Ned Dougherty

***2024 Semifinalist for the O'Neill***
NYC reading produced by The Playwrights Workshop @ Alchemical Studios, 2023

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.

***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.

****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.

**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.

***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.

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.

***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.

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.

**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?

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.

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.