In 1875, ten years after the assassination of her husband, Mary Todd Lincoln’s increasingly bizarre public behavior rankles her sole surviving son Robert. In Chicago, he orchestrates an insanity hearing in which Mary is not permitted to speak. Pronounced insane by a “Sea of Men,” Mrs. Lincoln receives a court- ordered commitment to Bellevue Place, a posh, private sanitarium in Illinois’ Fox River Valley. There, Mary hoards trunks of her possessions and vials of poison. She relies on the friendship of cherished friend Lizzie Keckley, a former slave and White House dressmaker, and enlists the aid of Rosalie, a maid at Bellevue Place, to fill prescriptions for laudanum and camphor. Mary wages a great battle with John Wilkes Booth, Secretary of War Stanton, and other ghosts of the past, while endlessly mourning the death of her husband and sons. Communing with the spirit world through the sham medium Madame Marvalosa and budding conjure lady Zuzu, Mary is determined to end her suffering—and her life.

Semi-finalist, Playwrights First, 2015
Semi-finalist, Vittum Prize

On-air personalities Dominique and Abner waylay unsuspecting Beth for a forced makeover.

Anthologized in: Applause, She Persisted: New Plays By Women Over 40 2022.

A coming-of-age memory play. With dragons.
In a world where women are forced to be good, stay quiet, endure abuse, stifle ambition, and step aside for men, rebellious throngs transform into dragons with fire and fury. After the mass dragoning, Alex is left behind. While all around her enforce silence, Alex, with her own rebellion, can’t and won’t forget. Using knotting techniques her mother taught her, Alex connects memories to find context and clarity in her universe.

Adapted for the stage from the novel by Kelly Barnhill.

Rachel and Christine thwart the evil actions of a zealous cabal that seeks to enrich Ubu with megachurch funds.

It is 1914, during the early months of WWI. Percy, promised he would be home for Christmas, wrestles with his religious beliefs in the face of war’s new rules. With her loved ones entrenched in a war of attrition in No Man’s Land, Eugenie is entrenched in London’s home front. She defies Grandmama to take a nursing position in the hospital, determined to do her bit to help the war effort and hone her skills in medicine. Her brother Cornelius, who failed his medical, vows to join up. When the historic Christmas Truce of 1914 sweeps across the Western Front, peace reverberates in extraordinary ways.

There is also a teen actor version.

Semi-finalist, Dionysus Cup Festival of New Plays; Polarity Ensemble Theatre Company, Chicago, 2014

After a violent squall ushers in a sweltering heat wave, Annabelle stumbles upon a delirious man in the gutter. He is unable to recall his name, Edgar Allan Poe, or how he arrived in his hallucinatory state. Annabelle drags him to her lover Lucretia’s Memento Mori Shoppe, where Lucretia creates photographs of the dead—and which Annabelle haunts. With his acuteness of the senses, Poe is aware of Annabelle, although Lucretia is not. Lucretia vows to provide the mysterious stranger a safe place to peacefully pass from the earthly realm. She promises to create a proper post-mortem mourning daguerreotype in his memory, although Poe is utterly alone in the world. But first Lucretia must photograph putrefying bodies before the heat has their way with them, as Death threatens to take Poe to the bowels of hell. Ghosts of his past combine with characters and images from his literary works to torment Poe in his terror of premature burial. Can Poe make peace with his untimely demise and find solace in death? And what solace can he offer grieving Lucretia?

Desperately seeking his lost treasure, Buccaneer Bochephus Q. Fizziwater summons three sea yarns, “Paddy and the Mermaid,” “Coyote’s Moon,” and “Foghorn Franny.”

The cast is easily expandable with flexible roles. Actors may portray a variety of roles.

"Paddy and the Mermaid" received an Honorable Mention Award from the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild

Available through Brooklyn Publishers: http://www.brookpub.com/default.aspx?pg=sd&st=THREE+BY+THE+SEA&p=2104

Synopsis: Embracing her boldness, young Lady Mary visits her mysterious lover’s home while he is away. There, she discovers a deadly secret. Loosely based retelling on Joseph Jacobs’ variation of “Mr. Fox.” Jacobs collected “Mr. Fox” in 1890; however, the tale certainly predates his collection. In fact, in Much Ado About Nothing, (circa 1598 or 1599) Benedick quotes: “Like the old tale, my lord: 'it is not so, nor 'twas not so, but, indeed, God forbid it should be so.’”

Andrea has had it up to her ears with Rocco’s new sidepiece, a fitness gizmo.

Ethnically ambiguous Maria battles discrimination because of her appearance and discovers strength in intersectional sisterhood.

A rape survivor claims her power.
Semi-finalist Women in the Age of Trump, NYC Playwrights, 2017

Sizzurup? Bombs? A suspicious cashier interrogates customers as they attempt to make purchases.

Published in Applause, Best American Short Plays 2014-2015

Ralphie can’t get the hang of wooing his ladylove beneath her balcony. Good thing Romeo and Cyrano show up.

When grieving Fiona kicks out her cheating lover, she seeks proverbial wisdom at the pub.

When a police officer detains and torments Makayla for “Grieving While Black,” Makayla is unable to contain her eruption of loss.

A monologue. Seven years after a brutish fisherman stole her sealskin and forced her to become his wife on land, a selkie discovers the precious coat. Before she returns to her long-lost seal husband and daughters, the selkie exacts revenge long years in the making.

A non-binary person hides from a bully in their high school library. In the safe space Ms. Vitali the librarian provides, they explore their intense resonance with a beloved children’s book author.

This piece will be published in Smith & Kraus WE/US: Monologues for Gender Minority Characters Anthology.

A female monologue. Hobbled with a back injury and trapped in a hulking MRI machine, a claustrophobic Boomer launches a ferocious flight of ancestral fancy set to the theme song she plays in her head.

Synopsis: Suffering malaise and writer’s block during yon dread Plague, Shakespeare is visited by the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father, who helps him breathe life into a new work.

"‘Course I’m terrified. Scared shitless. But I got a job to do." An essential worker experiences her own food insecurity while ensuring hungry kids eat lunch at home and at school.

After dieting and exercising herself into a frenzy for the Christmas Eve bash, Roma’s ready to rock her new bod. She squeezes into a too-too-tight sweater in a fitting room. And can’t escape its deadly clutches.

Following the murderous rampage of the Capitol Insurrection, Sylvia uses a dating app to hook and reel in a rampaging traitor.

When lonely Paddy captures a mermaid and steals her little red cap so she loses all memories of the sea, she truly becomes a fish out of water.

A young woman prepares to leave home for the day to go to work and then meet a friend for cocktails. She arms herself against potential rapists, as Mama, a rape survivor, taught her to do.

Widow and former First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln is desperate to reach across the spirit realm and commune with her husband, President Abraham Lincoln, ten years after his assassination. She falls prey to the scamming Madame Marvalosa, until a séance yields unexpected results.

As Carla, a gynecologist, watches an anti-choice protest outside her office, helmed by her goddaughter Jolene, she recalls a secret long kept.