Gwendolyn Rice

On a hot August night in 1914, two men boarded a train in Chicago, bound for the Wisconsin countryside. One was famed masterbuilder Frank Lloyd Wright. The other was Edwin Cheney, whose wife Mamah left him to be with the eccentric architect. They have both received the devastating news that Wright’s home, Taliesin, is on fire.

Historic accounts do not reveal what the two men talked about during the agonizing six-hour journey north. But they had plenty to say, hounded by the press on the worst day of their lives, desperate to know the extent of the blaze, and the final death toll.

It’s election night, November 2016. Amidst all the exit polls and red and blue maps on TV, Maggie gets an urgent phone call from her friend Saiyna, a young photographer she works with at the local newspaper. Rattled by the panic in Saiyna’s message and unable to shield her from xenophobic attacks of Trump supporters, Maggie decides to distract herself with a comforting ritual; she makes a pie, while recalling specific moments from their friendship that revolve around food.

As Maggie leads the audience through each step of making a great apple pie, she also traces the history of America’s hostility toward immigrants. Then she wonders what will become of her talented friend under the new administration, since Saiyna is a Muslim woman from Pakistan. She also wonders about her own responsibility to fight back against racism and prejudice.

Set in rural Georgia in the late 1930s, The Griots focuses on an elderly African American woman (Ada) who grew up in slavery, a young woman who is the descendant of the plantation owner’s family (Lizzie), and a young white man from Ohio (John) who has been sent to the South to interview ex-slaves as a part of the WPA Writers’ Project. As John gains Ada’s trust over a period of several weeks, her stories turn from quaint tales of happy field hands, to brutal accounts of violence and intolerance. And when her tales contradict Lizzie’s family legends, exposing the truth may have too great a cost.

The art world is ecstatic when a box of stunning black and white photos is discovered amongst some long-lost possessions of Ernest Hemingway. A curator from the Metropolitan Museum of Art lays claim to them, but so does a woman who might be the granddaughter of the photographer, Walker Evans.

This new play explores the meaning of authenticity and the relationship between art and marketing. Whether the medium is vintage photographs or antique quilts, it asks the question, what are they really worth? And what's more intriguing, the art? Or the story behind it?

Beloved children’s book author William McGinn has writer’s block. His wife, his agent, and his readers are eagerly awaiting his next story, but William believes he has nothing more to say -- until an ambitious upstart from his publishing company mentions the measles vaccine debate. Enraged and consumed by grief, William begins one last book that illustrates the danger of propagating fear about scientific and medical advances, and the grave consequences of awakening sleeping monsters. But to tell this story he needs the help of his 8-year-old daughter Miranda, who has been dead for decades. The book they create is a ghost story like none other.

Who do you love the most? And how do you tell them? Would you call in the middle of the night? Hide secret messages or send a postcard? Maybe for you, love can be captured in a photograph, or a Beatles record, or a set of keys. Explore love in many phases and expressions through a collection of monologues and short scenes that approach our most important relationships from many angles — in pieces that are both funny and poignant.

Appropriate for high school or adult performers.

In The Tales of Wandering Grace (or The Revengers’ Tragedies), all is not well in Sicilia. King Leontes is convinced that his wife Hermione has had an affair with his best friend, King Polixenes. Who would plant such a terrible thought in the King’s brain? Perhaps the young soldier who was recently rescued from a shipwreck knows something about this. There is something strange about Iago. . . Determined to find her daughter and fight for her innocence, Hermione sets out on a journey to Bohemia under an enchanted spell — during the day she assumes the form of a bear but at night she is a ghost, who visits those who have wronged her demanding revenge. She travels around the countryside with Constantine, the man who inherited his father’s bear-baiting business, and the elderly Russian bear Anatoly. Meanwhile Prospero is visiting the Oracle of Delphi, hoping to learn how to interpret his visions, which center on the Hermione’s fall from grace. But Ariel is refusing to obey her magical master until he grants her freedom. How can the Oracle intervene, if her prophecies are ignored? The Tales of Wandering Grace (or The Revengers’ Tragedies) merges the worlds of Othello, The Tempest and A Winter’s Tale, to create an exciting narrative that fills in many of the gaps for important characters such as Prospero, Ariel, Iago, Leontes, and Hermione, finding interesting parallels in their stories. Follow Iago’s first attempt at duping a king, Hermione’s quest to prove her innocence, and Prospero’s desire to interpret magical visions, as the stories are interwoven and each character learns the price of seeking revenge.

When Catholic priest Michael Ziperski begins counseling a convicted mob boss at Springfield Federal Penitentiary, he expects to offer spiritual support and guidance. He does not expect to be questioned by two FBI agents, looking for someone on the outside who is helping Frankie “the pizza man” Palozzollo continue to profit from his criminal past. Another unexpected visitor, a fellow priest, also comes to ask a Father Ziperski a question; will he hear his confession?

Otto Kannenberg is an aged recluse, living in a tiny apartment in Munich. Although he has very little human contact, he is not lonely — he immerses himself in the worlds of hundreds of paintings that fill his dingy flat, many by masters of Modernism, Expressionism, Cubism, Impressionism and Dadaism including Klee, Kirchner, Picasso, Monet, and Chagall. When the German government begins investigating how Otto acquired so many rare and wonderful pieces, his world is thrown into turmoil. He and the authorities must decide how to make peace with the past and make amends for Hitler’s war on “Degenerate Art.”

Sleight of hand artist and professional pickpocket Artemis Foster is called home suddenly to retrieve some of his magic books before they are sold at a public auction. As he searches an old theater for the books that may help him finally master an amazing illusion, he is visited by ghosts of his unresolved past and the greatest magician of all – Harry Houdini.