Jane Willis

Lake Life synopsis

Set in the future, Lake Life is told through echoes, reflections, folktales, and familial telepathy, in a world where resources are running low…bodies of water, blood for the ill, patience for the fragile — and for unruly children.

As the Pagan Leary family grapples with their ailing Lake Spirit, Cass Hamilton, a hydrologist, discovers how the family must reckon with their past greed and sins against their once beloved Lake Spirit.

Can Cass, with their unshakeable reverence for nature, help them to make amends?

It’s 1917, America is at War with Germany: journalist Bella Moore is trying to garner support for her Black sister Suffragists -- as -- at her War Profiteer father’s command, privileged White Vinny Chestnut goes to D.C. to rescue her younger sister from the “cult” that she’s joined. But Vinny finds she’s up against some badass women – the “cult” --Alice Paul’s Silent Sentinel Suffragists who will stop at nothing to win the Vote, War or not.

They push back at President Wilson every single day at the White House gates. But Vinny finds herself embroiled in a dangerous game, as she’s trying to convince her sister to come back home. In loyalty to her sister, she’s swept up with the other women and taken to a secret prison, where the women are punished for standing their ground, and scapegoated as “German Sympathizers.”

There is one woman who can help them – Bella Moore – but Bella and her group of African American picketers have been excluded from joining the White women in the fight for the Vote.

As Vinny endures the Night of Terror and days after in the Workhouse, she undergoes a transformation as she’s forced to reckon with her own life choices and her own blindness to the injustices in the world beyond.
Can she bring her reckoning to help her White sisters unite with their Black sisters to impact change?

Emily and Joanne, old high school classmates, inadvertantly meet on the bank of a river to watch the bridge - an important remnant of Emily's childhood, be blown up, as a new bridge has replaced it. But with this event, will Emily forever lose an important piece of history with her Mom?

What She Wished For: A full-length dark comedy by Jane Willis
Time: the Present
Setting: NYC, Costa Rica, Suburban Middle School Classroom

Grace and Claire, mid 30s, are psycho-pharmacologists, friends and colleagues. From the moment she meets Claire, Grace longs to be Claire's lover as well. With a nod to Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the story is told through Grace, who admits that she has a faulty memory, and tends to embellish the truth in places, as she struggles to determine her part in the chain of life-changing events that unfold. Thusly, Grace shows Claire's story, and Claire's frustration with a world that continues to reward female passivity and compliance. An expert on rage management, Claire has great difficulty in expressing her own anger, because it is deemed to be "unattractive." She struggles between being perceived as being in charge of herself, or --being true to herself, which she can't seem to do at the same time. To make matters worse for Claire, her soon to be ex-husband has just gained full custody of their only child, due to Claire's poor judgment and loss of self-control. As a result, Claire takes drastic measures to push back at him and anyone who has tried to victimize her. Through some Internet research, she gains bioengineering means to transform into an unlikely and unpleasant power animal, and, Grace, through her loyalty and longing, becomes an accomplice to a terrible and zany crime. Yet, Grace is still hopelessly in love with Claire, who is technically now a mommy, a therapist, and a predator.
The play explores the question - How far will we go to love and to be loved? Are we willing to lose ourselves in order to get what we wished for?

As she prepares lunch, Evelyn tries to find out the cause of her quirky and precocious grandson's anger toward a visiting deer. The realization that it's just "the two of them now" is a responsibility that weighs heavily on her. When Fabian discovers that his grandmother has a mysterious medical condition, he is even more determined to get rid of the visiting deer. The play explores the courage it takes for ordinary folks to get through days that may seem banal, but are shadowed by the danger of imminent loss.

A Semi-Finalist for 2017 O'Neill Conference: "Prospect and Refuge" features Jill and Adam, both 17, and first loves with big future plans that will hopefully eject them from their small town of Bartley, New Jersey, and the small-minded existence that it offers. They have everything going for them: a companionship with fierce loyalty, magnetic physical attraction, and a desire for vengeance for what happened earlier that night to Jill-- all which leave an indelible mark on their young lives. But as they navigate growing up, their individual choices place a wedge in their relationship. Years pass, disasters ensue, and when Jill and Adam "accidently" meet up again in their 40s --they're all caught up in living what appear to be their own irreversible choices, and horrific choices that were done to them.

As we see the relationship(s) of Jill and Adam 17, and Jill and Adam 40 unfold simultaneously, we see the ways that time ambushes them and their dreams--- but is their past bond irretrievable? In place of what trauma has taken from Jill and Adam, can it also open up a path for them toward renewed guts and hope?