Gemma Cooper-Novack

Full-length. Break begins in 2019 at a symposium where Jo has been speaking out against psychiatry. In an awkward encounter afterwards, Quiara speaks to her both about the content of her presentation and about Jo’s relationship with Lia, Quiara’s former fiancée. As the play unfolds backwards in time, the loving, chaotic, tenuous relationship among the three of them—struggling with Lia and Jo’s bipolar disorder and psychiatric hospitalizations, Quiara and Lia’s racial differences, and their conflicting ideas about activism and love—become clear, and the role that Jo has played in Quiara and Lia’s relationship for good and for ill leaves all three women uncertain. What is the role of activism in an intimate relationship? Where do our passionate commitments meet our love?

In 1944, someone knocks on the door where 22-year-old Felice Schragenheim, a Jewish woman who has been living as a “U-boat” (anonymously after staging a false suicide), has been living—the apartment of her lover, Lilly Wust, the 30-year-old wife of a Nazi soldier. Lilly shoos an old man away.

When she meets Lilly and her four children, Felice feels instantly at home, all the more so when she cautiously reveals her Jewish identity to Lilly and Lilly doesn’t reject her. They marry in a makeshift ceremony. Ultimately, against her Resistance friends Elenai, Gerd, Ulla, and Gregor’s advice, Felice declines a possible escape to Switzerland in order to stay by Lilly’s side.

Only months later, Felice has been arrested and deported—first to Theresienstadt, then to Gross-Rosen, where she is hospitalized along with another prisoner, Renate. As Lilly struggles to reach Felice, Felice enters the jumble of her memories and what she now has lost. Scenes collide in time—Felice’s early losses of both family and education, her work for the Resistance, her intense relationship with Lilly, and her treacherous and terrifying present meet in fragments in her mind and onstage. The tool of seduction that Felice has always used to help her navigate a threatening environment no longer serves her in the forced-labor camp and killing center.

As the play ends, Felice remains starving and depleted in a section of abandoned Bergen-Belsen with Renate, listening to the end of the war and a future without her.

Full-length. Commissioned by Breadcrumbs Productions, Syracuse, NY. Lady, a young woman with a mysterious past, finds her way to a San Francisco brothel in 1850. As she draws closer to her fellow sex workers, Madam and Mercy, she also finds herself pulled in by her past and wondering about the security of her future, both dependent on the hungers of men. The brothel finds itself at greater risk, haunted by a hurt ghost and threatened by a rising male power structure, and Lady must decide on her own loyalties.

Daniella and Marshall, a longtime couple, have recently gotten engaged. Neither can admit that Jessica, Daniella's best friend, serves as a distant object of love for them both. As the wedding draws closer and a devastating event at the charter school Daniella founded and where Jessica teaches disturbs both women, all their relationships are disrupted.

When Callie returns from cleaning up a horrific oil spill in the Yukon, she gathers with her sibling Dylan to plan their baby shower—without revealing that she brought home a baby polar bear.

In this 15-minute play, a powerful white American female politician currently involved in a grueling campaign brings in a female Syrian Arab psychic to read her past lives in exchange for getting the psychic's children out of Syria. The psychic herself is the reincarnation of the famous second-century queen and military mastermind Zenobia of Palmyra.

Sheila, Deb, and Suzanne, three women in their fifties, gather in their friend Kate's room at a cancer treatment center, vying for closeness to the dying woman while Kate, hidden from her friends behind a curtain, tries to understand her impending mortality through a macabre "Dating Game."

10-MINUTE. In the school library, Kai is overwhelmed by Gianna's friendliness, and Gianna is oblivious to what Kai has planned.

Claire struggles to defend herself after snails perpetuate a horrific attack in her newly purchased home.

In this 15-minute play, a threesome finishing an encounter in a theater runs into a couple intending to have a similar encounter. Then the shelter in place order comes in.

In this 1-minute play, a sock asks a dog why she's neglected them during quarantine.

Sasha's husband, Marco, and her sister, Kira, are relieved that she's come home, but echoes of the war still seem to be with her. Kira's partner, Dani, prepares herself to address questions of violence in modern society for the radio program she co-hosts. When an unexpected revelation about Sasha’s experience throws them all off balance, the characters in Blindside must confront their assumptions about the limits of moral behavior and of their own relationships.

Blindside explores the homefront ramifications of war, examining what United States citizens are capable of under duress and the unforeseen repercussions of their actions.

Seventeen-year-old Marianne Dashwood is passionate and poetic, while her nineteen-year-old sister Elinor is rational and organized. As the play begins, their father dies (“Legacy”) and they struggle to adjust to changes in their lives. Elinor refuses to admit her attraction to Edward Ferrars; Marianne despairs of finding a man to her standards (“A Growing Attachment”). Their father has left his fortune to their half-brother and his vindictive wife, who refuse to provide for their relatives (“Generosity”); however, a distant relative, Sir John Middleton, invites Marianne, Elinor, and their mother to move to a small cottage on his property (“To My Cousin”). The Dashwoods say “Farewell to Norland.”
The Dashwoods meet Sir John Middleton, Lady Middleton, and Mrs Jennings, the residents “At Barton Park.” Marianne’s musical talent is admired by the group at large (“First Love”), but particularly by Colonel Brandon, a wealthy middle-aged man. Mrs Jennings notices Colonel Brandon’s attraction and determines that both Dashwood sisters will be “Married by Midsummer.”
Edward pays a brief visit, making Elinor realize how much she missed him (“A Country Parson”); Marianne meets Willoughby, a passionate, romantic man whose every taste matches hers (“My Preserver”). But sisters Nancy and Lucy Steele, arrive at Barton, and Elinor learns that Edward has long been secretly engaged to Lucy Steele (“Impertinence”). The sense of jealousy is “Unfamiliar” to Elinor, and she tries to hide it; Marianne is only too eager to show her feelings for Willoughby (“Exactly What I Think”).Elinor is horrified by Marianne’s open expressions of affection (“The Pleasantness of an Employment”). This increases tension between the two sisters, compounded when Marianne learns Willoughby must leave her to go to London. Colonel Brandon suddenly departs as well. However, Mrs Jennings invites both Dashwoods to London for “The Season.”
At a party in London, Elinor runs into Lucy; although Lucy and Edward’s engagement remains a secret, Lucy is still delighted to meet Edward’s family, including his brother Robert (“Excessively Fond of a Cottage”). However, the party comes to a halt when Marianne sees Willoughby singing a duet (“On a Hillside Green with Clover”) with another woman and refusing to acknowledge his intimacy with Marianne (“Mr Willoughby’s Maggot”). Marianne and Elinor are devastated to learn that Willoughby is engaged to this woman, Sophia Grey. Colonel Brandon tries to comfort Elinor, telling her that Willoughby recently committed a terrible offense against a member of Colonel Brandon’s family, “A Girl Like Marianne.” Nonetheless, Marianne falls ill, close to death. Hearing this news, Willoughby runs to Elinor and tries to explain his behavior (“Expensive Taste”), but she refuses to speak with him.
Marianne does recover, though, and resolve to change her behavior “From This Day Forward”—including, possibly, acknowledging her feelings towards Colonel Brandon. She is soon distracted, though, when Lucy and Edward’s engagement becomes public knowledge and she learns of Elinor’s “Misery.” In spite of this, Elinor continues to extend friendship to Edward when his mother disinherits him (“Perhaps There’s a Place”) and finds a bit of Marianne in her when John and Fanny try to lay claim to “Generosity (Reprise).” With Marianne recovered, the sisters decide to return home.
Back at Barton, they are greeted by tremendous news—Lucy has married Edward’s brother Robert, who was not disinherited. Edward proposes to Elinor (“A Country Parson (Reprise)”), and she accepts. The two marry, and encourage the budding romance between Marianne and Colonel Brandon (“Second Love”).