Patricia Connelly

Patricia Connelly

Patricia Connelly is an award-winning playwright and director, founder of Thelma Theatre, and founding member of Pipeline Playwrights. Her plays have been presented at the Kennedy Center’s Page-to-Stage Festival and have been produced in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and New Mexico. Her play, The Penny or the Stone,won the Robert Bone Memorial Playwriting Award at the Dallas Theatre Center. Other full-length...
Patricia Connelly is an award-winning playwright and director, founder of Thelma Theatre, and founding member of Pipeline Playwrights. Her plays have been presented at the Kennedy Center’s Page-to-Stage Festival and have been produced in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and New Mexico. Her play, The Penny or the Stone,won the Robert Bone Memorial Playwriting Award at the Dallas Theatre Center. Other full-length plays include: What Happens in This Town, All the Sins of My Past Life, Harriet, Night Sky, and Princess Margaret which premiered as part of the D.C. Women’s Voices Theater Festival in 2015. She has taught playwriting and theater and produced new play festivals at the University of New Mexico. She has a MA degree in Theater from the University of New Mexico and has an MFA in Creative Writing (Playwriting) from Goddard College. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Playwrights Forum of Washington, D.C.

Plays

  • Around the Snake Turn
    Kwame and Baaba, husband and wife, have barely finished celebrating their son’s scholarship when he is accused of raping a girl who is now pregnant. Their son, Yoofi, denies the charge. Once the complaint is made to the local priest — the village leader and arbiter of justice — nobody can prevent him from placing a curse on the extended family in accordance with the centuries-old practice known as trokosi. The...
    Kwame and Baaba, husband and wife, have barely finished celebrating their son’s scholarship when he is accused of raping a girl who is now pregnant. Their son, Yoofi, denies the charge. Once the complaint is made to the local priest — the village leader and arbiter of justice — nobody can prevent him from placing a curse on the extended family in accordance with the centuries-old practice known as trokosi. The belief is that the curse will bring continual tragedy to the offender’s family, until the family atones by offering a young virgin girl to serve as a “wife to the gods.” In reality, the young girls become sex slaves to the priest. Realizing her 10-year-old daughter, Aku, is at risk to be named to serve, Baaba challenges the accusation and searches for a way around the curse. Kwame and the extended family want Yoofi to marry his accuser so her family will withdraw the accusation. Baaba, however, is unwilling to accept this solution because there is no guarantee the priest will remove the curse and they will have sacrificed Yoofi’s future for nothing. Baaba puts herself at risk to confront the priest and get help outside of the tribal community. In the end, as Baaba pits herself against family, religion, and tradition, she must decide how far she will go to save her daughter.
  • Princess Margaret
    It’s 1969 in upstate New York, and eleven-year-old Margaret has been caught stealing milk from the local convent. Sister Anastasia takes pity on the impoverished girl, and admits her to the school. Sister Helen, a newcomer to the school with a dark past of her own, treats Margaret harshly, and takes great exception to Margaret being chosen to represent the school. Anastasia witnesses Helen’s shocking...
    It’s 1969 in upstate New York, and eleven-year-old Margaret has been caught stealing milk from the local convent. Sister Anastasia takes pity on the impoverished girl, and admits her to the school. Sister Helen, a newcomer to the school with a dark past of her own, treats Margaret harshly, and takes great exception to Margaret being chosen to represent the school. Anastasia witnesses Helen’s shocking humiliation of Margaret, and Anastasia is forced to acknowledge her own role in hiding Sister Helen’s objectionable teaching record. As tensions in the school and community flare, Anastasia must decide whether to look the other way or take action and risk losing the school she has built.