Nina Wright

~ In 1919 ~ one year before women will be granted the right to vote, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge, great-great-granddaughter of five-time failed presidential candidate Henry Clay, is leading a suffrage rally at Ashland, the family’s historic Kentucky estate, when she is visited by a figure from her family lore. The ghost of Lotty Dupuy, Clay’s enslaved housekeeper, tells Madeline how she sued the senator for failing to free her as promised and was sent down the river in punishment. Now, as Madeline’s own life is waning, Lotty recruits her to continue the fight for women from beyond the grave.
~ In 2019 ~ at a prestigious Southern university, Madeline embodies the department chair and Lotty represents every pivotal insider. Together they cast supernatural revenge vibes over contemporary proceedings. Post-doc scholar Acacia James finds herself in a battle of academic ethics with Charles “Whit” Whitmore, a past-his-prime expert in the social fragmentation of Henry Clay’s era. What Acacia sees as parallel contemporary issues—the struggles of marginalized people and denial of climate change—Whit dismisses as “memes and melodrama.” Owen Lee, one of Whit’s doctoral students, reveals to Acacia that Whit is presenting some of her data as his own. Whit finds himself in a locked classroom late at night, confronted not only by Acacia but also by Madeline and Lotty in their original forms evoking the voices of women throughout time. After a terrified Whit is drawn off into the shadows, Lotty assures Acacia that women are not haunted: “Women are the ‘haints.’”

"Wish I Were Here" is a black-box-appropriate existential comedy for five (3F/2M), six (4F/2M), or eight (6F/2M) actors. Any race or ethnicity. Ages 20s to 60s. Some roles are gender fluid.

It’s December 2008 in Dallas, Texas, and high school teacher Jane Verloren has just ceased to exist. Or so she’s been told by a woman who may or may not work in Admin at St. Clare Academy. If she wants her life back, Jane must complete a quest to "find meaning or make meaning," and she is warned that the process may seem a little like online dating.

Jane’s guide on this strange path is a woman in her 60s who claims to be Karolyn Grimes, the actor who once played Zuzu Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It turns out that Karolyn-slash-Zuzu knows a little something about vanishing acts.

“Wish I Were Here” wryly focuses on finding our community where we least expect it after accepting one hard truth: that we have to let the dark in before we can find the light.

TAGLINE: A rapid-paced, darkly comic account of the Patty Hearst saga: the kidnapping, the media circus, the absurdity.

SYNOPSIS ~
"Tania: A Hostage Comedy" is a manic romp through one of the 20th century's most infamous true-crime sagas, the Symbionese Liberation Army's abduction of heiress Patty Hearst and her subsequent conversion to domestic terrorist. Seven actors (4M/3F) play forty roles, ranging from members of the Hearst family to members of the SLA, from law enforcement to celebrity lawyers, and from bystanders to reporters. The fiasco that captivated America in the 1970s reminds us how wildly, deadly, uproariously wrong a celebrity kidnapping can go.

Riding her bicycle, Mia shares with the audience her love of fresh air and exercise and the downside of dating after age 40. With a little help from her best friend Deb, Mia reveals her post-divorce dating history, starting with William, an online match who writes like William Faulkner on Viagra. When William offers Mia a Grand Tourismo, the Maserati of touring bicycles, Mia’s dating pattern is set: she meets a man, falls in love with his bike, and rides away on it. Before long, Mia has a collection of bikes but no boyfriend. On the bicycle path she literally runs into Kyle, a former student. An uneasy courtship ensues, mostly on bicycles. After an argument about their age difference, Mia rides straight into the path of an oncoming car. Her life route is changed forever: the question now is how to go on.

"Mimi’s Famous Company" is a wicked one-act comedy that explores the origin of greed. This fast-paced, nonlinear actors' piece requires a simple unit set that can suggest rather than represent locations. The play’s two pivotal roles are the title character, a pert teenager who’s infinitely more talented than Patricia Highsmith's sinister "Mr. Ripley," and Sheila, her Drama Queen mom with a keen taste for revenge and regrettable taste in men. Mimi may be (almost) perfect, as she and her mother contend, or else she is the very embodiment of evil. Perhaps wickedness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Oscar Wilde's classic comedy of manners, now in the public domain, is reset in and around Chicago in the summer of 2019. This rollicking satire reflects our current obsession with selfies and social media as we meticulously, endlessly craft our personal brands. Are we really who we claim to be?

A comedy about one’s Higher Power . . . of fiction.
Meet Nola Rhinderknecht, an agoraphobic Indiana housewife who may or may not abandon her champion-bowler husband Bob. For five years Nola has rarely left their mobile home. TV, the Book of the Month Club, and the Internet keep her connected, more or less. Mostly, though, Nola seeks refuge in the novels of James Lee Burke, whose recovering-alcoholic Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux is her romantic hero. She decides to find him in the flesh. (Never mind that he’s a literary character.) On the road to New Iberia, Louisiana, Nola becomes the involuntary travel partner of another fugitive from reality. Elizabeth Bye Harkness and her multiple personalities lead Nola into a Hoosier Wonderland where Fiction and Blind Faith confront Fear and Regret. Guess who wins? The outcome will amuse and move you.

An agoraphobic mother grieving the death of her Down's Syndrome child recounts what she has learned.

In this two-minute comedic monologue from the full-length play "On My Boyfriends' Bicycles," 40-something-year-old Mia introduces her method for finding a second husband: by stealing bicycles.

An isolated woman of indeterminate age recounts her pandemic survival strategy as she administers a positive-thinking group page on social media.

An isolated woman of indeterminate age recounts her pandemic survival strategy as she administers a positive-thinking group page on social media.

An attractive female, midlife or older, chats with a stranger in an airport bar about the feminist writer who raised her and her own earlier career as a "Charlie's Angels"-type TV actor in the 1970s.