Sarah Stryker

Emily, a young white painter with a by-the-book mentality, wants nothing more than legitimacy in the eyes of the art world. When a stroke of luck gives her the chance to pitch to an influential Curator, out from Emily’s paintings emerges a portrait of a lover and competitor: Tae, a Black artist whose seemingly effortless rise in the art world left Emily envious and bitter. As the Curator’s critical eye picks apart the person behind the paintings, Emily learns too late what Tae sacrificed in order to make it.

FULL LENGTH (90 mins)
Emily, a young white portraitist, wants nothing more than legitimacy in the eyes of the art world. When Emily gets the chance to pitch to an influential Curator, her work reveals a vivid portrait of a lover and competitor: Tae, a Black artist whose rapid rise left Emily envious, bitter, and alone. When the Curator probes for the story behind the paintings, Emily must and ask herself how far she is willing to go to make it.

ONE ACT Radio Play (35 minutes)
As Jane and Damon prepare for the birth of their first child, Jane grapples with the fear that she is doomed to become her mother. As the physical and psychological hardships of pregnancy take their toll, ghosts from Jane’s past begin to emerge in the form of dreams, strange phone calls, and even visions. As Jane begins to suspect that what haunts her comes from within, she must determine whether she is losing her mind, or whether she must perform an exorcism on herself before time runs out.

CAST
JANE she/her Early 20s to Late 30s; pregnant, uncomfortable with intimacy
DAMON he/him Late 20s to Early 40s; Jane’s husband, craves intimacy
DR. BRODY she/her Jane’s obstetrician; any age, a good doctor
MOM she/her Jane’s mother; Late 30s to early 40s, older sounding

THEME
As a house can be haunted, so can a body. An unwelcome resident can hide within the sovereign walls and change the atmosphere of the dwelling. When I think about hauntings, I think about what hides within us: uninvited thoughts, terrifying urges, and even at times another life. This radio play explores the complexity of desire and fear that comes with pregnancy, and how a blessing can transform into a curse when one’s body no longer feels like one’s home.

ONE ACT (50 minutes)
Grandma Janine, mama Jean, and daughter Jesse are three generations of family bound together by a curse: any woman in their bloodline who falls in love is bound to suffer a horrible fate. One muggy evening, Jesse comes home from college afraid to tell her mother that the worst has happened, only for an old flame of Jean’s to appear with his adult son and a life-changing proposal. During an excruciating dinner full of secrets and fears, the motley family cling together to survive one of the strangest paths to healing. 2M 3W

SHORT PLAY (10 Minutes)
When Collin returns home for an unexpected visit and finds his mother's dementia grown noticeably worse, he tries to convince his disinterested father to force her to seek treatment but is stymied by the discovery that she would rather slip away than hold fast to consciousness.

ONE ACT (30 minutes)
the normally abnormal life of three young sisters is interrupted when a school teacher with good intentions and a forgotten textbook steps across their threshold and discovers that some snarls are not so easy to untie

MUSICAL - In Process
When former divorce lawyer Dierdre founds a sociocratic commune to combat the loneliness of the modern world, she discovers that she cannot make everyone happy. As her attempts to mediate spin out of control, she must decide whether to sacrifice her own place in the community to keep it afloat

ONE ACT Radio Play (30 minutes)
when two women with opposite personalities are trapped in a collapsing elevator, their fears and hopes emerge as death creeps inevitably toward them

OPEN SCENE FOR DEVISING (20-40 minutes)
when the spilling starts, it's hard to stop:
an stream-of-consciousness open scene for any number of voices to share hope and fear and wonder and ultimately ask: in the face of existential dread, is anything enough?

ONE ACT Storytelling (30 minutes)
in a somewhat magic grove, two combative woodspeople carve their likenesses out of two trees, but when the likenesses develop minds of their own, the woodspeople must address the roots of their enmity