Elizabeth Archer

Tiffany has just moved home to live with her mom, Sharon; Sharon just lost her job and boyfriend (and possibly her grip on reality?) In a last-ditch effort to get her journalism career (lol) off the ground, Tiffany decides to make a podcast (double lol) about working as a Contract Content Moderator for Facebook. As Tiff delves deep into the chaos and despair of online and offline life, Sharon becomes increasingly shut-in, only watching "her YouTube programs" and gearing up for the coming end-times war.

Note: This play was developed by Shakespeare Festival St. Louis (Tom Ridgely Producing Artistic Director)
as part of its 2020 Confluence Regional Writers Project (Nancy Bell, Director.)

Anna is 29 and on the brink of a new decade of her life. She needs to do one thing before she turns 30, but the fallout from that event is life-altering. A bacchanalian hero's journey that involves mysterious ceremonies, a "bachelorette party in human form," and shortening.

One evening, Lucy’s mother discovers her masturbating to Playgirls. Horrified by Lucy’s sexual, wild behavior, Lucy’s parents “re-home” her in their lab at a local university. There, her father tries to direct her attention toward male chimps and away from human men, but Lucy is intent on finding a man to love her. Fortunately, Lucy’s human sister Heather –furious at her parents’ behavior– sneaks into the lab and helps Lucy escape.

Free from the lab and all alone in the world, Lucy searches for love and employment across America. In 2018, a middle-aged Lucy finds work as a cam girl for a fetish site. After a rough start, she gains a massive following of patrons and becomes the highest earner. Having found a place where she fits in and receives the male attention she has always craved, Lucy is finally happy. One of her most avid patrons –Manny– eventually proposes to her, and against her co-workers’ warnings, Lucy leaves her job to marry him.

The marriage is happy but short-lived, as Lucy’s new mother-in-law forces Manny to send her to a chimp sanctuary in the Gambia. They send her to their secluded island to live out the rest of her life alongside other former lab chimps.

NOTE: Lucy Loves Boys is based on the true story of Lucy, a chimpanzee raised as a girl as a part of a 1970s linguistics study by an American family.

The women of Athens –led by Polly, urged on by Athena- are sick of not having a voice in politics, and are desperate to save their city from the incompetent, corrupt men running her into the ground. Polly leads them all to an assembly dressed as men, where they vote to give all power to Athens’ women. Under this new rule, the women strive to create an equal society, but (big surprise) some Athenian men aren't thrilled with these changes.

Due to the onset of preeclampsia, May –an eight-months pregnant neurosurgeon– has been placed on bed rest and ordered to ‘do less.’ Her husband Sam juggles his career with keeping his workaholic wife from sneaking into work or making covert phone calls to her staff. He also tries to keep his well-meaning-but-nosy mother BRENDA from making surprise visits. But, as May’s condition worsens, she begins receiving disturbing anonymous emails about Sam and his online activities, which he claims are linked to his controversial articles and research methods. Soon, the truth behind the emails is revealed, plunging Sam and May into a nightmarish world of online vigilantism, articulate fetuses, and legal drama.

Ape Leader is a play based on an old English belief that, upon dying, spinsters would spend eternity leading apes into hell. The play follows the journey of Enid, a 21st-century spinster ape-leader faced with a dilemma when her unrequited earthly love arrives in the underworld for her to lead to eternal damnation (in this underworld, humans qualify as apes). Enid’s strange and sweet cohort of fellow ape leaders from different continents and periods helps and hinders her journey, but she alone must decide her fate in the afterlife.

Twelve-year-old Cleopatra ‘Patty’ Taylor and her older sister Guinevere have lived with their grandmother, Helen, for the last few years as their mother, Venus, was in jail for having an affair with one of her students. Now that Venus is out of jail, the four Taylor women live together in an uneasy peace at Helen’s house. Venus discovers that her ‘baby’ Patty has ‘become a woman’ in every sense of the word, which means that Patty must partake in a ‘Tent Party’ per the Taylor family’s longstanding tradition. As party preparations unfold, a neighborhood girl goes missing, and Venus’ long-absent sister Antoinette arrives for a visit, both events effectively unbalancing the house and its residents. Each of the Taylor women struggles to keep their desires and demons in check while fighting off ghosts from their pasts and the persistent advances of suitors and stalkers who lurk outside the house day and night. The day of Patty’s party brings chaos and heartbreak, forcing the Taylor women to figure out how to keep their family and themselves together.

V+R Forever chronicles the trials and tribulations of Vaclav Nijinsky –a gay ballet dancer- whose desire to be himself and live the life he wants to puts him directly at odds with the strict laws and social norms of the early 1900s. The story follows a young Hungarian woman, Romola de Pulszky, as she pursues Nijinsky on the Ballet Russe’s ocean voyage to South America in 1913. The play examines the strange, largely unexplained marriage between de Pulszky and Nijinsky through historical and fictional characters while also exploring themes of love, taboos, and obsession.

He and She have come to the end of their relationship, but they need to correct their biggest mistake before either can move on.