In the summer of 1863, Frederick Douglass has had enough. Moved in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation to actively recruit colored troops into the Union Army, he has seen nothing but broken promises: unequal pay, no commissions, and--worst of all--no retaliation for the brutalization of black prisoners. All of which he blames on the “tardy, hesitating, vacillating policies” of Abraham Lincoln--who, far from being “the great emancipator”, seems to be merely another disappointing politician, ready to compromise at every turn. Unwilling to recruit a single black soldier more, but understanding that the future of African-Americans hangs in the balance, Douglass travels to Washington, to make one last attempt to have his grievances reconciled. First at the War Department and then--arriving without an invitation--at the White House...

Based on the two documented meetings between Lincoln and Douglass, “Necessary Sacrifices” looks at two leaders in a time of crisis--both of whom grapple with the problems of leadership in a democracy, problems compounded by war, race, and the politics of an election year. Who begin by misunderstanding pointed rhetoric as inflexibility, and abundant humor and a folksy style as weakness--and come to realize not just the truth about the other, but how much they need each other. Who must move beyond differences in position and personality if they are to keep the wounds of slavery and civil war from damaging their country for all time. And who, in the process, ultimately discover the basis for something neither expected: friendship.

Based on a true story. In 1863, after an attempt on the life of the mayor of Warsaw, the occupying Russian Army responds by sacking a building used by Polish rebels. The building contains the late Frederic Chopin's apartment, housing a number of his mementos. Also, his piano. The soldiers are ordered to destroy everything, including the piano--now a symbol of the inconvenience of art and culture when power is at stake. A short play for our time.

When a young playwright is rejected for production by a local professional theatre, she confronts the theatre's artistic leadership--first on her own, then with her lawyer. The encounters result in a darkly comic look at commerce, criticism, gender imbalance, and the choices we may be compelled to make for art's sake.

A long-time story analyst for a film production company hits his forties--and they hit back. The one-daughter nest empties out, leaving him lonelier than he’d anticipated. His college-professor wife can finally pursue the opportunities she’s put on hold for years to support his screenwriting aspirations, straining their marriage. And the one film script he’s actually sold is put into turnaround. Even his musician friend is a reminder of how life ought to be--he’s celebrating his own vitality with a new album and by marrying his longtime girlfriend. Desperate to find some creative project, the writer buys a box of books at a local garage sale, hoping to find an overlooked work that would make a smash hit film. What he finds instead is a misplaced diary, years old, written by a young woman whose scribbled story of coming to L.A., finding love, confronting an unwanted pregnancy and enduring the father’s desertion, hooks him. And then obsesses him--as the woman increasingly becomes as real as he needs and wants her to be. Until all she wrote spills over into his own work, friendships, and most of all marriage, and he discovers that no-one is who he thought they were..

20 years later, and Katharine and Petruchio find themselves in divorce court--ordered by the judge to make one last effort to reconcile. Verily, truths are told about who hath grown, and who hath not...

Late 1930s, and a fragile young woman in a St. Louis apartment, sitting amid a wreckage of glass, writes to her brother--who has traveled much farther than the moon--about recent family events which might make it possible for him to come home at last...

Adapted from the book by Kenneth Grahame, with music and lyrics by Grammy-winning composer Michael Silversher. Originally commissioned and produced by South Coast Repertory. It's good. :-)

Adapted from the young adult novel by Lois Lowry. Music and lyrics by Michael Silversher and Joy Sikorski. In this companion story to Lowry's Newbery-Award winning novel "The Giver", Kira, a disabled teenager, has been orphaned in a future world that condemns its wounded and old to die. But Kira has a gift: the art of weaving and dyeing, not just learned from her mother but inherent in a way even she doesn't fully understand. When a magistrate who recognizes her skill rescues her, Kira is given a task: first, to mend the Robe used in the Singing of the Song, an annual ritual that recounts the calamities and despair of the world. And then, to weave the Future. With the help of Annabella, an aged bearer of wisdom, Kira learns the deeper secrets both of her craft--including the secret of the long-lost color, blue--and of her task. Which, she comes to realize, involves creating not the world she imagines but the one dictated to her, where her community will be kept under control through the constant evocation of fear. Alongside Thomas, a carver, Matt, a young friend, and Jo, a singer-in-training, Kira explores both the truth of her world and her place in it--until the arrival of Christopher, a blind man, forces her to choose between fleeing to save herself, or staying and trying to save her community. If art is a key to salvation, who will make it? If blue is the color of hope, who will weave it?

With music and lyrics by Grammy-winning composer Michael Silversher. Fishy business on the ocean floor, as pollution threatens to ruin sea-life ranging from the very-down and out denizens of The Tidewashed Inn to the vocally-wrecked cast of American Tidal. Can famed undersea detective Coral Reef find the source of the disaster before it's too late? A film noir take on ocean ecology and conservation, with more puns than you can handle...

With music and lyrics by Grammy-winning composer Michael Silversher. This play employs masks and slapstick characters from commedia dell'arte drama to confront - with remarkable frankness - children's cruelty over racial differences. Rejected because his face mask is different, a boy runs away on an imaginary journey--meeting colorfully hip variations on characters from commedia dell'arte. A play about looking beyond exteriors, and being comfortable with who you are. The music is a bit of funk and a lot of pop rock, full of spiky, splendid lyrics.

1905. Legendary Shakespearean actress Helena Modjeska has given up the stage and retired with her husband to an isolated canyon in Southern California. She is visited by her friend and fellow Polish expatriate Jan Paderewski, the famous pianist, who demands that she not retire--or at least not without giving one final farewell performance, which he will arrange. In New York, preparing for her farewell, she's approached by a booking agent who promises her a great deal of money, and a future of sorts, if she'll boil her classic art down to a vaudeville act. After all, it's been a success for Modjeska's friend and tribute performer, James O'Neill....A gentle and humorous look at what it means to endure in the arts--or try to...