Grace Parker

Every month, college friends Mac, Audrey, Lia, and Sarah meet for Book Club to talk about literature (their lives), favorite authors (each other), and to analyze plot and character (to drink.). Through book club meetings, phone calls, and therapy sessions, the play follows the four women over the course of four years as they grow, get married, grapple with sexual identity, have children, lose family members, and fail/succeed at loving each other. A play about the closeness and danger of intimate female friendships. Half in a world of full-hearted and quick paced naturalistic realism, and half in the hazy, strange poetic place we go to when confronting ourselves.  A comedic shot to the heart.

A play about six college kids in New York City.
Kate Morgan, known by thousands of followers as @betterkatethannever, doesn't come home one night. The play deals with the aftermath of Kate's disappearance. As a result of losing Kate, the remaining five friends discover the ways they themselves are lost. They speak honestly about female friendship, fall in love, come to terms with sexual identity, and try to find Kate. They ultimately find each other.
It's a play about friendship, love, fear, millennial culture, and one missing girl. It doesn't condemn social media, but asks a question about it.

The eldest May child Declan is USC-bound, straight white male "perfection." When he leaves for college, his younger sister Keely resolves to do whatever it takes to join him there-- even though her scores definitely aren't up to snuff. She enlists the help of her gifted adopted sister Molly to tutor her. Meanwhile, her parents enlist the help of a Rick Singer-like "college counselor" offering guaranteed admission for Keely, to the tune of 50,000. A story about privilege, female intelligence, and what we're left with when secrets come to light.

It’s Indian Summer in NYC, recent acting conservatory graduates Annie, Benjamin, and Jimmy, along with Oliver, a young director, are rehearsing a play in a hot rehearsal room in Midtown. The play is called The Beginning of the Fall of the Extraordinary Time. It was written by Oliver’s grandmother, and hidden away in a sock drawer for her grandson to find. As they work on the play, lines between character and reality begin to blur, bringing hidden desires, wants, and repressed anger to the surface in the actors’ offstage relationships. Annie, Benjamin, and Jimmy play their parts as they navigate what it means to be a struggling 20-something actor in New York, and all the rejection and joy therein. A play about love, what makes it hard and why it should be easy.

It’s almost the end of the year, and the students of East Skokie School for Girls are very busy. (V busy, exclamation point, red emoji heart, they might say…or type in the group chat…) The drama club girls are gearing up for their Spring Show, and the basketball team has their sights set on that championship trophy. But when the girls’ principal decides that the Spring Show will be mandatory this year, everything is thrown upside down. Practice schedules are upended, friend groups are intermingled, and ideas are challenged. Two groups of girls come together to put on a classic story of rivalry, risk, and love, Romeo and Juliet, forming an unlikely ensemble and discovering rivalry, risk, and love amongst themselves, in a time when growing up is hard, and safety is tempting.

Flight 119 from Paris--Charles deGaulle to New York--LaGuardia is delayed. Jeremy meets Katherine, sitting, waiting for their flight. They talk about where they're from, family, writing, and all the things people talk about when they're meeting somebody important for the first time. Their conversation and chemistry gets away from them when Katherine reveals her secret-- and the two are pushed to face their own fears, vulnerabilities, and wants--for themselves, and maybe each other.

On the back steps of a Catholic school in a suburb of Chicago, Lizzie has something to tell her best friend Chandler. After a rebellious teenage weekend of sneaking out, lying to her parents, and drinking for the first time (as well as other firsts), Lizzie is feeling a kind of anxiety she can't shake. Faced with the option to say yes to a sexual encounter she says yes, and offered emergency contraception, she has said no. A play about female friendship, anxiety, growing up Catholic, and growing up.

It's the night before Adrian's wedding, and high above NYC, her bridesmaids are in her hotel room laughing, drinking from the mini bar, and waiting for a boy to text back. All seems well, but Cassie, her best friend, knows it isn't. There's something scratching at the door--and Lauren, Vic, Bella, and Cassie are all afraid. Afraid of the future, their own desires, scars, and hearts. A rule-breaking play about love much desired and feared.

Every Sunday night, Nancy and Eric's grown children return to their childhood home for dinner. It's a lovely tradition, complete with high expectations, prayer, surprise announcements, and everyone talking over each other. This Sunday night starts off like any other, until Nancy and Eric's son Rick gets a phone call that sends everyone around the table to a breaking point, bringing repressed anger to the surface in the process. A play about well-intentioned and misplaced love, addiction, and the very nature of family.

A small non-profit theatre is holding auditions for a production of All My Sons, and the lobby is full of actors hoping to book. Hank, the casting intern, is doing is best to keep things running smoothly. As the day goes on, tension, hopes, and fears build, bringing Hadley, a talented but out-of-work actress, and James, a kid actor, to ask why it is they do what they do, and how to overcome their fears in the audition room. A play about the vulnerability and resilience of being an actor, and of being a hopeful person trying to get unstuck.