Wendy Graf

Secrets, lies and unresolved conflicts play out against a background of familial memories of food and cooking in Masala Dabba, a deeply felt family drama where food is love, loss and a portal into the past. Long buried truths surface through stories inspired by each of the spices in a grandmother’s masala dabba, an Indian spice box. Though Masala Dabba focuses on an Indian/African American family, all families can see themselves in the stories about the past, culture, identity and the choices we make.

What do you do with the rest of your life, when your brother/son has committed a horrific act of a school shooting? How does the fallout affect the family of the shooter years later? Can they ever live a normal life again? Is it like dropping a pebble in a brook and watching the subsequent concentric circles grow, with lifelong affects? Does one generation, never able to explain the act, hold onto their own guilt, afraid that they might miss the signs again? Do they actually see qualities of the troubled shooter in someone in the next generation, or are they projecting in hopes of early identification? Does the past dictate the present, unlocking the future? These are some of the questions asked in Exit Wounds, about three generations attempting to come to terms with their painful past.

The Cross and the Saber is a dark comedy that takes place in a dystopian America, an America one can well imagine but hopes will never occur. Under the gathering storm of authoritarianism. totalitarianism and radicalized Christian nationalism, REVEREND ISAIAH PROFFIT (30s-40s; African American) has been arrested and locked up. Proffit is a Midwestern minister whose popularity and influence have been growing as he speaks out against the new government, the Great Leader, and PAPA GABE ROMAN (60s-70s; African American) the charismatic, superstar Evangelical leader, whom we later discover has a personal ties to Proffit. Proffit is proving to be an ever increasing threat to the federal government and the Evangelical establishment, who see him as un American, and they are out to silence him. Proffit, however, believes that America is a theocracy and should remain so, and he doesn’t hesitate to preach it, both to his congregation, his classes and in a new book titled “The Cross and the Saber”. Profit is stunned to be arrested for High Treason - Fourteen Counts - by the State because he refuses to promote the political agenda and candidate slate of the Religious Right in his church, as ordained by the regime and the Great Leader, who watches and listens too everything over security cameras and communicates via the Great Leader Immediate Response System (seventh generation Twitter) Proffit is met in his jail cell by STONE , Head Interrogator and ardent supporter of the regime, who just happens to be a robot, as do other players in this story. Will Proffit succumb to the pressures by the State or risk his life and hold to his beliefs? That is just one of the questions asked in The Cross and The Saber.

A chance meeting in an airport lounge leads to a Burmese odyssey and a search for a missing monk. And maybe love.
Unemployed Elephants - A Love Story is published by Original Works Publishing www.originalworksonline.com

When Emily Diamond dreams of her twin Beckett, who disappeared many years before, she attempts to unravel the mystery of what happened to Beckett and to her family. Do all members of a family remember the events differently? Do they all write their own narrative as to what really happened? What is real and what is rewritten in the minds of the survivors? Can parents love a child too much? Can a family ever really come to grips with its painful past? Can a person ever really make the journey to selfhood without breaking with the family that holds them tightly in their throes? These are the questions asked in Please Don't Ask About Beckett, a Memory Play and deeply felt family drama.

Activist or terrorist? All American Girl, a solo play where the actress plays 16 different characters, is an extremely timely piece in this age of domestic and international terrorism. It follows the compelling story of Katie Mason, an “ all American Girl”, as she journeys from innocent youth to political/religious extremist, passionately pursuing her ideals despite growing fears and doubts. From a normal childhood in Middle Class Boston to her adolescence in New York City, from her meeting and marriage to a Muslim Indian immigrant and conversion to Islam, Katie struggles to come to terms with her devotion to faith, the confusions of an extreme culture clash, and her desperate need to do something meaningful with her life. All American Girl begs an answer to the bigger question: is violence ever justified?
https://www.facebook.com/pages/All-American-Girl-a-play/939890266037492

An African-American attorney with a successful career discovers she has an Iraqi half-sister she never knew about in award-winning playwright Wendy Graf's latest work. This hard-hitting drama about family conflict and clashing cultures stars L.A Weekly and NAACP Award-winner Diarra Kilpatrick as up-and-coming corporate attorney Julie Dolan, whose carefully constructed life begins to crumble when she meets her half-sister Neyla. Neyla, a violinist, has fled Iraq to audition for Julliard, but Julie suspects there is more to her story. Graf's fresh spin on racial relations gives each of its characters their own voice and point of view as they navigate in a world that has become interconnected and multicultural on every level.
Production history, reviews and photos: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Closely-Related-Keys/148345098705675

In this 2012 GLAAD award winning solo play, a gay Muslim of color struggles to reconcile her faith and her sexuality.

Play is published and available through Original Works Publishing www.originalworksonline.com
Production history, reviews, photos at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/No-Word-in-Guyanese-For-Me/1222535211813…

A parent's worst nightmare... In Wendy Graf's gripping mystery, 17-year old Bethany disappears while on a school trip to Israel. As her parents feverishly search throughout Jerusalem for their daughter, they find themselves lost in a hidden world where ancient and modern collide, conflicting cultures and politics clash, and extreme orthodoxies and passionate feelings of nationalism try to coexist while growing more volatile with each passing day. (Note: some roles may be double cast) Multiply produced, photos and reviews can be found : https://www.facebook.com/pages/Behind-The-Gates/216015652690

Multiple award winning LEIPZIG explores the journey of a three-member Irish Catholic Boston family when the mother descends into Alzheimer's and begins praying in Hebrew, unwittingly revealing her long-held secret that she is Jewish, a child refugee of the Holocaust. Past and present collide in a psychological homecoming that raises deep and ultimately moving questions about identity. The play is a beautiful exploration of religious identity, loyalty, parental bonds and attendant feelings of safety or threat. It is a plea for inclusion at a time of fear and religious polarization.

Multiply produced LESSONS: A rabbi who has lost her faith and a man searching for it. He convinces the rabbi to help him study so he can have a bar mitzvah. The two characters forge a friendship as they each search for healing and forgiveness while wrestling with their own deep-rooted problems.
"A blend of wit and wisdom, "Lessons" questions, amuses and beguiles. Graf is in the long tradition of Jewish writers that include Neil Simon.
And, very much like Simon, she mixes the angst in our lives with an overlay of humor that is both touching and tender." - Ed Kauffman, Hollywood Reporter
"This quest for faith---in his case, a faith he's never had, and in hers a faith that she's forsaken---is a poignant plea that touches everyone," - KABC Radio

A Comedic Look at Jewish Assimilation in America

Guy walks into a bar....Two completely disparate strangers-a local barkeep and a Hasidic Jew- meet one late night in a barbeque joint off the highway outside of Memphis. Do they know each other or not? What is their game?
A Hasidic Jew and a Southern Baptist struggle to reconcile faith and family with their sexuality.
Poetic and lyrical, the play is a beautiful exploration of religious and sexual identity, clashing cultures, loyalty, hopes and dreams, parental bonds and attendant feelings of safety or threat. It is a plea for understanding and tolerance at a time of fear and religious, moral, and political polarization. But mostly A Shonda is about communication and unconditional love: the difficulties of it, the search for it, and the desperate need to be heard.

How the election of Donald Trump has affected a young, gay Muslim immigrant woman

54% refers to the 54% of women that voted for Trump. 54% is a protest play about Women's rights.

Wednesday’s Child tells the story of Britt, a white working class Midwesterner. She begins a career on the bottom rung of an industry remade by Latinos, whose population growth is fueling that of America, and is coming to understand what it means to be outnumbered. She and her family struggle to navigate a new and confusing terrain in America, frightened that whites seem to be losing their majority status and where demographic anxiety is contributing to many of the social fissures polarizing the US - from immigration and their town’s influx of Spanish workers to welfare reform to the election of President Trump. Finally, at a crossroads, Britt is faced with adapting or succumbing to the dark forces of violence in reaction to a world that has brought anger, frustration and disenfranchisement.

In a dystopian America (but today coming dangerously close), REVEREND ISAIAH PROFFIT has been locked up, arrested by the totalitarian state for treason because he refuses to promote the political agenda and candidate slate of the Religious Right in his church as ordained by the regime and the Great Leader. Proffit is met in his jail cell by STONE Head Interrogator, an ardent supporter of the regime, who we soon discovered is a robot, or "Humanoid L-76 Synthetic Techno Output Newly Engineered". Will Proffit succumb to the pressures by the State or risk his life and hold to his beliefs?

An unusual request brings solace to a weary ER doctor

A love story in the time of COVID. Longtime married sweethearts Jim and Barbara Dolan have been separated by Barbara's Alzheimer's when Jim is pressured by family members to move her to a Memory care facility. He visits her every day, and together he shares with her the music of their youth on these visits, in the hopes that the music will unlock more memories for Barbara. Suddenly they are separated by COVID 19 - the facility will no longer allow visitors. Thanks to a sensitive health care provider, Jim is able to connect with Barbara again through their music.

Bethany Leiberman is an angry, rebellious, disenfranchised American teenager searching for acceptance and identity. She has turned to drugs, sex, and cutting school in order to fill the hole in her soul and a terrible longing to be loved and understood. Finally, as a last resort, deferring to the advice of the therapist and their friends, her parents ship Bethany off to a summer program in Israel. Resentful at first, Bethany finds herself drawn into the Haredi world of the ultra Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, as it appears to fill the hole by offering the community, identity and family she has been craving so intensely...changing her name to a Hebrew name, adopting a new identity, cutting off all contact with her parents, and ultimately disappearing into the Haredi community. Is she now better off or has she stepped into something more dangerous?

White, and in the minority...She speaks English. Her co-workers don’t. Inspired by a Washington Post article that takes you inside a rural, rust belt chicken plant, alienated whites struggle to fit in. The tragic journey of Brittany, desperately needing to be seen, and what happens when hate trumps love.

Based on an actual recent court case, Sacred Ground explores the question: Whose land is it? This applies to the land in question in the court case - a Santa Monica hotel, then explores more broadly the same question in Israel/Palestine. Whose land is it?