Ned Dougherty

Ned Dougherty

Ned Dougherty is a playwright, screenwriter, and poet living in Appalachia. His plays have been featured in theatre festivals from Dublin to Albuquerque and independently produced in his previous home of Taos, New Mexico. He has received a commission from the Greenbrier Valley Theatre to develop new plays for elementary and middle schools across West Virginia and his writing has been supported by ForgeNYC,...
Ned Dougherty is a playwright, screenwriter, and poet living in Appalachia. His plays have been featured in theatre festivals from Dublin to Albuquerque and independently produced in his previous home of Taos, New Mexico. He has received a commission from the Greenbrier Valley Theatre to develop new plays for elementary and middle schools across West Virginia and his writing has been supported by ForgeNYC, SOMOS, the Taos Center for the Arts and Josh Wilder’s Playwrights Workshop. He is a member of the Tamarack Foundation for the Arts and former faculty for the Taos Writers Conference. He was named the New Mexico Charter School Teacher of the Year in 2015 and has presented at numerous national education conferences with students showcasing their own work. He is currently teaching at-risk high school youth in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. MFA: Augsburg University, 2019.

Plays

  • Blue Reunion by Ned Dougherty
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: drama, movement/physical + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: American football, horror + 8 more
    Genre: drama, movement/physical, mystery/thriller, political
    Keyword: American football, horror, crisis of masculinity, fight choreography, abuse survival, anger and PTSD, Aging athletes, boys in sports, drinking problems, middle age
    **Received professional reading produced by The Playwrights Workshop @ Alchemical Studios in NYC**

    Haunted by their complicated senior season twenty years ago, a football team meets again behind the bleachers of their alma mater desperate to find out whether winning-at-all-costs has the power to cure anything at all.

    Blue Reunion is a 21st Century riff on Buried Child in a Friday...
    **Received professional reading produced by The Playwrights Workshop @ Alchemical Studios in NYC**

    Haunted by their complicated senior season twenty years ago, a football team meets again behind the bleachers of their alma mater desperate to find out whether winning-at-all-costs has the power to cure anything at all.

    Blue Reunion is a 21st Century riff on Buried Child in a Friday Night Lights rural Pennsylvania setting.
  • Purgatory Intermediate Room by Ned Dougherty
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: after death, purgatory + 6 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, faith-based
    Keyword: after death, purgatory, classroom, Students and Teachers, creative writing, non-binary roles, high school teachers in crisis, existential comedy
    ***2022 NEWvember Festival of New Plays Selection, AboutFACE Theatre Dublin, Ireland***

    All dead and locked in Purgatory, four creative writing students must determine whether they should drop out or pursue the great promise of graduation.
  • Telemachus Unbound: A New Myth for Masculinity by Ned Dougherty
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: contemporary myth, Toxic Masculinity + 5 more
    Genre: comedy, drama, young audiences
    Keyword: contemporary myth, Toxic Masculinity, crisis of masculinity, definitions of masculinity, Odysseus, a war story, America
    ****NEWvember Festival of New Plays Dublin****

    Set at Camp Olympus and the various dream states / flashbacks of Telemachus' memory, Telemachus Unbound is the new myth of a young man trying to transcend his destinies of toxic masculinity, violence and fear. Telemachus has waited his whole life to meet his father, but Odysseus only returns to Ithaca for 40 days before giving up on his domestic...
    ****NEWvember Festival of New Plays Dublin****

    Set at Camp Olympus and the various dream states / flashbacks of Telemachus' memory, Telemachus Unbound is the new myth of a young man trying to transcend his destinies of toxic masculinity, violence and fear. Telemachus has waited his whole life to meet his father, but Odysseus only returns to Ithaca for 40 days before giving up on his domestic life with Penelope and his son. This development troubles the Gods because their job was to provide Odysseus with the challenge, wisdom and perspective to understand the value of his life. So Athena and Poseidon are forced to join Telemachus at Camp Olympus for Those Who Aspire to Be Men to develop a new way of teaching the future men of our society.
  • The Giant Desk Plays by Ned Dougherty
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    3–4
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 4 more
    ·
    Keyword: blue collar, Working + 3 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, experimental, political, satire
    Keyword: blue collar, Working, working class, existential questioning, Existential Absurdism
    **Workshop production at Taos Center for the Arts**

    In the orbit of a giant desk, seven vignettes offer a glimpse into the many meanings of American work.
  • Some Park by Ned Dougherty
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: american satire
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, political, satire
    Keyword: american satire
    ***Semifinalist for B Street Theater's 2nd Annual New Comedies Festival***
    A full-length satire of community in two acts, Some Park offers a glimpse into all the SNAFUs of community building and civic beautification projects. Actors play multiple roles.
  • The Tisdale Family Garage - an Escape Room Play by Ned Dougherty
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 3 more
    ·
    Keyword: Escape Room, a marriage in crisis + 7 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, experimental, science fiction
    Keyword: Escape Room, a marriage in crisis, family ghosts, Haunted House, dreams and drugs, dinner party, garage, divorce, midlife crisis
    Tina and Glen think they've had it with their marriage - and their damned garage that Glen is refurbishing into an Air Bnb apartment. But after a crazy dinner party during an energy-related state of emergency, Tina and Glen get stuck in that garage and can't get out. Their marriage is an escape room and they'll need the ghosts of their past and future to figure out what's next.
  • Good Blood by Ned Dougherty
    Cast: 
    6–7
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: family, funeral + 1 more
    Genre: comedy, drama, faith-based
    Keyword: family, funeral, religion
    ***Chosen for 2021 Roadrunner NM Theatre Festival***


    A full length play in one continuous act, Good Blood is the story of one family trying to figure out what to do now that the family matriarch has passed away. Taking place over one conversation, the seven siblings bicker and rejoice over the life of their mother and wonder what's next for their father. Unmoored, undeterred, the family must move on.
  • The Microjoys of Teaching by Ned Dougherty
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: dark comedy, bad teacher + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, tragedy
    Keyword: dark comedy, bad teacher, education, Drugs, high school teachers in crisis, teachers' lounge
    Set in the chaotic inertia of a failing American high school, The Microjoys of Teaching is an existential tragicomedy about a depressed teacher in the long dark middle of his career who discovers micro-dosing drugs might not only be the solution for his own mental health issues but could be what sets his fellow teachers free as well. To save their school, this teacher comically subverts the idea of a drug-free...
    Set in the chaotic inertia of a failing American high school, The Microjoys of Teaching is an existential tragicomedy about a depressed teacher in the long dark middle of his career who discovers micro-dosing drugs might not only be the solution for his own mental health issues but could be what sets his fellow teachers free as well. To save their school, this teacher comically subverts the idea of a drug-free school zone. As they begin to witness their own depression lift and the improving efficacy of their classroom, this teacher decides to change the entire school culture…by micro-dosing their colleagues. I’ve never met a teacher who wouldn’t scarf a free donut in the staff lounge between classes. And with a backstory of loving Joy of Cooking, this teacher whips up the low-level-LSD-laced pineapple candies needed to really kickstart an algebra class…but one can only walk that line and get away with it for so long.
  • Escape Plans by Ned Dougherty
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: suicide, kitchen + 3 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: suicide, kitchen, family, rural, teenagers
    **Workshop Production with Metta Theatre, Taos NM**

    Colin reluctantly returns to the house where he grew up in an attempt to help his niece after her attempt to take her own life. Confronting his father's suicide as well, everything about the life Colin has avoided now challenges his every move. Can he save his niece from another attempt? Or perhaps will she save him from his own oblivion?
  • What We Add to the Water by Ned Dougherty
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: family, parenthood + 2 more
    Genre: comedy, drama
    Keyword: family, parenthood, Down's Syndrome, Arthur Miller
    Tim, a young man with Down syndrome, is trying to find his father. He works at Pete's Cafe where business is slow and the budget is tight. A local teacher, expecting his first child, enters this world and learns about fear, compassion and opportunity from the tiny world of the cafe.

    This play is inspired by the life of Daniel Miller, son of playwright Arthur Miller. Daniel lives with Down...
    Tim, a young man with Down syndrome, is trying to find his father. He works at Pete's Cafe where business is slow and the budget is tight. A local teacher, expecting his first child, enters this world and learns about fear, compassion and opportunity from the tiny world of the cafe.

    This play is inspired by the life of Daniel Miller, son of playwright Arthur Miller. Daniel lives with Down syndrome, but was never publicly acknowledged by his father.
  • I Took Up Running by Ned Dougherty
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: education, high school + 1 more
    Genre: comedy, drama
    Keyword: education, high school, teenagers
    A play in two semesters, I Took Up Running is a glimpse into life in an American High School. Ms. Jones, a scrappy first year teacher, does well to reach her students, but rocks the boat with her unorthodox approach. A play that utilizes both staff and student voices, ITUR captures what it really means to make an impact on young people and how that challenge can be monumental.