Deborah Zoe Laufer

Sarah is struggling to survive her senior year of high school - new town, new school, new boyfriend. She's also struggling to survive the new America, where the insurrection was successful and everything has changed. When an ancient Yiddish-speaking woman is deposited on their doorstep, Sarah and her father must decide whether to help the woman hide or to save themselves.

Emery and her sister Hazel have never ventured out of their tiny town in upstate, N.Y. for all their sixty-some years. This is a-ok with Emery, who would very happily spend the rest of her days alone, in her home-made treehouse in her beloved tree “Mabel,” blogging about her experiments
on the consciousness of plants. But when she becomes an unexpected internet sensation and crowds start congregating beneath Mabel, believing she’s their savior, Hazel sees an opportunity for profit and escape for the first time in her life.

Bari’s always been a bit of an angry, depressed misanthrope. And losing her job teaching nihilism in New York to work at the local fulfillment center in her rural hometown has sent her into despair. But lately her recurring headaches manifest bizarre, ecstatic, almost religious experiences, and they’re changing her entire view of life. She’s in love! She’s almost… happy! When she finds out they’re also killing her, she must decide whether it’s better to live a short, joyful life, or risk a lifetime of misery. And she must also ask herself… what’s it all for anyway?

Olga, Masha and Irina have dreamt of returning to their childhood home of Manhattan all their lives. There It lies, gleaming, a mere ferry ride away from their provincial home in Weehawken, New Jersey. Though their sister-in-law, Natasha, tries valiantly to help them realize their dream with offers of work, tickets, maps, guidebooks, even anti-depressants, old patterns are hard to break. And that fifteen-minute ferry ride may as well be a mission to Mars. As they remain, decade after decade stretching into old age, the walls of their world move in tighter and tighter, until it becomes nearly impossible to move at all, borrowing as much from Beckett as Checkhov, The Three Sisters of Weehawken, wonders at the forces that keep us from following our dreams, and begs the question -- how little can one live, and still have lived “a life”?

Sixteen year old Rachel Stein is having a bad year. Her father hasn’t changed out of his pajamas since 9/11. Her mother has begun a close, personal relationship with Jesus. Her new neightbor, a sixteen-year-old Elvis impersonator, has fallen for her hard. And the Apocalypse is coming Wednesday.
Her only hope is that Stephen Hawking will save them all.

How do you straddle the fuzzy line between reality and virtual reality when you’re playing video games 20 hours a day? Ian, Zan, and Chuck are two years out of college when the government comes looking for expert gamers to launch remote missiles. And the bombs and the guns and the screams and the victories look so much like the ones on their Xbox.

When Sam Abrams first fell in love with Rose he wrote her a song — a song that has been covered by every recording artist and translated to every language. It is heard in every elevator and on every cell phone ringtone. For twenty-five years, Sam has been trying to write the next song – to no avail.

Sam and Rose are now celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with a cruise in the Mediterranean. Sam hears the most beautiful music ever heard, jumps overboard, and winds up on the Siren’s island. There he must struggle with the seductions of the Siren, the terrors of middle age, and the tortures of creative failure. And he must find a way to get home and win his wife back.

Maude, a lonely, surly, storefront psychic has accepted that love is not in the cards for her. She can see the future and knows this to be true. But when Jeremy, a despondent love-hungry accountant threatens to kill himself if she sees no love for him, she must wrestle with fate, and in changing his destiny, change her own.

With genomic breakthroughs happening at breakneck speed, we can learn more about what our futures may hold than ever before. But how much should we know? And who gets to decide? Inspired by a recent court case between the Havasupai tribe and Arizona State University, Informed Consent takes us into the personal and national debate about science v. belief, and whether our DNA is our destiny.

The Cherry Orchard takes a holiday in the Catskills as the Schwartz family congregates, maybe for the last time, on the one-year anniversary of their father’s death.

Dotty’s life in Sterno with her husband Hamel is absolutely perfect! It’s a fairy tale, it really is. True, in their seven years of marriage Hamel has forbidden her to leave their tiny apartment or speak to anyone, but Dotty is so very happy to spend her days watching video re-enactments of the day they first met.
When a phone call from a mysterious woman threatens to tear her world asunder, Dotty must venture out into the vast city of Sterno, and try to discover what it is to be a “real” woman.

The gun control issue goes to kindergarten.

10 minute play -- Why won't Sam show his mom his college essay?

​Lizzie is a cuttlefish, who has a deep yearning to climb out of the ocean and breath air! But nobody has ever done that before...

The darkest prom story ever.

Jim has been standing on one leg on a park bench for 99 days! He will break the world record! And he has gotten more attention from fans and the media than he ever got as an actor. It’s been thrilling. Now… how to convince his new bride that he should try for 100 weeks?

The big bad wolf comes in many forms...
A feminist cautionary tale.​

It is Saturday, Chaim is late to join his Minyan, and his Shabbos Goy has not sent the elevator to him! How can he persuade this ancient cleaning woman that, for him, pushing the elevator button himself is work and not allowed on his day of worship?

After 63 years of marriage, Mabel wants a trial separation, but why?

A 20 minute play in which woman confronts her troll on a seemingly "blind date" Unproduced!