Kara Emily Krantz

[10 MIN]: On the eve of a wedding, three people navigate the blurred lines between friendship, love, and what it means to show up for each other.

Full-Length: Charlotte and Eugene live a quiet, no-nonsense lifestyle surrounded by sudoku and argyle. Robert and Bella are boisterous and messy and ridiculously in love. Then there's the neighbor, Suzanne, who basically doesn't know what's going on, but definitely has something to say about it.

Sure, relationships can be exciting! They can also be confusing, unexpected, and expose us to profound emotional risk. However, relationships are almost always worth exploring, and if we’re willing to be vulnerable, can fill up the empty or wounded spaces in our hearts.

And if that doesn’t work? Well, get a dog.

Full-Length: When 32-year-old Samantha wakes up with a hangover on 75-year-old Theodore's couch, the only logical way to navigate the situation is to pose as his caretaker. While discovering why she is there, Sam and Teddy form a strange yet wonderful bond. Sometimes people stumble into your life... and help heal you.

[TEN MIN] Two children enact on the playground how they imagine life would be like as adults. But perhaps they are merely practicing for the future, and they are destined to spend their lives together.

Full-Length (90MINS, NO INTERMISSION): In the wake of an unfulfilling marriage, Katherine returns home to be confronted by the realization that something is terribly broken within the family. Desperate to be heard, Katherine pulls from her stores of memories and pain to vocalize a new identity, both for herself and her family - to finally use her powerful, poetic voice to pave a better way.

Full-Length: Gerald, 75, while mourning the loss of his wife, Daisy, and feeling pressure from his family to pack up his house and move to assisted living, struggles with memories, regrets, and ultimately with the healing that can come after a family decides to confront all that is broken between them.

[ONE ACT- 15mins]: Archibald and Jessie frequent the park every Thursday afternoon, but today holds a special, slightly disturbing and definitely disrupting surprise.

[Monologue] Day 3 of the Matthew Weaver make-it-happen monologue challenge.

A woman recalls snails.

[Monologue] There are these crazy things you do, to cope, when you’re just a kid. You don’t know any better, and it’s not like anyone was teaching you these things, these coping skills. You cope instinctively, savagely - you clutch at anything that will make you feel better, even if temporarily. You see, I was a few years older than my brother so I’d get off the bus about an hour earlier. It was a strange, wonderful hour of quiet solitude in the house, and I would wander around the rooms, sometimes talking out loud to myself. I would eat what I wanted and play computer games and occasionally glance at the clock to see how much time I had captured in my desperate, shaking hands.

Then the elementary school bus would arrive, and I would shut off the computer and put my Wheat Thins away and wait for Jimmy in the kitchen. I would be ready for him when he opened the front door. I loved him so much. He was funny and kind-hearted and adored me in a simple, unaffected way. We had always taken care of each other, especially since the divorce.

“Fuck you!” I would yell before the door was halfway ajar. “You’re an asshole!” he would yell back, throwing his school bags on the floor. “You’re a piece of shit” I would assure him and he would slam the front door, throw something in my direction and yell “Well, stop being such a selfish bitch!” I’d remind him he was fat and he’d remind me I was useless, I’d threaten him with violence and he’d describe all the ways I was undesirable. And we’d continue like this for a while, for long enough... until the game wore off. Until we were tired of it. Until we were ready for Mom to come home and say it to us all again.

[Monologue] I called my father today. This might seem to you like a pretty mundane thing to do. Okay, mundane’s not the right word - everyday, it’s an every day - every week? Sort of thing to do. You call your father. You check in, say hello. But you see, I stopped calling my father the night my father called me. It was after eleven, almost midnight, so when I saw his name on the caller ID, I picked up, you know? A parent calls at that hour, they’re calling for a reason. And then, when I heard his voice, i knew that reason. He was hurting; my daddy was hurting. My daddy was hurting, so he wanted to hurt me.

It didn’t start off that way, of course - it started with the usual plea to connect, tell me he missed me, make sure I still love him - but the fact is, none of that matters. None of it will ever be enough. My dad called me near midnight to pick a fight - to wake me up from sleep and let me know I’m a shitty daughter.

As for him? I have no right to consider him a shitty father - that’s on me. It’s all on me. So I didn’t talk to him for a couple months - and that was on me, too. I’m too sensitive. I can’t take a joke. I’m a selfish, ungrateful child. But today? Today is the Superbowl, and the Pats are playing, so I called him. To wish him a happy game. To wish him a happy game, and a happy life, and every now and then I’ll get the guts to do it again. But I shut off my phone at night now. I changed his caller ID from Daddy to his legal name, and I shut my damn phone off at night.