to conceive, while across the City historian Katherine and her husband Rathanak “Ryan” debate whether or not to adopt, all against the background of the isolating global pandemic. They don't realize that they are connected by a history deeper than it appears on the surface through the figure of Patty, an aged abortion activist living on a Wisconsin ranch, until their fates come together in a fertility clinic waiting room.

FINALIST: The Henley Rose Playwriting Competition
SEMI-FINALIST: James Madison University's New Works Lab
STAGED READING: Chester Theatre Group, Chester NJ
SEMI-FINALIST: Bay Area Playwrights Festival
SELECTED PLAY: A Stage of Her Own Play Development, Drew University, NJ

FULL LENGTH- Romance novelist Lily has spent her twenties “growing her garden” as a single woman eschewing IRL romance. But when her long-distance partner wants to “close the gap”, she accepts his proposal–just as she sits down to write a sequel for her suffragist novel. Though she’s unsure about the concept of marriage, she enrolls in “apartment swap” to switch leases–and in turn meets three women at the end of romantic relationships. The past and the present collide in campy suffragist glory and encounters with the ghosts of bad marriages past as Lily explores what it means to be an independent woman.

FULL LENGTH- Two couples face the same harrowing choice over their wanted, medically-unviable pregnancies. But given the different worlds each couple operates in, they really facing the same choices?

Readings:
Cellunova Players New Work Festival
Powerstories Voices of Women Festival, Tampa

FULL LENGTH: How can we ever know what anyone else is going through?" Ten years after high school, six former classmates remember–or don’t– the impact they’ve had on each other’s lives. Like any bad high school reunion, there’s moonshine, an acoustic guitar solo, and–of course—crying in the bathroom (“Was our high school secretly a soap opera?”). After all, when it comes to high school, why look back?

Content warning: this play contains menions of a past character's suicidal ideation.

When loud-mouth comedian Natalie violates the fight club etiquette of the waiting room of a fertility clinic, an
unexpected and hilarious friendship forms between her and Katherine, another women who is
waiting…not just to see the doctor, but to have a chance to start her family.

When weird things start happening during influencer tradwife Georgia’s livestream, is the raw milk or her unsettled past to blame?

Produced during First Kiss Theatre's Feb Lab, February 2024

It’s the end of the world as we know it... and while Kevin feels fine, his wife Amy does not. As they drive towards the center of a nuclear blast radius, they talk about things they have never talked about before—including their failing marriage.

Previous title: Into the Blast Radius

Alyssa is fat. She's okay with it though. Her mother is decidedly not. This is a short play about body positivity.

If you're a theatre who balks at this play because the actor playing Alyssa will be "so hard to costume", you have missed the point of this play entirely.

After Kayla learns that her first love Jesse has named his child after the cat she used to have, she returns to ask him a question that's been nagging at her.

This play was written as part of a masterclass at Folger Theatre Library. It was loosely inspired by Shakespeare's Sonnet #140.

Budding real estate agent Amelia bites off more she can chew with her first sale, evicting depressed Todd from the house he cared for his mother in while she suffered from Alzheimer's. This is a play for caregivers

After a traumatic experience, a prolife Republican Senator and his wife go on retreat. How has the experience shaped their beliefs?

"What do we need the ghost lights for? We're the ghosts."

This touching short play is about lives--and afterlives--spent with your chosen family, doing what you love.

TEN-MINUTE. Mike and Alyssa are connected by a past he can’t remember. When they meet at a high school
reunion, Alyssa confides in Mike her mental health history—and he realizes the impact an
encounter from a decade ago could have.

Content Warning: This play contains brief mentions of a character’s past suicidal tendencies.

In this five-minute monologue written for Zoom performance, a grandfather wishes his grandson a happy birthday from the isolation of a nursing home with a covid-19 outbreak.

A divorced couple find themselves stuck together on the top of a roller coaster for ten minutes. What do they learn about their shared history and co-parenting relationship?

What is the perfect day, one you relive in dreams? If your father’s dying, it’s a perfect, normal morning with
him. In this ten-minute play about our subconscious desires, Jessie’s father returns to prompt her
to ask an overwhelming question

When a nice white PTA mom accidentally creates chaos on the town's Facebook page by creating a fundraiser to sell covid facemasks branded with the town's racist mascot, what's an unemployed ombudsman to do but call a Zoom meeting of all the offended parties? This twenty-minute one act spoofs a phenomena well-known to suburbanites: the political argument on the town's Facebook page.

Could you go back to delivering babies, after having an abortion? In this thought-provoking take on abortion and adoption, two maternity ward nurses of different generations confront the history of choice through a conversation. A twenty-minute one-act.

What is "the real world"? What risks do we take to feel normal and loved in the most abnormal of circumstances? Lessons in Feeling Human tells the story of Amy and Ricky, two millenials who live in the same apartment, at three points during the spring 2020 lockdown. They connect deeply on the fire escape, a place separate from their "real world" lives in a time when the "real world" no longer exists. However, what happens on the fire escape doesn't always stay on the fire escape, and in "the real world", Amy is in a lackluster marriage. Her time with Ricky helps her determine what she wants her life to look like, once lockdown is over. This is a forty-minute one act that is meant to be performed by actors practicing social distancing.

Catie has been an up-and-coming actress for the past twenty years; had the pandemic not happened, she would have finally gotten her big break this year. Paulie is a quiet morgue worker. When they meet on
the Staten Island ferry, Catie contemplates a big decision with Paulie’s reluctant help.

Paul and his wife Mary clash with Paul’s father James as it becomes clear that James disapproves of Paul and Mary’s adopted children. As Paul and Mary discuss what it takes to be a family, they stumble upon a discussion over what is enough to make them happy.

When Frankie and Pina run into each other on a Jersey City street nineteen years after their teenage engagement ends, they are confronted by roads not taken.

What is the legacy of choice? In this play about Jean and her daughter Barbara, two generations of women in small-town America before Roe v. Wade, family power dynamics control their destiny. In Act I, Jean mulls her reproductive options in 1949, a journey mirrored in Act II when her daughter Barbara also contemplates choice in an era marked by control. The play is ultimately about the legacy of reproductive rights, choice and power.