Denis Meadows

A weekend in 1940 in Brookline, a working class neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Shayna Zaytoun, whose family emigrated from Lebanon, is faced with several imminent tough decisions, whether or not to send her teenage sister for an abortion; to accompany Lemuel, a Black handyman, on a car trip down South; to accept Aidan Rooney’s offer of marriage. Most harrowing, however, is whether or not to confront Zadie, her battle-ax of a mother, over Zadie’s denial of the train wreck of her marriage.

35 MINS: Flo meets her friend Clarissa at Cafe Gruere to try to persuade her to leave her husband but Mitch, the waiter/actor, keeps interrupting to show off his, often hilarious, acting range. Eventually this leads to a breakdown of the play (breaking the fourth wall), as we discover what's at stake in the actors' relationship to each other.

10 MINS: Married oldsters Burt and Martha are glued to their laptops searching dating sites on the sly. Their son Jeremy, who lives in the basement, helps them figure out how to navigate through the shoals of technology. What happens to them eventually is a true surprise.

10 MINS: Two boomers, Winston and Horace, trade memories pleasantly on a bench till Winston asks for twenty bucks which annoys Horace because he'd lent Winston the same amount just last month.

10 MINS: After Carlson arbitrarily raises his buddy Chuck's rent, Chuck plots his revenge which involves Carlson's recently deceased Granny B and a toaster.

40 MINS: 1974, post-sandlot football game locker room, Pittsburgh. Butch (Vietnam vet and lineman) and his older brother Bronco (quarterback), spar over whose fault it was that Bronco threw an interception that day. Bronco wants to celebrate his chance to try out for the Steelers but Butch says go celebrate with Donna, Bronco's wife. Bronco confesses she's left him. Butch confesses he's quit his job after his boss insulted him. The reveal of the insult and why it stung so much is the core of the play.

15 MINS: Three 18-year-old teenagers, about to leave for college, try to deal with their anxieties about the future. What complicates things is Pru's boyfriend, Lars, has just spent the night with Popsy.

15 MINS: Jinx, an enormous bouncer, sits next to Jimbo, an attorney, on the ferry, when he recognizes Jimbo as his son's youth baseball coach. Jinx is not pleased, to put it mildly, with Jimbo's coaching philosophy.

20 MINS: Tony and Joey, having just pulled off a robbery, are taking the loot across to Staten Island on the ferry. Disguised as priests, they are trying not to draw attention to themselves when Megaly, who looks like a homeless woman, approaches. What happens next is not what they had in mind.

10 MINS: Max and Ceci, wearing blindfolds, get together for a meet-up on the ferryboat that runs between Manhattan and Staten Island. While taking the first hesitant steps toward getting to know each other, they discuss poetry and life. When they finally remove the blindfolds, they are in for a surprise.

10 MINS: (1980's) Timothy drops by to visit Declan, an AIDS patient, and his girl friend, Bethany. In asides to the audience, each reveals their real feelings while maintaining an awkward front to one another.

10 MINS: Phyllis is cornered by Philip at their 40th high school reunion. Their memories of those long ago days wildly diverge.

10 MINS: Chaim is trying to persuade Benjy to buy a new Fuller brush to use in their business, but Benjy’s having none of it until he finally relents. Then when they don their overcoats and pick up their cases, the audience realizes where they are and that they’ve been talking in code.

25 MINS: A gaggle of Trump supporters come together to prepare a “diversion” to be performed at the upcoming Republican convention. They base their material on Shakespeare’s Rude Mechanicals from his Midsummer Night’s Dream; however, current rabble-rousing slogans and eerie admissions of what’s really going on, (primarily by Lick Spittle who fancies himself in the Trumpian mold) keep sabotaging their presentation.

15 MINS: Gil refuses to let his niece Tiffany take any of his late mother's outfits but Tiffany is insistent. He ends the argument with a bang.

15 MINS: Juanita, Mrs. Fisnik's personal assistant, feels compelled to confront Mrs. Fisnik about her fear of and loathing for Mexican immigrants.

10 MINS: It's Valentine's Day in Sam's Bar. Henny, an extremely shy guy, talks (in a high-pitched voice) to Saffron through a small, stuffed bear which he manipulates by hand.

10 MINUTES: Mrs. Cicatelli goes to a funeral home to buy a casket for herself, but she wants a bargain which young Morty the mortician refuses to agree to. In the end she outmaneuvers him.

10 MINUTES: Rex and his wife Heidi await the arrival of their 3 sons for Thanksgiving dinner. When Rodney appears, a friend of one of them, and declares he's gay, Rex worries his son is, too. What ensues surprises them all.

10 MINUTES: Stew wants the couch in front of the TV, but Monica insists that's bad Chi.

Maddie, a high school senior, has been sent to the principal's for refusing to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Mister J, the principal, is prepared to forgive her until she accuses him of something he did a long time ago.

10 MINUTES: Keith and Cassie wait in their bedroom while Gaspar the plumber fixes their leaky toilet. When Gaspar asks for Vaseline, Keith gives him KY-jelly; this leads to a difficult denouement.

10 MINUTES: Lou, losing his way in the theatre on his way back to his seat from the loo, winds up on stage with Liz, who convinces him to put on a show for the audience.

10 MINUTES: Hilary is trying to wake her teenage daughter up so she can get to school on time for a change, but the argument escalates rapidly into more dangerous territory.

10 MINUTE: Reese has come to a prestigious Wall Street bank to be interviewed for a summer internship. When she’s put through the ringer by the interviewer, she has a decision to make and a surprise to reveal.

ONE MINUTE: Three lady friends are trying on dresses in a department store fitting room when an attendant announces the place is closing in a minute! Panic ensues.

MONOLOGUE: Maudie, the white widow of a Confederate soldier, appeals to a judge to not deny her the pension she feels she deserves.

MONOLOGUE: While wiping sweat from his face, a white self-appointed guardian of the Southern Border stands over the prostrate form of a Mexican “invader” who has fallen from the border wall. .

MONOLOGUE: La Rain, a Black maid working the graveyard shift at the White House during Clinton's presidency, is thinking of quitting because the president just called her son Dezmun on the phone (he's sailing to Haiti with the military to liberate that country) so he could talk to his momma. However, when Dezmun does so, he tells her he's going to quit the mission. La Rain tries to dissuade him but the connection fails.

Thomas Olitaire enters a Jesuit Novitiate to begin his studies for the priesthood. His first challenge is to pass muster with the Master of Novices, Father Seamus Gideon, who is charged with deciding who’s worthy to continue and who’s not. As the months go by, Thomas confronts his own and his fellow novices’ unworthiness while suspecting the Master of far worse. He begins to act out, brazenly flouting the Rules, arousing the Master’s wrath. However, when he wants to leave, the Master refuses to let him go, saying it’s too soon to give up fighting for his vocation. In the end, the play contemplates the mystery of what makes a priest and why; as Scripture says: “Many are called, but few are chosen.”

It's 1918 and the flu pandemic is looming. Angela Rooney, trapped in a loveless marriage, is trying to raise her six-year-old son the right way even as he refuses to speak to his father. When a German doctor joins the household, all sorts of complications arise. Will she find the happiness she so desperately seeks?

65 MINS: Willow Godoy, a Black college student and adoptee, embarks on a quest to find her birth parents. James Godoy, her white adoptive parent, is for some reason reluctant to assist her. Meanwhile, he has to contend with a cantankerous voice in his head, personified on stage by a giant puppet.

Young Billy McDonough, after boarding an ocean ferry sailing overnight from France to Ireland, proposes marriage to his traveling companion, Sally Plunkett. When she turns him down, he grows petulant, resolving to cut short their trip and head straight home to America. That night in the males-only berth, however, his sleep is disturbed by a troubled dream about the Troubles in Ireland and how he loses Sally forever. The next morning, to her delight, he’s had a change of heart and is now eager to meet real flesh-and-blood Irish instead of the fanciful folks that haunted his dream.

25 MINS: The Cottontail team (all male) competes against the Turtledove team (all female) in answering multiplication questions (based on Aesop's fable: The Hare and the Tortoise).

When Nick DeVine, police detective, arrives at the church rectory on Thanksgiving to investigate the mysterious poisoning of his twin brother, Father Richter DeVine, he discovers a nest of vipers and criminal misdeeds among the staff, yet is not convinced any of them did the deed. Ultimately the truth comes out.

Cliff with his wife Colleen heads off into the wilds of Vermont to build his dream house with his own hands. However, all too soon all sorts of obstacles coalesce to impede his progress, including gnawing doubts about his skill-level, a constant shortage of funds, and the sheer arduousness and unending frustration of construction. Moreover, things get exponentially more complicated when his shiftless pal Lanny drops by with a new, weird girlfriend. The question Cliff has to ultimately face: Is building a house worth the risk of losing all that he values?

Trev, our wandering troubadour, after citing Kant's dictum, there is no knowable objective fact, proceeds to re-tell Lady Di's story in blank verse, culminating in a reenactment of her tragic, accidental death in 1997. His goal: to have us and the royals reflect on any lessons learned from her too brief life.

In the first scene, Iris, a suburban housewife, is told by her husband that their marriage is over. The play then spins back in time to explore the possible reasons for why this came about (and to mirror the confused state of mind Iris finds herself in). In the end, she refuses to accept what’s happening.

FULL-LENGTH comedy for teens. Bets, new to her high school, joins The Grand Ol' Oprah Gossip Club primarily to meet other kids, only to realize the members led by Alice would rather indulge in backbiting, innuendo and slander. Eventually Bets must decide whether or not to defy peer pressure and challenge them to aim for higher ground.