Barbara Lebow

The Hebbles are a lively family with good friends, few problems, budding teen romances, growing pains, and three-generational, barely whispered worries. With no real warning, several in the group are suddenly caught in a mass shooting.

The second act moves into a victim’s broken mind whose interior monologues are expressed by a shifting chorus speaking for the now mute victim. Over time, wishful fantasy mingles with grief and terror. Mother becomes child again; grandmother, a new parent again; father, brother, and friends become strangers to themselves and each other. All struggle to accept, to deny, and to understand a sudden, inexplicable, death and their shattered family.

The play follows an extended family, descendants of poor Spanish and Russian immigrants who find a safe haven in early 20th century Cuba. They prosper until the '59 revolution causes a drastic rift. The focus is on the new generations in 1902, 1950's Cuba, and present day California. The actors are their own great-grandparents, grandparents, and grandchildren at the same age. They travel through time and personal events against the background of conflict and the rich heritage of intermingled cultures, always under the steady hand of their ageless niñera.

Inspired in large part by fear of how current political actions and attitudes resemble certain movements preceding the Second World War.

In 1936 Germany, a widowed mother and her teen-aged son live quietly in an old farming and wine making village. Beginning with their hopes for peace after the theatrically manipulated Olympics of that year, they are swept up in a whirlwind of creeping extremist social and political events, leading inexorably to war. Through the wartime years, the force of the whirlwind is woven from the mother’s anxieties about her tenderhearted son, the intricate relationships both son and mother have with an enigmatic uncle serving in the military, and—ultimately—the conflict between two young men: One a Norwegian Resistance fighter; the other, his nonviolent German interrogator.

Two best friends, part of a close-knit group of high school seniors (And Barbershop quartet winners) in a small lumber town in Washington State, celebrate the public pronouncement of “Mission Accomplished” in 2003. For them it means the end of combat is near. As before the war, they anticipate light duty and a ticket to college and a better future. They convince their friends and families (“All that’s left is cleaning up.”) that joining the army will be a safe—and the only—way to do it. The play examines the consequences of that choice, both for those who fight and those who watch and wait at home. The story unfolds moving between shards of past and present, future, fantasy, reality, and in and out of a soldier's wounded mind.

[First produced at Academy Theater in 1985 & ’87, "The Adventures of Homer McGundy" demanded revision of the title now; indeed, Homer, himself, was revised— both while alive and dead.]

Oklahoma, 1911. Homer, who suffered from hemorrhoids like many outlaw riders, is killed in scene one! His body is sold by the local sheriff to a shifty, soulless showman, one “Dr. Proctor,” to use as a lure for the locals who gladly drop a dime into Homer’s frozen-open mouth to gain entrance to a shoddy tent show. Here, innocent young Tim, Homer’s hapless sidekick, now and forever falls victim to Proctor’s shameless shenanigans and is mercilessly thrown into the hoosegow.

Dr. Proctor and his mostly fake freaks [“See the fearsome dead outlaw, the bearded lady, the geek biting off live chickens' heads, the giant, the half-man half-woman!”] hoodwink the public into buying his cure-all powders.

As time marches on, Tim is released, talking pictures arrive and, with them, "Director Emil Proctor,” garbed in black, reeking of hypnotic perfumes and untraceable foreign syntax, with a retinue of desperately hopeful young actors. Once more transformed in Hollywood, he creates a motion picture, “THE ADVENTURES OF HOMER McGUNDY,” wherein Homer is a singing cowboy, dressed in white, and incorruptible. Tim is sacrificed again. The audience weeps on cue.

A showdown ensues. Who will survive? Who is real? Who is an actor? Who is a “freak?” A fake? Who is innocent? Who and what is Doctor Proctor?

On a remote island, on the eve of World War II, a group of expatriate Germans battle the elements and each other to control their “New Eden.” Loosely based on actual events which occurred in the Galapagos, reflecting today's social and political dynamics, the play follows the story of a volatile philosopher, the timid woman who follows him into the unknown, and the charismatic “Baroness” who arrives at the seeming paradise with three young men in thrall. Which will be the "fittest" to survive?

Two actors play three parts each (As trains, themselves, are made of linked sections). An older and younger man, finding themselves in an abandoned station/warehouse, evolve as characters connected through changing times and places. They deal with growing up, with race, freedom, servitude, dependency, dreams of other lives that might be. In 1895, they travel from New Orleans to Montreal in a luxurious private rail car. Later, they sit, freezing, on a wall just outside present day Trenton, NJ, overlooking the train tracks and brown-bagging it. The links return each of them to “now,” wherever that may be, and their journey continues.

Four actors, each very different from the others, are in place before the audience enters. They have been waiting, scattered on seat backs, not engaged in their surroundings. Clearly, they are bored, waiting for something, ANYTHING, to happen! They yawn, stretch, snooze, or play listlessly with hand-held games. When everyone has arrived and lights dim, they begin to express their boredom and irritation. They are angry with time, finally decide to crack open a minute; a noise-building and explosive process. CLANG! They find themselves inside a minute! Once inside, they discover four everyday objects (A very large piece of cloth, low 3-legged stool, dented cookpot with handle, and a 3-sided decorated box, big enough to hide in). Their experimenting with the objects gives rise to imaginative uses, then scenes, each ending with another clang! And another new story follows until the “minute” is over. Audience involvement throughout.

This is what happens after Cinderella and the Prince are married. Envy and discontent disrupt the happy pair. No matter, their language is playful; rhythm and rhyme mixed with silliness, humor, and innocence. Featuring all-Chopin musical bits. The play continues to evolve and update, even as the children who first saw it are now parents, themselves.

For children, with adult actors. Wolf is the good guy. All he wants is to live peacefully in his own quiet corner, “…eat a little cheese, sing a song or two, and let the rest of the world go by.” But Granny, the Woodsman, and Little Red have other ideas. They insist he must fulfil his destiny and pounce. Participation with the audience (e.g. Wolf invites them to his birthday party and they always respond) ensures that the usual tables are turned, at least for a while. The determined three are unwavering in their plans of how to fulfil their prescribed destinies, as well.