Donna Spector

Caroline and Henry are discussing the behavior of Pale Male and Lola, two famous hawks, over dinner in a Manhattan café. The question of whether Pale Male is faithful to Lola arises. Caroline insists the hawks mate for life, but Henry disagrees, a bit too intensely. Their conversation is overheard and interrupted by Frank, Melissa and their daughter Shana at a nearby table, as it becomes clear that Henry has been having sex with his students, and in the ensuing vociferous argument, the women are triumphant.

Sita, a 19-year-old member of the Hare Krishna sect, has been given a mission by her guru: She must save the soul of one homeless person. Sita goes to Gladys Park, where homeless people live in downtown Los Angeles. She chooses Dolores, a disturbed older woman whose photo she has seen in the Los Angeles Times after the park was raided by the Salvation Army to clean up the city for the 1984 summer Olympics. At first Dolores rejects Sita’s efforts to save her, but Sita, who identifies Dolores with the mother she lost, is persistent. “Tell me one thing I can do for you,” she pleads. Finally, Dolores convinces Sita to walk with her into a fire to burn her troubles away.

Madame Anastasia, a fortune teller in Manhattan’s West Village, encounters problems when her critical and demanding Ghost Mother emerges from a crystal ball and interferes with Anastasia’s attempts to tell Monique, a young actress, what the future holds for her. Then Paul, a journalist, enters and falls in love with Monique, as predicted rather irascibly by Anastasia’s mother.

Mark Fanberg comes to the Bureau of Short-Term Affairs in Manhattan because, like all their clients, he is afraid of commitment and wants a limited, no-strings-attached affair with someone so wrong for him that he will immediately be attracted. When Denise Delaney interviews him, they dislike each other so much that they fall in love and begin what they insist is just another short-term affair.

The play is a comedy about parents who raise their children to be geniuses and the unexpected results of this rigorous conditioning. At the age of seven, Kimberly—who already has an agent--is writing a novel based on Dante’s Inferno. Her twin, Kevin, is constructing a TV set that will emit tactile sensations. Both children are planning to compete for a $100,000. Prodigy Prize for a work of genius by a fifteen-year-old in science or the arts. But when, at fourteen, they are completing their first year at Harvard, the twins begin to behave in ways that upset their parents’ carefully-laid plans for them.

LIFE LINES is about ELIZABETH SCHULMAN, a doctor at a Northern California abortion clinic, who is forced to reevaluate her life’s work as a result of increasingly violent attacks by militant right-wing Christian groups. Because of an illegal abortion in Tijuana when she was fourteen that made it impossible for her to bear children, ELIZABETH becomes emotionally engaged with AMANDA, a fourteen-year-old who comes to the clinic with her sister SHIRLEY for an abortion. ELIZABETH also becomes involved with an informant who calls himself CLARK HENNESSEY. As a former member of a right-wing Christian group, CLARK provides ELIZABETH with inside information about the group’s plans to destroy her clinic. At first suspicious, Elizabeth gradually believes Clark and follows his suggestions, with fatal results.

Set in the context of the USA Patriot Act, UNFORGIVABLE ACT is a play about personal betrayals that have wider socio-political consequences. The play focuses on ALMA DAVIS, whose love for a man causes her to betray both her good friend and her own deepest principles. When ALMA, a librarian in upstate New York, becomes involved with LEN FRANKLIN, a dynamic, left-wing history professor, her insular, tightly-knit life begins to unravel. As she follows her feelings, the impulsive choices she makes will damage the lives of all three people forever.

In this 70-minute comedy-drama ANNE and MARIE, two New York City actresses, rehearse a folk play about two older women from the Caucasus Mountains. When they become enmeshed with their characters, they are literally "caught in the act," as they turn into older women who have the same concerns and fears as their younger selves—the longing for love, fear of commitment, lack of trust in others and in their own judgments,

Two teenage girls look at dating sites on the internet to research the question “What has happened to the American family” for their history class. Believing that adults are incapable of real love, the girls find four intriguing ads for people who seem to come alive. As they become involved with the adults, the teenagers discover that vulnerability and the longing for love know no age limits.

Set in Paradise, Kentucky, ANOTHER PARADISE is a memory play, narrated by Birdie Mae Tyler and her daughter Neva, both on a journey of self-discovery. The play's action, called forth by these women's narratives, runs from Birdie Mae's marriage to Hiram Tyler in 1903 to Neva's marriage to Aaron Greenberg in 1924.

Although the events which Birdie Mae and Neva describe are the same, their points-of-view throughout the play are conflicting. Birdie Mae tells a simple, honest story of her difficult marriage and family life in backwoods Kentucky. Neva, a would-be writer and early feminist who is ashamed of her background, embroiders her story, making oral
tradition into "elegant literature."

Proud, isolated, fierce mountain dwellers, the people of Crete and the people of Appalachia have
much in common. Although the invasions of Crete have occurred many times over the centuries A comedy/drama about the meeting of these two cultures, NOT FOR THE FERRYMAN is a love story that takes place in a nursing home in the Catskill Mountains of New York. It is here that two older women, THEA TOMADAKIS and ORIAH PEABODY meet, and as their friendship develops, so does the unexpected love between THEA's son NIKOS and ORIAH's granddaughter TROUT. Interwoven through the real time and place of this story are the folktales of these two cultures. Each folktale—a journey of the living to the land of the dead--springs from the psyche of one of the characters. TROUT and NIKOS fall in love in the folktales before they fall in love in our time. Cretan lyre and Appalachian fiddle music is used throughout the play.

In this full-length comedy-drama five older women try a communal living experiment—before they are too old to make such decisions—as an alternative to ending their lives in nursing homes or burdening their families. Disparate types, they experience the difficulties of adjusting their daily living patterns and their views of life and death in order to be compatible with each other. Some of these “adjustments” naturally generate humor, while others take a more serious turn, but ultimately they learn to care for one another in this “dance” near the close of their lives.

How much, exactly, are our words worth? How can we know when they’re true? In Donna Spector’s jazzy comedy, STRIP TALK ON THE BOULEVARD, winner of the James Sunwall Comedy Prize, Marty, an English teacher, meets Sally a high school dropout, at a drugstore on Hollywood Boulevard, where Morgan, a musician and Sally’s word dealer, battles with Marty over the price of words. When Jeremy, Marty’s former student, enters, the battle escalates into a search for what is most important in their lives.

Manhattan Transits is based on the October 2, 1988, cover story in the New York Times Magazine about the suicide of April Savino, a girl who lived under the subways at Grand Central Terminal and was called an angel by homeless women living there.
Manhattan Transits follows the events of April Savino’s story, although names and places are changed. Jose Cartello is a runaway, living under Port Authority Bus Terminal. She befriends two bag ladies, adopting them as a surrogate family, falls in love with Carlos Fava, a drug dealer, becomes addicted to crack cocaine, and is almost rescued by a police detective. Jose’s life, like April’s, ultimately ends tragically.
This play is also based on the Demeter-Persephone myth, primarily because Jose’s mother (like April’s) knew she was living under the subways, but was psychologically unable to rescue her, just as Demeter couldn’t rescue Persephone from the underworld. The setting here is a lurid underground labyrinth. Sergeant Frank, called by one of the bag ladies, the “king of Hell,” is an ambivalent character loosely modeled on Hades. Dallas and Lowanda, the bag ladies, are like benevolent witches, and there are references throughout the play to elements of this Greek myth.

How long will three women wait for one man? What will finally push them over the edge?
HANGING WOMEN, a comedy/drama is about three women--ALICIA and her daughters CELANDINE and PEONY--who have put their lives on hold until the man they loved returns to them. Every night for ten years they have made a banquet for him, but he never comes. When he finally sends a telegram that he is arriving for his wedding anniversary, ALICIA plans to kill him. As her daughters begin to understand their mother’s intention, memories of this charismatic but abusive man rise to the surface. Finally realizing that their view of this man, like their lives, was a fantasy, they exorcise the forces that limited their potential as women and free themselves.

This semi-autobiographical comedy/drama is an exploration of the difficulties many people experience when they come from families torn by religious and ethnic differences. In an effort to come to some understanding of her identity, CATHERINE, in her early 30’s, recalls her confused childhood and adolescence stemming from her Protestant mother’s denial that her father is Jewish and her father’s struggle to give up his spiritual heritage to please his wife.

The play takes place in Pasadena, California, and in the memory scenes between CATHERINE’s parents BERNARD and LAURA, in Evansville, Indiana. Events move back and forth between 1943 and 1980. CATHERINE’s adolescent scenes take place in the early 1960’s.

CATHERINE speaks directly to the audience throughout the play, commenting on scenes from her childhood and adolescence which are acted out by her younger self and her family and friends. Though her primary relationship is with BERNARD, her father whom she adores, and AARON, her early boyfriend and finally her husband, other important figures in CATHERINE’s search for meaning in her life are her mother, LAURA, and her friends MARY and CAROLE. This search leads CATHERINE to become involved with several forms of Christianity-- including Catholicism and Fundamentalism--before she finally claims her father’s heritage and becomes “really Jewish.”

Psyche fancies herself a scientist who studies the stars. Eros is, of course, a playboy who accidentally falls in love with her, and then there is the vain Aphrodite, Eros’ controlling mother, also the exasperatingly ambiguous Sibyl, as well as Psyche’s narcissistic and jealous sisters, her worried father and a talking sheep, the Queen of the Ants, Cerberus, the three-headed dog, beautiful Persephone and the Ferryman who takes mortals to the Underworld. Psyche’s journey is to learn to think with her heart.

After the death and burial of her mother, Emily is haunted by memories and dreams of her family. The play opens with a phone call from her sister Beryl, who suggests they put their dead mother in a plywood box and keep her in the garage till Emily flies out to L.A. from New York. This triggers further memories and dreams—a vaudeville act on the nature of time, a funeral, in St. Paul’s cathedral, that never happened, a surgery to find her sister’s heart, Death as a stand-up comic, and her mother’s interview with Death, a neurotic character who refuses to grant her immortality. The play ends with Emily’s remembering her final moments with her living mother, her mother’s bizarre burial, and Emily’s recognition of her feelings of love and loss.