Rachael Carnes

A woman mourns for her life, cut down by gun violence. Part of the #CodeRed Plays collection.

A modern epiphany.

A Play for Zoom

10-Minute Play: At a small campground — Margaret, a field biologist, camps alone.

Two-Minute Play: A Father Contemplates loss, all the way around the world.

BETTY, FRED and BARNEY on a rocket bound for Mars.

Made into a film in 2020 by DEAN PRODUCTIONS, which premiered at the Silicon Beach Film Festival in 2021.
(An actor playing 'FRED' won an award for best Supporting Actor!)

It's Thursday, and BILLIE and MINKY's relationship isn't improving.

Oh, and MINKY is a sock monkey.

Two-minute play: A response to gun violence in places of worship.

Dedicated to the memory of David and Cecil Rosenthal.

Full-Length Play: Both characters are in their seventies, and played by a man and a woman — Two roles shared among four actors. A coin toss accents transitions throughout — So that the roles are assigned randomly from scene to scene. Not only are we seeing folks onstage who are older, because that’s rare as hen’s teeth, we’re also seeing a play about two men or two women or a man and a woman — In a slippery, permeable random chance experiment. It’s just about love — And the patience love requires.

Featured in the Carlo Annoni Prize library, Italy.

Monologue included in the Smith & Kraus Best Men's Monologues of 2022.

On the eve of revolution, two strangers become friends, and find a new meaning of family.

Ten-Minute Play: A riff on Mark Bly's Kafka's Train exercise.

Seven weeks into quarantine, an intervention. (This play was written for video conference, or could be performed on a real stage, if and when that becomes possible again.)

10-Minute Play: Venus complains about the male gaze to Botticelli. 1485.

10 Minute-Play: A couple assesses their relationship on their 10th anniversary.

10-Minute Play: A quiet evening at home, on the eve of Thanksgiving.

10-Minute Play: Marty helps Cheryl rethink her choices.

As bulldozers threaten gardens across NYC, one woman fights Big Development.

A Third Installment in the Sock Monkey ™ Cycle

“When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it cannot be cured.”

Three-Minute play: A woman waits for her bus.

Published in the Silk Road Review, 2020.

Online school is an adjustment, but one thing's for sure: Friends matter now, more than ever.

Published in Feels Blind Literary Magazine Issue #6.

A brief summary:
“Luckily, or unluckily, there is nothing in our lives
That does not end — Sooner or later.”

One-Minute Play: A female orca whale grieves for a dead child in U.S. custody.

10-Minute Play: A not-too-distant future where diseases run wild and women's rights are in question.

Published in the Coachella Review, Fall 2019

10-Minute Play: Tween Ella and her mom both agree — it's just a tough age.

5-Minute Play: The Holidays can be hard, A ridiculous and goofy Christmas Play.

A father's late night panic finds surprising allies.

"We had a truly amazing time working on this powerful, touching, and truly honest piece." - Jeffrey Stanzel, Artistic Director, Theatre Three.

Published in the Hominum Journal and Canyon Voices Literary Magazine, 2021.

Monologue included in the Smith & Kraus Best Men's Monologues of 2022.

Full-Length Play: A play with a play within a play within a musical within a play by puppets who do a play. Based on Henry the IV Part One.

5-Minute Play: A documentary-theatre play, sourced from Supreme Court Nomination Hearing Testimony, by Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford, and a statement by Senator Susan Collins, October 5, 2018, Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution, inked in 1787, and the step-by-step instructions of a sexual assault evidence collection kit (SAECK), that comes in a sealed package, with an expiration date.

One-Act: Focusing on the history of the Eugenics movement in this country and the chronic mistreatment of people with disabilities, this play drops into a moment in time and two possible futures, one with some support, one without.

10-Minute Play: The indications and contraindications of physical and chemical restraints during the holidays.

10-Minute Play: This little play imagines a young couple somewhat protected – or are they? – by the supernatural, on the day the Staten Island ferry crashed, in 2003.

One-Act: In the year 930, the Age of Settlement, over the previous fifty years or so, the population of Iceland, this geologically-rich, but resource-poor island (about the size of Oregon) has grown from one, to nearly 10,000 people, who are scattered across the land, and dispersed into a multitude of self-appointed, and pretty shitty, kingdoms. They come together to discuss the impending apocalypse, but are too distracted with witch hunts, and the latest gadgets, to get much done.

Dizzy Vikings addicted to their phones and their world in ruin — a commentary on the relationship between internalized oppression and environmental collapse – using mostly stupid jokes.

10-Minute Play: At Green Boots, the name given to the unidentified corpse of a climber that’s become a landmark on the main Northwest Ridge route of Mount Everest. An imagined dialogue between Ronald Reagan and writer/advocate Randy Shilts.

In the frozen north, little Gerda demonstrates that girls can do anything. Based on "The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Anderson.

Larry hopes that talking to someone might help him with his ennui. (That's French.)

Published in 2022 edition of Some Scripts

10-Minute Play: Bailey is worried about his/her friend.

10-Minute Play, inspired by the life of Elsie Parmann, beloved family matriarch (1921-2016), and member of the Norwegian Nazi Resistance, called "Ice Front". In the U.S., the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") has come to be epitomize hate and fear. This play, part of 365 Women a Year: A Playwriting Project, is dedicated to refugees, wherever they flee from home. It will be published in the Silk Road Review: A Literary Crossroads, in June 2020.

5-Minute Play: A monologue channeling '45' through Richard III's usurpation in 1493.

5-Minute Play: A monologue in a box.

10-Minute Play: Happy human-sock monkey relationships are all alike; every unhappy human-sock monkey relationship is unhappy in its own way.

This play appears in The Smith & Kraus Best 10-Minute Plays, 2021 Anthology.

10-Minute Play: Welcome to the job from hell. A play in the dark.

A three-part monologue, exploring the photoelectric effect of a global pandemic on an AP Chemistry teacher.

10-Minute Play: Alison reconsiders Julie's invitation to attend a leggings party.

Ten-minute play: In the long-running cop drama "Cagney & Lacey" Detectives Lacey and Cagney solve crimes in Manhattan's 14th precinct. Their balance of toughness and sensitivity make them stronger as a team as an unstoppable crime-fighting duo.

5-minute Play: Sourced from a publicly-available 9-1-1 call, made November 28, 2017, from a park in Lantana, FL, and the publicly-available online Facebook comments made in response to a news article, months later, referencing its release.

One-Minute Play: A new spin on a holiday classic!

10-Minute Play: In the Last Exit on Brooklyn Coffeehouse, in a pre-tech Seattle, heated backgammon and espresso shots provide fertile ground for a not-yet icon to find his voice. A play about limitation and life.

10-Minute Play: A commentary on the opioid crisis

DIDI et GOGO sont tristes.

A tense holiday in the gated community.

Published in the Ponder Review.

In which three astronauts, with apparently minimal training, hurdle through space on their mission to Mars.

Full-Length Play: In a converted brothel in the middle of nowhere, adjacent to the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, in Harney County, Oregon — A place where people converge in small groups to do one of two things: watch migratory birds, or hunt, few people ever do both — Characters grieve the loss of a future past, a once-great nation, a stolen place, an ideal, over mini muffins and coffee. And one character comes to terms with a loss —

Deep in the Cascade forest, a community theatre production struggles to get a play on its bipedal feet.

10-Minute Play: A documentary play, sourced verbatim from police reports, public 9-1-1 audio files and social media comments.

ONE-MINUTE PLAY: Two creatures with plenty to lose, look around a bit.

Published by the Extinction Rebellion, London, 2020.

Ten-Minute Play: A meditation on the reproductive rights of women.

Full-Length: In the Pacific Northwest, Summer 2018, humans, animals - and yellow jackets - consider a future with more wildfire smoke, and a past that might have prevented it.

Created in 36 hours, with a creative team of 20+ people. (And one really good dog.)

10-minute play: A staff meeting takes a wrong turn.

10-Minute Play: Monticello, VA, 1787 — 14-year-old Sally Hemings is made ready by her mother and the ghost of her grandmother, to accompany Thomas Jefferson, who is 30 years older than she is, to Paris. Trigger warning: Assault, abuse, rape.

Thank you to Fade to Black in Houston, TX, and the research team at Monticello, for consultation.

10-Minute Play: An intergenerational #MeToo conversation.

KAY misses folding sweaters. TONY thinks he'll live forever. Can they find love?

Full-Length: RORY wants to be a better person, but "MAIA" has other plans.

A preschool teacher soothes a classroom full of tiny students through another lockdown drill.

10-minute play: Written in a tone-poem style.

Full-Length: A university campus — 1933. Women receive training in home economics, "A tool of the utmost importance in building up forces which increase physical well-being of the population," writes Albert Mann, Dean of the New York College of Agriculture. "And which make for a reduction in the number of persons thrown back to the state for support by reason of physical, mental, or moral failure.”

Practice House is a 2019 New Dramatists Princess Grace Award Semi-Finalist.

Looking back to see forward.

A family connects across time and space.

Ten-Minute Play: In the heart of New York's East Village, Philosopher King Ray dispenses love and wisdom along with egg creams.

Published in the Spring 2023 edition of Review Americana

Ten-Minute Play: Two black holes, one bigger than the other, consider the implications of merging.

Published in the Hamilton Arts & Letters, 2021.

10-MINUTE PLAY: Three mature women explore the past and the future, at Flower Arranging Class.

Two-Minute Play: In 1823, Mary Shelley and her four-year-old sail home for England. A widow, she's determined to write.

One-Act: A playwright attempts to self-produce a ten-minute seven-person play from 3,000 miles away.

One-Act: The MUSICAL version of the play about the making of the 10-minute play for seven actors.

10-Minute Play: A response to gun violence — This short piece examines the destructive work of assault rifles against first-hand accounts from the murders at SandyHook.

10-Minute Play: Weaving together 500-years of separating children from their parents. Set on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

10-Minute Play: All aboard.

A couple attempts to navigate a new normal, over Zoom.

Winner: 2021 Young-Howze Theatre Award for best short play for Zoom.

10-Minute Play: Commentary on those "recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes" — set in 230 B.C.

One-Minute Play: The parents of either the victim, or the perpetrator, of gun violence, receive a phone call.

5-Minute Play: Sleeping Beauty wakes up.

The best part of air travel is yogurt parfaits. Or finding God. Or understanding fate. Or all of the above.

Published in the Stonecoast Review, Summer 2020. Nominated for 2020 Pushcart Prize.
Featured as part of the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Festival, 2022

10-minute play: ZAC and DEB seek some support for their long-term relationship.

5-Minute Play: From the POV of Jeanne Lumière, sister to the famous Lumière brothers — A commentary on the glut of women who will never EVER be recognized for their effort in art, science, math, etc. — Short-listed by the Women in Film Project, The Female Gaze, London, 2018.

An everyday hero makes a living.

A dark night in the country reveals secrets that shoulda stayed buried.

Published in Smith & Kraus Best 10-Minute Plays of 2022.

Josh is really not sure about this Zoom party ideas.

One-Act: During a quiet weekend in Orange County in 1659, mirth ensues.

We're all just stuck in a Whac-a-Mole game, amirite?

Published in 'Hello Godot! An Anthology of One Act Plays' 2022

A group of Middle Schoolers are *supposed* to make water clocks, over Zoom.

10-Minute Play: An invitation to a naked wedding might be just the spark this couple needs.

MONOLOGUE — A bone is bent, not broken, but the averted crisis exposes a family in trouble.

10-Minute Play: Gary wakes up to find his hamster missing, and takes an epic journey through career crisis, the audience and into intergalactic space and back again. It’s a hero’s journey, with a hamster.

Josh's new puppy isn't even here yet, but his pals are onboard.

10-Minute Play: Two characters — Played by four people — Explore the magical realism that can connect the generations.

Full-length play: England, 1769: As revolution between England and its American colonies simmers, candy-colored Georgian society pits the woeful, starving masses against the excessive powers of the rich elite. Sir Thomas Day, rebuffed at every turn from would-be wives, despite his fortune, grows frustrated, and hatches a plan to steal an orphan, and raise her to be the Perfect Wife. I wrote this because I was pissed about Roy Moore and his ilk. Based on real events.

Exploring the moral manifestation of unconscious social systems or environments where women continually face hostility, through the lens of competitive dance.

With choreography. And fighting!

One-Act: What are our assumptions, how do our ideas of women, as happy wives and mothers, cloud the roles that we're afforded? And what if that's all we can be?

10-Minute Play: What happens in the tide pool stays in the tide pool.

One Act Radio Play: Exploring intergalactic universals through the purr of a ’63 Alfa Romeo, breakfast foods and cats.

10-Minute Play: Walter and Ray prepare for the day ahead.

Three-Minute Play: Get-Out-The-Vote play, for two bunnies.

10-Minute Play: Chauncey — A middle aged British raccoon — Receives a survey from the local municipal court, forcing him to question everything.

Two trapeze artists reckon with nine months of quarantine.

Two-Minute Play: Four victims of white nationalism meet in the land of the midnight sun.

Published in Some Scripts Literary Journal, 2019.

A timeless work of staggering, unparalleled artistry. Believe me.

10-Minute Play: Friends from the past reconnect in High School.

Available as part of A YOUNGER TEN: WRITING THE TEN MINUTE PLAY by Gary Garrison.
www.garygarrison.com/younger-ten-plays

One-Minute Play: A friend remembers a victim of gun violence.

Animals find solace in unlikely kinships.

Published in Some Scripts Literary Magazine, and by the Extinction Rebellion, 2020.

A one-minute play.

One-Minute Play: A protester speaks.

In Oregon's Cascade Mountains, three generations of women grapple with the past and an uncertain future.

A monologue from this play will be featured in the Smith & Kraus Best Women's Monologues, 2021 Anthology.

On an archipelagic island nation, a shero prepares to save the world.

Full-length play: This play is seeking development.

Yoncalla, Oregon: one hundred years ago, a dinky town about 45 minutes south of where I live. Sounds cute enough, but like many towns in the West – Yoncalla tells a pretty dark story. There’s a lawless alchemy to these pioneer outposts, where ‘settlement’ runs over whole peoples, where prejudice finds a foothold, then a platform, then a foundation.

Yoncalla takes us to the past, to find today, and tomorrow.

A meeting of an online Extraterrestrial-Curious Social Club has surprising outcomes.