This play begins in the fall of 2011, when a libertarian rancher, an anarchist punk, an aging hippie, a radical priest, and a single mother gather in Courthouse Square in Prescott, Arizona, determined to fix America. They all agree that the one percent is too powerful, and the rest of us are getting screwed. When they try to get more specific than that, though, they find themselves disagreeing about nearly everything. Some want to focus narrowly on economic inequality, while some want to reimagine the entire structure of society. Some see the government as a potential ally, while some see it as the main enemy. Over the course of the occupation, unlikely alliances form even as friendships crumble. People unused to articulating their worldview in public are forced to defend their most cherished beliefs. The personal and political merge and fuse, and abstract debates about political theory suddenly become intensely emotional. This is a play about the sometimes frustrating, always necessary work of trying to create a new world.

The play is prefaced with two quotations, “We need a better world right away, this week” by Wallace Shawn and “We need everybody and all that we are” by June Jordan. These two “we needs” are held in tension in this play, as they are in our political moment. We must move incredibly quickly to deal with the myriad problems in our society, but we must also make sure we don't leave anyone behind. How do we do both at once? I don’t have answers. But I do have a play.

The place: a Coney Island of the mind.
The time: old timey-times.
Coney Island Baby is a musical comedy in one act by Andy Boyd featuring a demented doctor with a brilliant plan to save the premie babies of Brooklyn, a back-stage sideshow "will they won't they" romance/friendship, a famous folksinger dying of a mysterious disease, and a plan to save Coney Island from gentrification (in the person of Fred Trump (boo hiss!)) that brings them all together! It's a weird, silly, earnest, ironic musical comedy written by a playwright who only knows like five chords. It's about community, friendship, and solidarity, and it's also about why Coney Island just might be the greatest place on earth.

A weight loss competition in a small Midwestern town. A budding romance between two park rangers at the local bird sanctuary. A diner run by a mother/daughter duo whose relationship is showing serious strain. When these three collide, 15 year-old Jenny will learn valuable lessons about self-acceptance, care, and the perils of an all-lentil diet.

One was a communist. The other was a capitalist. One was an artist. The other, an engineer. And yet, for the year between the spring of 1932 and the spring of 1933, Diego Rivera and Henry Ford were friends. Rivera came to Detroit on a commission from Ford’s son Edsel to paint a mural on the theme of Detroit Industry. Rivera and his wife the painter Frida Kahlo arrived in a city on the brink of revolution or collapse: bank failures, violent labor clashes, rallies by Communists and Bible-quoting proto-fascists that drew audiences in the thousands. River Rouge tells the story of the year that followed in a dizzying collage-inspired style mixing vaudeville, docudrama, folk music, protest theatre, and magical realism. It asks a question as relevant today as it was in 1932: how can we use art to remake the world?

Seven Minutes In Eternity is an exploded biography of William Dudley Pelley, America's favorite fascist mystic. It follows Pelley from humble beginnings in small-town Massachusetts to revolutionary Russian, Jazz-Age Hollywood, and Heaven. Twice. In the second act, we enter the world as Pelley sees it, uncovering an international conspiracy that only Pelley, with the help of his allies Hitler and Mussolini, can stop.

Sinclair Lewis never actually said "When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross," but if he had he would have been talking about William Dudley Pelley. This plays shows that fascism is as American as small-town values, religious revivals, Superman, and the Ku Klux Klan.

When 17 year old Nick transfers to a new school, he finds himself drawn into the orbit of the mysterious, fabulously wealthy Jay. Jay throws extravagant parties at the local Yacht Club with the goal of attracting the attention of Nick's cousin Daisy. Only one problem: Daisy has a boyfriend, football star Tom. As Jay launches a campaign to be elected Homecoming King and win Daisy's heart, Nick finds himself more and more fascinated by Jay's ability to invent his own reality, and by his paradoxical desire to make everyone a star. This play, adapted from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, asks audiences to choose: do we want equality, or do we want to be the best?

In this play, two women in Puritan Massachusetts navigate friendship, love, sin, and death in a struggle to live Godly lives. Mercy Pritchett is a young woman recently widowed who must carve out a space for herself in a society that praises women only as wives, mothers, and daughters. Sarah Gooden is a recent arrival to Massachusetts, a refugee of the tumultuous civil war that led to the widespread discrediting of the Puritan movement. Their unlikely friendship takes us into the founding moment of American exceptionalism even as it reveals the darkness at the heart of our national soul.

A military official answers allegations of war crimes.

A tale told from far-off times that's also somehow a powerpoint presentation.

A letter from the only person who will only ever truly love you, but who lives in New Jersey so isn't really on your radar dating-wise.