Richard Lyons Conlon

Richard Lyons Conlon

A two-term Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists and proud member of the Dramatists Guild, Richard has written over thirty plays and screenplays.

Most recently, THE VOLITIVE EFFECT OF ORAL LITERARY INUNDATION ON THE LSTM RECURRENT NEURAL NETWORK took First Place in Stonybrook University's 2018 Science Playwriting Competition; DESCANSO was the Winner of the 2017 WordWave New Play...
A two-term Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists and proud member of the Dramatists Guild, Richard has written over thirty plays and screenplays.

Most recently, THE VOLITIVE EFFECT OF ORAL LITERARY INUNDATION ON THE LSTM RECURRENT NEURAL NETWORK took First Place in Stonybrook University's 2018 Science Playwriting Competition; DESCANSO was the Winner of the 2017 WordWave New Play Festival, and BIG GAME: A MOTHER-DAUGHTER HUNTING STORY was selected and produced in Chicago for the Scared S#!tless! Festival: Living in These Trumpled Times. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY was named a Finalist for the 2017 HRC Showcase Theatre New Play Contest in New York, while 7 MINUTES TO LIVE was a Semi-Finalist at MultiStages in NYC. FALLING INTO MACY received its world premiere at 2nd Act Players in Evanston, Illinois, where it won their One-Act Play Competition.

NO TIME AT ALL was named a Finalist for the 2016 Reva Shiner Comedy Award, while THE MOST HIDDEN THING was a Top 2% Finalist in the 2016 Hope and Optimism Play Competition at Cornell University, and is a current Finalist in the 2017 BETC Generations competition.

The comedy-drama ONE TIME enjoyed a record-setting world premiere at Next Act Theatre in Milwaukee. It's been workshopped at Urban Stages in New York, and in Chicago at the Raven Theatre and Chicago Dramatists. It also took the Gold Prize in the 2015 Beverly Hills Stage Play Competition.

UNNATURAL DISASTER was selected for production in early 2017 as part of AlphaNYC's Rainbow Festival in New York. SEND FORTH THY MERCIES was a 35th Anniversary Selection for the 2016 William Inge New Play Festival and was also a Finalist in the 2nd Act Players’ 2016 One-Act Script Competition. It was the Winner of the Emerging Illinois Playwrights Award and was Runner-up in the Eileen Heckart New Drama Competition.

The one-act monologue, EMOTIONAL AFFAIR, was the Winner at Voices 2014 in Liverpool, UK. A children's play -- ANASTASIA AND DRIZELLA (aka "The True Story of Cinderella") -- has been continuously published for over twenty years by Eldridge Publishing and has received hundreds of productions.

Three plays have been scheduled to be published by Adirondack Plays: ONE TIME, SEND FORTH THY MERCIES, and 7 MINUTES TO LIVE, which also won the Editors' Choice Award from over 1,000 submissions.

Richard's full-length screenplay, LOVE AND DAMAGE, was a Finalist for the 2014 Screencraft Screenwriting Fellowship.

Plays

  • One Time by Richard Lyons Conlon
    Cast: 
    2
    ·
    Genre: drama, romantic comedy
    Genre: drama, romantic comedy
    Sometimes it take a lifetime of stories to tell the story of a lifetime.

    Unrequited love, religious epiphanies, posing in the nude, an abusive marriage, and the secret powers of nuns ... these are just some of the stories Sonia and Mason tell each other from their individual lives.

    As the stories unfold -- and the mysteries and tension heighten -- we discover there is so much more...
    Sometimes it take a lifetime of stories to tell the story of a lifetime.

    Unrequited love, religious epiphanies, posing in the nude, an abusive marriage, and the secret powers of nuns ... these are just some of the stories Sonia and Mason tell each other from their individual lives.

    As the stories unfold -- and the mysteries and tension heighten -- we discover there is so much more to Sonia and Mason than at first appears . . . so much more to the stories . . . and so much more to their relationship -- past and present.

    Now, can they complete the story of a common past they once shared more than three decades earlier?
  • The Volitive Effect of Oral Literary Inundation on the LSTM Recurrent Neural Network by Richard Lyons Conlon
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    6–8
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental + 3 more
    ·
    Keyword: artificial intelligence, A.I. + 7 more
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental, parody/spoof, satire, science fiction
    Keyword: artificial intelligence, A.I., literature, creativity, writing, pressure, technological singularity, man vs. machine, writer's block
    "We were curious . . . Six months ago, we began a project in which a small army of volunteers -- students, faculty, community members -- read the world's great works of literature to an LSTM recurrent neural network, whom we've given the name Geoffrey (for Geoffrey Chaucer, of course). And now, after a brief processing period -- a time of creative reflection, if you will -- Geoffrey will produce...
    "We were curious . . . Six months ago, we began a project in which a small army of volunteers -- students, faculty, community members -- read the world's great works of literature to an LSTM recurrent neural network, whom we've given the name Geoffrey (for Geoffrey Chaucer, of course). And now, after a brief processing period -- a time of creative reflection, if you will -- Geoffrey will produce -- create, if you will -- the world's first artificially-generated work of literature. If you will."
  • Intellectual Property by Richard Lyons Conlon
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    5–9
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 1 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, satire
    The main character in Victor Pagán's third novel is a woman whose life unravels due to her uncanny resemblance to Vivien Langford, the world's biggest and sexiest movie star. And now, Victor's life may share a similar fate as he's being sued for invasion of privacy and intellectual property piracy by the star herself. Based on true events.
  • Descanso by Richard Lyons Conlon
    Cast: 
    2
    ·
    Genre: drama, tragedy
    ·
    Keyword: descansos, makeshift memorial + 7 more
    Genre: drama, tragedy
    Keyword: descansos, makeshift memorial, hit-and-run, mother-daughter, grief, victim, guardian angel, helplessness, 2-woman play
    Every evening without fail, Beth appears on Marissa's front lawn to spend time at the makeshift memorial that's been erected there, the exact spot of her daughter's last moments of life after being struck by a hit-and-run driver. The two women have struck up a genuine friendship based on shared tragedy, but now Marissa is looking to move on — and she thinks Beth should do the same. (Formerly titled: Send Forth Thy Mercies.)
  • Falling Into Macy by Richard Lyons Conlon
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: Relationships, marriage + 8 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, experimental
    Keyword: Relationships, marriage, love, connections, intimacy, troubled marriage, carl jung, emotional affair, Sex, workplace relationships
    Fifteen short scenes about the relationships of two (and possibly, three) different couples. One, a long-time married pair who find their union in trouble. The other, two separately married co-workers trying to decide between friendship . . . or more. And then there's Macy, who has a vested interest in the fate of these relationships.
  • 7 Minutes to Live by Richard Lyons Conlon
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 4 more
    ·
    Keyword: twisted, Urban Angst + 4 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, experimental, mystery/thriller, political, satire
    Keyword: twisted, Urban Angst, Brontë, Homeless, conspiracy, thriller. Sex. Violence. Mozart's Laudate Dominum. Young love.
    No metaphor. No joke. Henry Crawford has exactly seven minutes to live and he's dying to tell you all about it.

    The play opens with Henry's voice ringing out of the darkness, asking, "You want to hear something funny?" The lights reveal Henry, looking like hell, nose broken, shirt bloody -- chained to a dumpster in an alley.

    Swinging from belligerent to...
    No metaphor. No joke. Henry Crawford has exactly seven minutes to live and he's dying to tell you all about it.

    The play opens with Henry's voice ringing out of the darkness, asking, "You want to hear something funny?" The lights reveal Henry, looking like hell, nose broken, shirt bloody -- chained to a dumpster in an alley.

    Swinging from belligerent to obsequious, he prepares the audience to hear the whole sad, twisted tale of how he found himself in this predicament.

    His story starts late the night before in his apartment, when he is visited by first, his free-spirit girlfriend, Vanessa, and later, her erratic brother, Luke.

    Vanessa and Luke turn Henry's life upside down with their inscrutable, shifting agendas and a bewildering mix of physical, mental, sexual, and yes -- literary -- intimidation.
  • The Most Hidden Thing by Richard Lyons Conlon
    Cast: 
    8–11
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: dark comedy, satire + 6 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama
    Keyword: dark comedy, satire, quirky, baseball, female protagonist, Big Bang, dark secrets, existential
    Mazy has always hated baseball — it took some arm-twisting by Owen, her on-again, off-again boyfriend, to even get her to go to a game. Getting hit on the head by a foul ball is not likely to change her mind.

    To make things worse, when she comes to, Mazy seems to have developed, in addition to a headache, a very disturbing new talent (“Blessing? Curse? Party trick? I don’t know.”). It seems she...
    Mazy has always hated baseball — it took some arm-twisting by Owen, her on-again, off-again boyfriend, to even get her to go to a game. Getting hit on the head by a foul ball is not likely to change her mind.

    To make things worse, when she comes to, Mazy seems to have developed, in addition to a headache, a very disturbing new talent (“Blessing? Curse? Party trick? I don’t know.”). It seems she can “see” anyone’s deepest, darkest secret, the one single thing no one ever wants to see the light of day. And she has a tendency to blurt it out without thinking.

    Her new talent wreaks havoc in her life and those around her as she tries to figure out why she can do what she can do. She is helped along the way by a mysterious, possibly homeless, guide: Gert.

    Mazy takes the audience into her confidence, breaking out from the action to share her thoughts and feelings with them directly. She comes to believe “something big was in the works . . . that this won’t stop until I see the biggest secret from the biggest individual I could encounter. A secret that would give meaning to everything.”
  • Char's Fucked-up Disaster of a Life by Richard Lyons Conlon
    Cast: 
    2
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: Sisters, lgbt + 7 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama
    Keyword: Sisters, lgbt, sibling rivalry, breaking up, 12 step, unemployed, desperation, Lesbian, bisexual
    Liz's little sister, Char, is well-known for her bad decisions and impulsive behavior. So when Liz returns home to find Char on her couch, she tells herself she's prepared for the worst. But as Char takes her step-by-step through her latest sequence of poor choices, it becomes obvious that she is thinking of Liz as her last hope. But is Liz willing to overlook Char's path of destruction one more time?
  • The Contrition Club by Richard Lyons Conlon
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: wickedly funny, accidental killing + 5 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, satire
    Keyword: wickedly funny, accidental killing, twisted drama, guilt, support group, life-takers, redemption
    They say the hardest thing a parent can ever face is the death of a child. But what about a death caused BY their child? How does a parent face that? The guilt and the shame are in direct conflict with the natural need to support and protect their own child. A wickedly funny drama about second chances, no chances, and last chances.
  • Emotional Affair by Richard Lyons Conlon
    Cast: 
    1
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy
    ·
    Keyword: intimacy, bad breakups + 6 more
    Genre: dark comedy
    Keyword: intimacy, bad breakups, monologue, stream-of-consciousness, stream-of-pee, jealousy, relational manipulation, 10-minute dark comedy
    While taking a home pregnancy test, thirty-something Brenda sorts through the debris of her extremely close relationship with co-worker William — a relationship that, despite its being "simply" a non-sexual, "emotional affair", ended very, very badly.

    During an emotional roller-coaster of a monologue, we learn about her dysfunctional relationship with her mother, her loveless...
    While taking a home pregnancy test, thirty-something Brenda sorts through the debris of her extremely close relationship with co-worker William — a relationship that, despite its being "simply" a non-sexual, "emotional affair", ended very, very badly.

    During an emotional roller-coaster of a monologue, we learn about her dysfunctional relationship with her mother, her loveless marriage to Phillip ("I can sum up his idea of intimacy in two words: Internet porn."), the deep bond she once shared with William ("All we had was the tawdry sharing of our deepest, most intimate thoughts, feelings, and longings."), and what ultimately lead to the end.