Suzanne Trauth

Astrophysicist Dr. Stella loves her work at the planetarium’s science education program—teaching young students about the laws of the universe in fun and practical ways. Sharing her love of the stars and black holes. However, a health crisis forces her to face her past, including her responsibility for the child she left behind years ago to further her career. Life for Stella and her wife Bree gets complicated when that abandoned child is hired as a visiting professor in environmental education. Coming face-to-face with her daughter Zoe is both heart-rending and exciting: an opportunity to mentor a rising star in her field and to make up for the sins of her past.
But neither Bree nor Zoe is eager for Stella to pursue her agenda. Zoe refuses Stella’s mentorship—her childhood has left a residue of bitterness and hostility—and Bree is desperate to keep the stress out of their lives. Zoe’s arrival will impact their son Jett, a high school senior obsessed with football who needs to get serious about college applications.
When Stella invites Zoe to a family dinner and a friendly argument between Stella and Zoe, about the importance of studying the universe versus tackling environmental challenges, escalates, Zoe discovers Stella’s role in her appointment at the university. The truth is revealed: Zoe and Jett are stepsiblings. Bree forces Stella to confront the ugly truth: Stella runs away when she can’t face reality. Life on earth can be challenging for her. Keeping her head in the stars is more comfortable and fulfilling.
Driven by her deteriorating health, Stella retires from her job to pave the way for Zoe to assume her position as a science educator. Zoe is irate at this second attempt to run her life by the mother who abandoned her and confronts Stella in a heated argument. Stella acknowledges her guilt and the mistakes she made in the past, refusing to run away this time. But the effort has left her vulnerable, near to collapsing, as she confesses the state of her health to Zoe.
Weeks later, Stella convalesces at home, sitting with Jett in her backyard waiting for a meteor shower. When Zoe appears to say good bye—her stint at the university is over—there is a personal détente between them, though professionally each acknowledges the other’s brilliance as they agree to “let the best woman win.” The meteor shower starts, Stella recognizing that, indeed, it is a beginning.

Steve Ortley grapples with his grandfather’s legacy and the decision he made in 1945 that will haunt him and his family forever. As he stands at his grandfather’s gravesite, Steve is transported back in time to the bar of the La Fonda Hotel, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, thirty miles from Los Alamos. People from the town meet to drink, gossip, and trade theories about the activity on the Hill, where the scientists of the Manhattan Project are developing the atom bomb. But sometimes over drinks at the hotel bar, false information about the Manhattan Project is leaked to mislead suspicious locals and Soviet infiltrators, who cultivate workers on the Hill to trade information for money, or because they are sympathetic to the Communist cause. It is a moment in history when many in this desert town have secrets. Who can be trusted? The bartender? The traveling businessman? The German-born operator of a rooming house? In the midst of the secrecy, Steve’s grandfather, a young Los Alamos engineer, falls in love and, torn by a battle between his patriotism and his conscience, confronts a future that threatens his family.

Françoise Bollinger is eighty and ill, with only a short time to live. Confronted with her mortality, she is frightened to die with a terrible sin on her conscience. While grappling with her past to find forgiveness for her actions, she relives the summer of 1944 in Nice, France. Françoise remembers studying dance with one of Isadora Duncan’s protégées, falling in love with Christian, a young German soldier, sharing his passion for the poetry of Rilke and sharing her passion for dance. Françoise also remembers Pierre, the owner of the bakery where she worked, and his offer of marriage.
When Françoise spurns Pierre’s offer and Christian moves north with the German army as the Allies enter the south of France, she is left vulnerable and pregnant. Accused of “horizontal collaboration,” she is punished, tried for her crime, and sentenced to three years in jail. Pierre visits Françoise in the prison, rapes her, and offers to secure her release if she marries him. A terrified Françoise acquiesces and convinces Pierre that the baby is his, but when the infant is a month old, she escapes and runs away. Once in Paris she sells her baby to an orphanage for clothes and food to impress a lonely American soldier, and accompanies him home to New Jersey. She puts her past and passion away.
Now sixty years later, with terminal cancer, she faces the end of her life and confronts the actions of her past. Françoise conjures up Christian, Pierre, Isadora Duncan, and a younger version of herself, struggling to navigate between the two worlds of past and present. A compassionate doctor, who is facing his own demons, and a troubled granddaughter, experiencing first time love and an abusive relationship, are her companions as she searches for the redemption she needs before dying.

In the summer of 1991, Charlotte Cranford travels to the Soviet Union to direct a production of A Streetcar Named Desire with a Ukrainian cast as part of a cultural exchange. The first obstacle appears immediately: she doesn’t understand what the cast is saying because the translation is in Russian, but she’s pretty certain the play has taken on a whole new level of meaning when the actors see Stanley as a hero and Blanche as a powerful, bullying woman. The cultural barriers complicate life as the show moves slowly toward production and Charlotte becomes a publicity tool for the theatre, forced to cancel rehearsal to accommodate local politics. And the theatre’s black market business. Most importantly, the vote on the Union Treaty that might establish the Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union is immanent and the members of the Kiev Theatre must decide their future. Meanwhile, Charlotte unexpectedly finds herself in a love triangle with the theatre’s leading man and woman, who play Stanley and Blanche. Days before the show opens, she makes life-altering decisions as she becomes enmeshed in the military coup that toppled the Soviet Union and changed the Cold War forever. Rehearsing A Streetcar Named Desire is a political as well as an artistic challenge, one that compels Charlotte to re-imagine what she truly desires as an American in the Ukraine in the midst of political turmoil. The show goes on…just not in the way that Charlotte has anticipated.

In Goodenough, Kansas, where the Prozacco family lives, three sisters and a brother own the town’s garage. Olive, practical and down-to-earth, is the mechanic who repairs tractors and threshers and runs the Under the Hood shop. Her sisters are little help. Mandy, supposedly the family accountant, can’t seem to get up off the sofa. She’s lifeless, withdrawn, and moody, in love with Victor, a Latino migrant farmworker who would rather be spouting philosophy than toiling in the fields. It doesn’t help that Mandy is a puppet… Izzy, perky, emotional, and a little ditsy, spends her time dancing rather than working in the shop. All three are counting the days—by paying off the family debts—until they can return to Wichita, their birthplace and object of their constant desire. Older brother Axle, an aspiring hip-hop artist, returns from his latest road gig to celebrate Izzy’s birthday, with plans to mortgage the garage to pay for a new van and an engagement ring for the town hooker. But in the midst of a tornado, Olive concocts a scheme to prevent Axle from destroying the sisters’ Wichita plans by forcing the Prozacco family to, finally, take action and save their dreams. There’s no place like home!

It is the summer of 1913, at Viareggio, Italy, and Eleonora Duse, foremost actress of her day, has invited Isadora Duncan, foremost dancer of her time, to recuperate following the deaths of Isadora’s two children five months earlier. Eleonora has entered into a self-imposed retirement at the villa, Isadora has come to Viareggio to escape her grief. They slip back and forth from 1913 to 1903, as they relive their past together. They accuse each other of not understanding each one’s pain, they embrace each other as mothers, artists, lovers. Eleonora knows Isadora cannot heal without confronting the deaths of her children. She compels Isadora to use her body to narrate the day of the accident. Isadora survives the retelling and turns a corner: it is an intimate moment of deep love and hope. But when Isadora becomes pregnant by a local sculptor, Eleonora, jealous and furious, is sorry she has brought Isadora back to life. Grateful for Eleonora’s love and friendship, Isadora departs Viareggio, leaving behind a parting gift: she dances. It is a dance of release—desperation, the pain of their separation, the eventual loss of her child. Eleonora weeps, weary and ill. They age.

Katrina: the K Word, based on interviews conducted with New Orleans’ residents in 2007, is inspired by true stories of individuals facing one of America’s most challenging crises. Both tragically heartbreaking and poignantly uplifting, Katrina: the K Word chronicles the journeys of New Orleans’ residents whose lives are forever changed. Some choose to wait out the storm; some can’t get out. Some create a new life elsewhere, while others return to help rebuild a broken city.

In iDream, three girls, Khadi, Theresa, and Amanda, are high school students confronting an uncertain future: whether or not to go to college and if they decide to, how to make that happen. They are encouraged by Ms. D, the dynamic teacher of their Digital Design course, to explore the male dominated field of computer technology—Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Information Science. In so doing, they begin to discover their places in the world while they struggle with the obstacles—personal, familial, and academic—that might prevent them from following their dreams. Art and science converge in this highly topical exploration of career opportunities in the twenty-first century.