Colette Mazunik

*Hellfire & Hame was developed with assistance from Boulder Ensemble Theatre of Colorado (BETC)
It’s January 5th, 2021. A family—splintered by politics and religion—gathers at a farmhouse in America’s heartland. It’s the day of the fire. The day the house burns down.

*Winner, Gulfshore Playhouse, New Works Festival
*Featured in Westport Country Playhouse's Script In Hand Series
*Developed in the DCPA Theatre Company's Playwrights' Group

Full-length. When Eddie, anxious and in debt, tries to rob a gas station, he instead falls for the station clerk, bungles a burglary, gets caught with a weapon, evades hospitalization, flees from the police, and has his library card revoked—but hey, at least he meets the woman of his dreams!
A Danger to Yourself and Others is a farcical look at what it’s like navigating life with anxiety, never knowing if the gnawing feeling in your gut is your intuition or your irrational fear.

*Published in: Stage It and Stream It! Plays for Virtual Theatre, Ed. John Bray, Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2023
*Ravening was developed with assistance from Red Rocks Community College Department of Theatre and Dance.
One-act for Zoom or Stage. A psychological experiment goes horribly awry.

*Falling Star was developed with assistance from Butterfly Effect Theatre of Colorado (BETC).
One-Act. Vega's parents are forcing her to make a will. If she's going to spend a semester abroad in outer space, she needs to get her affairs in order.

One-Act for Zoom or Stage. In a polarized world, what happens when rose-colored glasses cloud our vision?
A new technology threatens to alienate us from those we think we love.

One-act. What would happen if a woman who is running from her past meets a man who feels he has no future?

Ten-minute. One day, your HR department will be outsourced to AI. Today, a program tester troubleshoots a surprisingly persuasive AI robot.

Full-length. Two Thumbs Up is a comedy with severed thumbs, a hitman, and the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
*In process of significant revision. Updated version available soon.
It all starts when the hitman who has been hired to obtain a human thumb accidentally passes the appendage on to a literature professor—whose neurotic husband finds it—and jumps to erroneous conclusions. Add in a marriage proposal, a burglary, and some plagiarism, and it looks like everyone might live happily ever after after all.

Ten-minute. A seduction simmers among books of love poems and recipes.
*Updated 10.31.2022

One-act. Love invades a gas station when two strangers, ready to shed their hypocrisy, meet on Thanksgiving Day.

*Finalist, 39th Sam French OOB Festival
One-act. Jealousy enters a dorm room when one roommate begins painting nude models.

One-act. What if your social-media AI counterpart was indistinguishable from your true self . . . and wanted to make a sex tape?
SELF(ISH) introduces us to a future where humans can use highly-realistic, sapient, real-wold avatars know as “Selfs” to interact with others. These “Selfs” can also function independently, acting on behalf of their humans. And yes, Cynthia's "Self" wants to make a sex tape.

*In development with Bliss Street Studios LLC.
Live electronics and sampled text underscore and surround futuristic parables that invite audiences to step into and grapple with the world of tomorrow.
*Sound element samples available upon request.*

Full-length. Shelter in Place explores the struggle to keep appropriate boundaries when faced with overwhelming needs.
Sarah has just discovered she is pregnant and is eager to share the news with her husband, but then a homeless client and her baby show up at the door, demanding to be taken in.
Overnight, the client abandons her baby and steals Sarah’s car, only to return in the morning seeking more help after being injured. Sarah alienates her husband by her unwillingness to surrender her client to the police and the baby to child protection services. Into this tense home environment, Sarah's controlling mother comes for a visit with a secret of her own.

Ten-minute. A blind date leads to a surprising connection.

Ten-minutes. A woman must ask for a favor from the person she least wants to see.

Ten-minute. Edvard Munch applies for a grant.

One-act. Have you ever said a word over and over and over until it looses its meaning?

Full-length. Sarah brings her husband Chris back to her ten-year college reunion. She’s lost touch with all her friends and hasn’t been back since the love of her life, Edmund, died in a car accident shortly after graduation. Her best friend, Kate, had been driving the car. Sarah has never told Chris about her relationship with Edmund. Now the group of friends gather at Adam and Beth’s home to honor Edmund on the occasion of an art building being named after him.

Beth is frustrated that she never had the chance to leave their small college town; Adam is uncomfortable with the fact that Gina is gay, particularly since his oldest daughter may be gay as well; Kate wishes her music career was going someplace, and hopes to make peace with Sarah; Gina is considering having a child and is ill-at-ease coming back to the hyper-conservative college campus; Dante is looking for some meaning in life, and is hoping it involves hooking up with Kate; Chris wants to understand a part of Sarah’s life that she’s never talked about much; and Sarah wants to finally put the memory of Edmund to rest.

When Dante brings out Edmund’s old sketchbooks, secrets that have been buried for years are revealed that threaten Chris and Sarah’s marriage.

At the end, we see the friends as they were ten years prior, on the night before their college graduation: idealistic and eager to embark on their future.

Coming Back is about the gap between expectations and reality. It is about confronting the heartbreak of dreams deferred. Ultimately, it is about the need to confront the past in order to fully live in the present.

Ten-minute. What happens when your fantasies become reality?
A neurotic young woman, searching for love, is astounded upon finding it.

Full-length. When a volunteer is frustrated by demeaning co-workers, and excessive demands, she lashes back by sabotaging a major fundraising event.

Ten-minute. After closing time, two strangers meet in a bar.

One-act. Homelessness, drug addiction, prostitution, child abuse: just typical problems in a typical day of work for Sarah, a job counselor at a Crisis Center for homeless women. Then one day something new happens. A client abandons her child to Sarah’s care.

Ten-minute. In 2017 research published in the journal Human Reproduction Update revealed that sperm counts have dropped 59.3% in less than 40 years in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. We don't know why. But what if we did know, and could do something about it? Would it matter?