Lionelle Hamanaka

A young married woman, Megan, is finally pregnant after trying for years. She has cramps and goes with her husband Nick to the ER where her doctor gives her an amnioscentesis. Her mother has come from New York to celebrate. They go to see her OB-GYN, Dr. Carman, who says her fetus has Trisomy 18, with many deformities. Although it is not a diagnosis that would endanger the mother's life, the fetus would probably not survive long after the birth. Megan decides to go to a state where abortion is not illegal, back with her mother to New York. Her case is heard by the State Supreme Court, that rejects her condition and threatens her and her doctor. Megan, Nick and her mother Betty are very upset that she has to travel thousands of miles away from her home town to get an abortion.

A young African American woman, an office worker, is pregnant and starts passing blood clots. Her doctor says her fetus is non viable and she must go to the ER. She does and because she is in her 21st week on the 5th day, and the state has passed a law outlawing abortion after the 21st week, she waits in the ER while the Ethics Committee tries to decide her case. She goes home after waiting all day and has a spontaneous miscarriage in her bathroom; she is accused of 'abuse of a corpse." She mobilizes the community behind her and they demonstrate in the parking lot; and she gets a lawyer to defend herself from these false charges.

The daughter of a politician from a red state is raped at college and hides it from her parents until she is 12 weeks pregnant, when she must leave home and get an abortion in another state. She asks her mother for money for expenses because her savings account is low, but her mother says they must tell the father. The daughter rebels and leaves home. The father finds out and pursues her but doesn't reach his daughter in time to stop her; another factor is his political campaign for the legislature and Right to Life laws. He disowns his daughter after she has the abortion and cuts off her education money. She accepts this and joins the movement to overturn the anti abortion laws in her state.

Eloise Beaumont is a forklift operator at a Germ Warfare Lab on Long Island Sound, who tries to warn Congress about the terrifying harm an impending hurricane may bring to her community. Having lost a daughter already to polluted water, she alerts a TV reporter and guides a pilot to try and save her co workers stranded on the island.

A doctor/scientist and political organizer meet on the George Washington Bridge during the pandemic and
discover their divergent outlooks on Covid-19 are the root of their relationship's rupture.

The Organizer follows Eddie Kay on his adventures organizing the rank and file labor movement. Taught by Leon Davis, founder of 1199 and Elliott Godoff, he develops Vanessa and Inez as leaders and together they organize 40 nursing homes and hospitals in Long Island, He then challenges Presbyterian Hospital’s racist practices with Steve and Jimmy by unionizing the “Castle on the Hill.” Black and Hispanic workers can only get low paying service jobs and do not get benefits unless they are ‘favorites’ of supervisors. 1199 was Martin Luther King Jr.’s favorite union because he believed in bridging the civil rights movement to economic empowerment of minorities. The Organizer show how working people were uplifted by 1199’s struggle against racism and poverty wages in New York City from the late 60’s through early 70’s.

A one act about a woman who tries to bury her father in Brooklyn, takes place April 9-10, 2020;
due to the spike in Covid-19 deaths (10,366), the funeral director runs out of refrigerated truck and the father's corpse begins to decompose.

Two women in a supermarket have a dispute about wearing a mask during the Covid 19 pandemic.

Under the Radar Part I is about the Iraq War from the invasion to the formation of Iraq Veterans Against the War in 2004 in Boston. Several enlistees' experiences are tracked, along with the wide nexus of the antiwar community in the U.S. It is an epic historical piece that combines realism with farcical elements, Brechtian and Greek influences. Suitable for families, colleges and advanced teens.

A panoramic nexus of the Iraq war following young veterans, family members and veterans from the Vietnam War, includes the POV of people from Iraq as well-oil workers; and the role of the US labor movement to oppose the war from 2004-2012.

Story: Tsutomu Yamaguchi was an engineer in Hiroshima on a business trip to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries when the city was city bombed Aug 6, at 8:15 am. He had forgotten his hanko (pass allowing him to travel), he went back to his office to retrieve it and was walking back to the docks when the US American bomber Enola Gay, dropped ‘Little Boy’ atom bomb. He crawled to a shelter, where he found his 2 co workers, and rested for a day. He went back home to Nagasaki, for the second blast three days later. The Bomber Bockscar dropped ‘Fat Boy’ Atom bomb on August 9. He was exposed to residual radiation while searching for his family. He married in the 1950’s, to another survivor, and had two daughters. He was the only person recognized by Japan to have suffered both blasts. He was satisfied just to be alive for a while. When he became older, he wrote a book, (Ikasareteiru inochi) and in 2006 in a documentary about Niju Hibakushi. Twice Survived: The Doubly Atomic Bombed of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, screened at the UN, in which he pleaded for abolition of atomic weapons. Late in life, he suffered from leukemia and cataracts-symptoms of radiation sickness. His wife died of kidney and liver cancer at age 93. His three children also had connected illnesses. This short play relives his tragedy, his anti-nuclear-war activism, and the revelation of hope and faith that made him feel there was a chance for mankind to overcome its dark side.

Cora, a housewife and office worker, wakes from a nightmare: she sees her son Matthew bleeding on a battlefield. Frank, a Vietnam veteran activist, comes home from a day of petitioning and calms her fears. Frank has PTSD from the Vietnam War. The military reports Matthew has died, but a buddy of Matthew's calls and reports having seen their son at Landstuhl, the U.S. hospital in Germany. The couple finds their son there, sick with PTSD. Frank tries to rehabilitate his son at Walter Reade, and eventually the family returns to their NY apartment. Matthew smiles for the first time when he learns his friend Daniel has returned alive from deployment to Iraq. Matthew joins an Iraq veteran group at the local VA and becomes active in the antiwar movement, refusing his second deployment, and finally accepting help from other veterans and mending his dysfunctional relationship with his parents.

A group of telephone operators in New York City on a wildcat strike, after construction on the job makes hearing customers impossible. The camaraderie of the women, from varied backgrounds, cross generational, is the glue that holds the shop together. The construction noise is the last insult they can stand, on a job with almost non existent benefits and pay below the poverty level.

A group of tour guides in New York City try to join a trade union after enduring multiple tours each day and no voice in working conditions. Their scuffling life style contrasts sharply with their job of 'selling' the most glamorous city in the U.S. and their own devotion to the city. The vote and their struggle to be heard and be counted is a dramatic episode of democracy in action on the 'street' level.

Elizabeth Jennings was a schoolteacher in New York City who desegregated the streetcars in 1854. She jumped aboard a streetcar reserved for whites because she was late for church, and her parents supported a lawsuit against the company that went to Civil Court in Brooklyn, where she was represented by Chester Arthur, later to be President of the U.S. This play is about the struggle against racism during the Draft Riots in New York, tracing Ms. Jennings' married life, the death of her infant son, her escape to Brooklyn and then New jersey, and her return to New York, when she established the first black kindergarten in the Tenderloin district up to her death at 74 in 1901.

Rie and Jack Maguire marry young and move to New York City with their baby from Pittsburgh after the steel industry dries up. Jack climbs to success in the toy business, and Rie is a stay at home mother who does art part time; and after drifting apart, domestic violence tears their marriage apart and Rie leaves. This sets off a custody dispute, kidnapping, and the more fame Rie achieves as a fashion designer, the lonelier she becomes. The court system favors Jack as the more materially secure parent, and Rie loses time with her daughter as she strives to attain the life style that her daughter has become accustomed to. The play puts in perspective the real life anguish and compromises divorced families endure and the choices they make along the way.