Andrew Martineau

(TEN MINUTES) Hope and Mitch are a young married couple. When Mitch comes home a little bit later than expected after going to "happy hour" with a friend, Hope has some questions, along with why he didn't take the trash out in the morning. Their thoughts are revealed to the audience through actual characters that the audience sees and hears, and they contribute a different layer of conflict that Hope and Mitch attempt to navigate.

(TEN MINUTES) "Be That As It May" involves a professor who has been laid off from his position and is about the jump for a high rise building. His supervisor and one of his students are trying to talk him down, but one of the bystanders on the street is egging him on. There is a plot twist to reveal that things may not be as they seem. Art imitating life is the thrust of this comedy that blurs the line between life and death, happiness and desperation.

(ONE ACT) “Etched in Stone” follows an elderly couple, Fanny and Peter, who meet as they have their own separate picnics at their future grave sites. It turns out that their spouses are buried there, and one day they will be side by side for all eternity. As they get to know each other, despite a rough start, they relive the times that they each first visited the sites with their spouses.

(15 MINUTES) A group of fairy tale characters meets regularly in a group therapy session. A new member, Jack, joins the group and creates consternation for the other members, including Hansel and Gretel, who are dealing with father issues, Snow, a recently divorced princess, and Pinocchio, who has trouble with issues of honesty and trust. The play ends with a gun stand-off between Jack and the others, who work to circumvent Jack's mother/anger issues.

(ONE-ACT) Four college friends, Joseph, Abby, Carter and Madison, sneak into a southern U.S. cemetery after dark and stumble upon a section devoted to Confederate soldiers. They drink beers, smoke joints and relax when Henry, the ghost of a Confederate soldier trapped in a form of limbo, appear to them asking to be stabbed in the heart and sent to the afterlife. The friends, two of whom are African-American, question Henry as to his motives for fighting the war. They are unsure what the best course of action would be. Henry has a few questions of his own about post-slavery America. Henry's betrothed, Clarissa, appears from the afterlife to Henry and tells him he must get them to stab him if he hopes to spend eternity with her, although she is not certain of anything. She appears to the friends and tries to convince them to take immediate action. Joseph wrestles with Henry after hearing his views, leading to a climactic moment that leaves the friends fearful of the future.

(ONE ACT) "One Fifty" is about a group of social science researchers conducting interviews using the same set of questions to respondents of different genders. The responses reflect typical gender role expectations in most cases, while they elicit strong reactions depending on both what the question may be and who is asking the questions. The play examines gender bias and conformity in a humorous way with an emphasis of language and surprising reactions that are both dramatic and farcical. The play can use a doubling of actors in the four scenes.

(TEN MINUTES) Mina, a teenager who has just moved to a new place from Chicago, sits on the high school cafeteria and is joined by Nia and Jason. The new "friends" ask Mina questions about where she is from and whether or not her food needs to be refrigerated. Mina soon learns that these two classmates are acting out characters in a play, and they seem to think Mina is a character, as well. Confusion about the reality of their situation and issues of diversity and inclusion are revealed. A popular guy named Dave asks Mina to the dance, but she is not sure if he is real or not, either. The voice of the stage manager is heard throughout the play to try to keep the "rehearsal" on track.

Mina, a teenager who has just moved to a new place from Chicago, sits on the high school cafeteria and is joined by Nia and Jason. The new "friends" ask Mina questions about where she is from and whether or not her food needs to be refrigerated. Mina soon learns that these two classmates are acting out characters in a play, and they seem to think Mina is a character, as well. Confusion about the reality of their situation and issues of diversity and inclusion are revealed. A popular guy named Dave asks Mina to the dance, but she is not sure if he is real or not, either. The voice of the stage manager is heard throughout the play to try to keep the "rehearsal" on track.

(TEN MINUTES) Jill and Curt are strangers looking at Valentine's Day cards in a department store. They start conversing as they marvel at the bad writing, and slowly begin to realize they might like each other in the process.

(TEN MINUTES) Three first cousins, Coldwell, Verizon, and Fargo, living a few decades ahead of us in the future, are rummaging through their great-grandmother's boxes after she passes away and find an old rotary phone. They try to guess what it is, but then Coldwell remembers seeing one in a museum and explains its obsolete function. Fargo pretends to make a call after figuring out how to dial it, and Ruthie answers. She is living in the 1970s and is suspicious of this call and thinks she's being pranked. Both sides of the conversation reveal utter confusion in this strange time warp that even Alexander Graham Bell could not have predicted.

(ONE ACT) On Christmas Eve, Vidalia, an eleven-year-old girl, is awakened by an intruder dressed as Santa Claus. He is taking her T.V., presumable to repair it. She doubts his assertions that he is, in fact, Santa, and she even finds that she craves his company. Jo, Vidalia's mother, does not see him, and we learn that Glen, the intruder, may only be a figment of Vidalia's imagination. We also discover what happened the previous Christmas Eve when Vidalia's father was told to move out. At the end of the play, Glen leaves, but he shortly returns with a Christmas present for his new friend.

(15 MINUTES) "The Water of Her Noblest Rivers” involves four characters with two scenes happening simultaneously with two sets of characters. One scene is set in a bar on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC and involves two young urban professionals, Leah and Jay, discussing the issue of water pollution and urban gentrification in the nation's capital. The other scene is on the edge of the Anacostia River. William works with Charles, a young man with intellectual disabilities, who has wandered away from his group home to swim in the polluted river. He finds a typewriter, which he wants to keep. William does his best to get Charles to go back home.

(TWENTY MINUTES) Mandy is sitting in a laundromat waiting on her clothes. She is reading a tabloid magazine when Jim enters. Jim gets upset when he realizes he forgot his detergent. The two strike up a conversation, which involves a discussion about Jim's fiancee, who lives in Alaska and has been milking him for money for the past eleven years. The two start to bond, which might be leading to a new romance as they sit and wait for their clothes to get clean.

(TEN MINUTES) “Visitation” is a drama about a mother who is visited in prison by her grown son, who has been suffering from drug addiction. Later we learn the truth about the mother's imprisonment and that few things are as they seem, particularly in this intense mother-son relationship.

(BRIEF MONOLOGUE) Eileen, an elderly woman, is on her deathbed. She is telling her son Christopher about how she named her baking company "Eight Aunt Marys" and teases about the eighth ingredient in her beloved cookie recipe.

(MONOLOGUE from THE LACEMAKERS) Jenny is confiding to her book club members that she realized that she lost sight of her own individual identity while signing her husband's name to their Christmas cards.

(SHORT FULL LENGTH) Astor Place is based largely on the true story of the infamous riot that took place in the Bowery of New York City in 1849. Two Shakespearean actors—the famous American actor who was also renowned for playing Sparticus, and the Brit, William Charles Macready, have had years of public rivalry prior to the riot that left 22 dead, some innocent bystanders including children, on the streets of New York.

At rise of curtain, Meredith is finishing off a pint of ice cream. She stands on the scale as the phone rings. Her father calls her on her cell phone and tells her that he is coming over to help her celebrate her thirty-fifth birthday. She is also expecting her ex-boyfriend to come over to remove the rest of his things. She throws the scale in the toilet. Her father arrives with champagne and a gift. They are a little awkward with each other as they proceed to talk about their recent breakups. Tom has just left his second wife by telling her a story of an affair that never happened. In Act Two, Tom and Michele (Meredith’s mother) are sitting in the bathtub having a romantic bubble bath with lit candles. It is thirty years earlier. The kids are out with her sister, and they discuss the surprise birthday party she has planned for her father. Her stepmother calls with the news that her father has been hurt in a drunk driving accident that he caused. Although he is all right, they will not be able to make the trip for the party. Tom gives her a tranquilizer to calm her down after they have a rather physical fight. She starts to give him a back massage. She then finds out that he has been counting her pills, which leads to another argument about his lack of trust.

(SHORT FULL LENGTH) Alicia and Nelson are getting married! The first scene opens as they take their vows. Alicia sits in Nelson's lap as they kiss, as Nelson is currently in a wheelchair because of an unfortunately mishap in which his best man, Phil, accidentally (allegedly) shot him in the back while hunting. The second scene involves the reception. Phil keeps leaving the room because he is bent over double with stomach pain. After the bride and groom finish their photo shoot, the reception begins as Mallory, the maid of honor, gives the first speech, followed by Phil's best man speech. Mallory sings for the newlyweds and the first dance commences. Phil stumbles into the room after leaving again and returning to collapse in front of everyone. Later the guests find out that Phil was poisoned! The subsequent scenes are all in the reception room a few days later, as Elena Zugravescu interrogates each member of the wedding party. Her clever ploy to get them all to open up about their relationships with Phil is to engage in an activity that each of them enjoys, such as chess, knitting, magic and ballroom dancing. She learns that each of them has a motive. Davis is the bride's father and is owed a lot of money by Phil. Jake is Phil's good friend who is running for public office and realizes that Phil suspects him of embezzling campaign funds. Mallory is Phil's current girlfriend but it is revealed that she has a motive, as does Alicia, who used to date Phil for many years. Of course, we know the best man had shot the groom in the back, quite literally. In the end, the murderer is known to us all in a rather shocking discovery, making this a rather "cool reception" for both the detective and the wedding party.

(FULL-LENGTH) In an upscale Italian restaurant during the Christmas season, two married couples meet to celebrate the holidays. The two couples are brother and sister siblings married to another set of brother and sister siblings. Nora and Porter are married to Giselle and Buck. The play is one continuous action from the start of the meal to the finish. Chess is their enthusiastic server. Nora and Porter are grieving their brother Finn who died a year earlier. The couples discuss their aging parents, their childhoods growing up in the same neighborhood, and the gulf that Finn has created when he overdosed on pills and alcohol, as well as the emotional divide he has inadvertently helped to create between his only brother and sister. GIselle and Porter are also experiencing the painful reality that they may not be able to conceive a child after several miscarriages. The dinner becomes less of a celebration and more of an awakening of sorts amid their grief and misunderstandings that potentially lead to reconciliation and hope for the new year.

(FULL LENGTH) The Dotted Line interweaves two stories: the true story of Louis Braille, inventor of the Braille alphabet for the blind with the fictional story of Brian Walker, a middle-aged man rapidly losing his eyesight to macular generation. Reggie, a New York street performer, is a pseudo-Greek chorus who serves as a narrative link between the stories.
Louis loses his eyesight at age 3 when he is playing in his father’s saddle-making workshop and accidentally pokes one eye with an awl. The infection spreads to his other eye, permanently blinding the young boy. A Marquise who lives in the small French town of Couvray helps pay for him to attend the Royal Institute for the Blind in Paris.
At the school, Louis must deal with horrible living conditions, which later cause him to develop consumption. Brian learns that he has macular degeneration in his early-forties, even though it mostly affects the elderly.
Louis develops the raised dot system of reading for the blind, after an Army captain named Charles Barbier comes to the school with his own raised dot system he developed during the Revolution called sonography and presents it the headmaster, Dr. Pignier. The students have trouble learning the system because it has too many dots and sounds.
Louis demonstrates his system of King Louis-Philippe, who is impressed but will not offer support. Meanwhile, Louis develops a method of reading and writing called raphigraphy, using dotted letters that both sighted and blind people can read. A blind friend, Francois-Pierre Foucault, invents a machine to make the letters. It is the prototype of the modern typewriter.
Brain dances with his ex-wife Lauren at her wedding. She tells him she has bought him a book on tape. He is hesitant to accept her gift. She asks him what he hopes his legacy will be. He jokes that he hopes to be remembered as “a man with a vision.” Louis learns he has consumption. Dr. Pignier is forced out by Armand Dufau, who convinces the Minister of the Interior that Pignier is too liberal and states that he is a threat to their system of government. Dufau bans the dot system, and students hide forks and knitting needles so that they can continue to read and write in the method they know best. Brain checks into a spa in Florida to be with real dolphins. Joseph Gaudet, Dufau’s assistant, convinces Dufau to accept the system before there is revolt, and a demonstration of the dot system is given and proves to be successful.
Louis dies of consumption and his brother and friends find a box that Louis wanted burned, containing receipts of loans to the many people he had given gifts and money. Brian listens to a book on tape. Louis’ funeral is given, and the blind pay their respects.

(FULL LENGTH) Levon Lyons is a sixteen-year-old who has been battling depression after his mother moves away. His teacher, Athena MIller, makes a home visit to discuss his mental health issues with his father, Mickey. We see Levon's nightmares come to life, which include his mother, Kitty Lyons, a stripper who wears a lion costume, and Milo, Kitty's abusive boyfriend. Mickey and Levon have been telling everyone that Kitty has died, but later she returns and encounters Athena, who seems to have feelings for Mickey. Milo enters the scene and searches for Kitty, who had tied Milo to the toilet and drugged him before leaving him. The climax involves an intense confrontation with Milo, Levon, Athena, Mickey and Kitty, in which Levon pins Milo to the ground to save his father's life. Later, Athena and Mickey show their true feelings for each other. Levon's life returns to semi-normalcy and he stops having nightmares, for the time being at least.

(FULL LENGTH) Trash Day is a comedy about a newly retired Caucasian widower who suffers from depression, racism, sexism, and homophobia. He becomes a participant in a clinical trial for a new depression treatment, and ends up in the body of a younger African-American woman. He spends the rest of the play learning to adjust to his new condition.

TRASH DAY is published by Next Stage Press.

(FULL LENGTH) A group of women convene at their friend Gwen's house for a book discussion group meeting. This week they are reading a book entitled The Tutor, which is the true story about a group of women lacemakers in the nineteenth century who improvise writing a novel about a male tutor, who comes to teach a young lady about English literature. In the story within the story (which is enacted by the lacemakers as they write it), the young lady, Emily, slowly falls in love with her tutor. The plot thickens when her sister threatens to tell everyone that the tutor impregnated her, and she could easily get away with it because the tutor's brother got her pregnant and ran off. In the present day, the contemporary women discuss the story that the lacemakers are writing as well as the true story of how they wrote it. As it begins to snow heavily, the ladies order a pizza. The pizza delivery person, April, robs the women and ties them up. As they sit there, April gets them to continue their book discussion, and she gets caught up in the plot, as well. What happens to the women after that is suspenseful as the book they are reading.

In the Land of Homonym, an aviator unexpectedly lands her plane there and discovers a world where puns and magic abound. A young boy named Aurelius has been searching for his parents, who disappeared mysteriously some time back. A flashback reveals the time the Mountain Dweller and the Beggar Woman (Aurelius' parents) first met. She was wringing out her clothes and a ring suddenly appeared and the Mountain Dweller proposed to her. Later, Aurelius meets an elf who convinces him to buy a magic hole. He had bought the hole wholesale from a Hole Seller, a shady character who is only in the business to earn a quick buck. We discover the time the Mountain Dweller bought another hole from the Hole Seller, and he disappeared into the hole. Aurelius disappears in his hole, as well, and soon he finds himself in a miner's camps full of minors (young children). They have being forced to work by the Hole Dweller, who recognizes Aurelius as his son. They jump for joy out of the hole. The townspeople run the Hole Seller out of town, and the town mare, who is actually the Mayor of the town, is magically transformed back into Aurelius' mother, who had been changed by one of the magic holes years before. Everything is now as it should be the Land of Homonym.

Skipping class for four high school seniors starts out with a few drinks in the park; it starts out with a discussion on movie sequels, popcorn, past mistakes, future goals; it starts out a few days before graduation, a few hours before commencement practice, and a few minutes before they get in a car and drive back to school, drunk. On that short trip from the park back to school, not even two miles, not even ten minutes, everything changes. A voice-over of a news reporter describes the accident in which two of the teenagers have died. One tragic decision to drink and drive and their friends and family are left with memories and a few photographs. This play communicates to our children that alcohol is a drug and that drinking and driving can lead to serious, even fatal consequences. It also encourages open channels of communication and could provide educators, concerned parents, and others seeking ways to prevent underage drinking with another prevention resource.

(ONE ACT) "The Journal" is a drama that deals with a group of seniors attending their prom and two "loners" whom no one seems to notice except for each other. As the different cliques have fun, dance and gossip, a journal is discovered in the boys' bathroom. One senior boy who was bullied all year is the author of the journal, and several students find that they are mentioned in an unflattering light. Connor and Cerise, the two "loner" students, meet and discuss their problems with bullying and depression. By the end of the play, Connor informs Cerise that they had ended their lives earlier in the year, but they dance together in solidarity along with the prom king and queen.

Neenie is living in Pascagoula, Mississippi in the 1990s with her mother, Brenda, her stepdad, Dean, and her intellectually disabled brother, Marty. Neenie has been dating her next-door neighbor, Biddy, whom she has known her whole life like a brother. When she starts secretly dating her African-American co-worker for the summer, Philip, who is attending law school at Ole Miss, things get complicated. Biddy's parents, Rhonda and Carl, are expecting a new baby, but rumors are swirling around town that Carl is having an affair with Wanda Charles, Neenie's piano teacher. Neenie is starting to feel like a fish out of water, especially when rumors start to spread about her and Philip, who gets caught up in more drama than even he expects his friendship with Neenie to cause.