Mia McCullough

Depending on one's perspective the Squirrel Plays are three movements on a theme or three acts of one play, but the latter two plays cannot exist without the previous ones and they are intended to be presented as one evening of theatre.

Infestation or The Play About the Squirrel

Tom and Sarah don’t want squirrels. They’re not like, “Maybe someday.” They really don’t want squirrels. Squirrels don’t suit their lifestyle and it’s in the pre-nup, but when they discover a squirrel trapped in the attic of their new home they have very different responses to this unplanned...situation. A look at abortion through metaphor, Infestation is a one-act play with one Man, one Wife, and an “Exterminator.”

Compensation

The extermination bill for their unplanned squirrel is outrageous. Tom doesn’t want to pay it. Sarah wants to forget it ever happened. Instead of respecting Sarah’s wishes, Tom tries to convince the neighborhood association that they should subsidize the cost of local exterminations leading to unpleasant debate, airing of dirty laundry, strained relations with the neighbors, and ultimately a rift in their marriage. A reflection on the use of public funds for abortion, Compensation is a one-act companion piece to Infestation.

Eradication

Already strained relations with the neighbors get worse when the Alderman goes on a shooting spree killing several — mostly black — squirrels in the neighbor’s yard. Then animal control manages to kill a couple more. Tom and Sarah find their relationship mending as they band together to oppose the neighborhood bigotry, and join the new movement to reduce gun violence and eliminate abuses perpetrated by animal control.
An exploration of how guilt and good intentions can lead liberal whites down a very patronizing and unhelpful path, Eradication is a companion piece to Infestation and Compensation.

A newly blended family spends a nearly disastrous holiday together in their fancy but haunted home in Westchester County, NY.

Erik, a sullen teenager, wants nothing more than to get away from everyone and everything he knows. He’s biding his time, closing himself off from everyone around him with his music and his video games. He hates his self-absorbed step-mother. His father, after being arrested on drunk driving charges, is completely consumed by early days of recovery from alcoholism and has no time for Erik’s unhappiness. Erik’s step-sister, who was not supposed to be home for the holiday at all, has arrived angry and violated. The housekeeper, Angela, is the only one with time for Erik and yet she does not truly understand him either. But the biggest threat to Erik’s sanity is his dead mother, whose ghost has been wandering the house for years, knitting and poking at Erik’s subconscious.

And then Evelyn, Erik’s step-mother, brings home a life-size rag doll – once promised to her daughter – whose ownership is now a matter of some dispute. The doll becomes the catalyst and the cause of much emotional trauma for the rest of the holiday week. She serves as a hiding place, a source of solace, a means for a dead mother to talk to her son, a sexual surrogate, and both a keeper and revealer of family secrets.

A very dark comedy about mental illness, alcoholism, and household spirits.

LUCINDA’S BED chronicles the life of Lucinda, a “Good Girl”-then-woman, through the significant moments that happen in and around her bed. It begins with a bed piled high with frilly, girlie sheets, but as each new stage of her life comes, a layer of bedding is pulled away to reveal something new. The two men who populate the piece are the “Monster”-under-her-bed, who portrays the various men that compromise Lucinda’s self-worth and tempt her darker side, and Adam who represents all the “Nice Guys” who promise to protect her but hurt her anyway.

As the play proceeds each of the characters tries to break from their mold. Lucinda desperately wants out of her “Good Girl” shackles, but by the time she figures out how to not be an unfailing rule-follower, there is too much to lose. The Monster, bound to Lucinda, finds himself falling in love with her despite his job as instigator and seducer. Adam is the only one who manages to release himself from his role as “Nice Guy,” but not without gravely hurting Lucinda in the process.

With each new betrayal Lucinda becomes harder and more bitter. Finally, with her heart turning to stone, Lucinda turns into a monster herself, releasing Adam from a hero role he cannot possibly fulfill, and seducing the love-sick Monster into granting her final wish.

A full-length cautionary tale in one act. (There is some argument whether it's dark comedy or a funny drama. Dramedy, maybe?)

A 19 year old Syrian refugee agrees to marry a much older Jordanian doctor so that she can escape the refugee camp and get an education, but when she gets to his home in Amman she finds herself a pawn in a strange family drama.

To live in Chagrin Falls, Oklahoma is to be in the killing business. The town’s major employers are a cattle slaughterhouse and a penitentiary where lethal injection is administered. Whether they work at the slaughterhouse, or play preacher or guard to death row inmates, or merely offer a bed and a hot meal to those visiting the prison, each resident of Chagrin Falls makes their living off of death and captivity.

A week prior to a particular execution, an Asian-American graduate student comes to town — purportedly to do a story on a man who is scheduled to die. As this would-be journalist interviews a cross-section of the population she finds her subjects revealing far more than their opinions on capital punishment. She is repelled by the recently-retired slaughterhouse employee’s morbid humor and his strangely intense interest in her background. She is seduced by one prison guard’s painful tale of sacrifice, and is comforted by the naivete and kindness of another. Though she never gets what she came for, when she witnesses the execution she becomes one of them: a participant in the killing, an honorary resident of Chagrin Falls.

In a not-too-distant future two separate missions of settlers are sent to Mars. One is a government sanctioned mission, and one is a mission privately funded by a billionaire-megalomaniac that is both scientific exploration and reality show. The two groups of settlers are forced together and must figure out how to integrate their settlements while navigating conflicting directives coming at them from leadership on Earth. They must also avoid asteroids, endure dust storms, search for water sources, reanimate long-frozen Martian microbes, and try to maintain connection with those they left behind.

This play is designed to be easily cast by high school and university theatre programs. 13 of the 15 characters are designated with they/them pronouns (though they don't have to present as gender neutral/fluid), and inclusive casting is encouraged.

This piece was written to be performed on Zoom.

Paul made a pact 30 years ago, to dig up a time capsule that he buried with his best friend Lainy, who moved away a few years after and he has not heard from since. When Paul’s wife Carol realizes that Paul has no intention of going to the planned rendezvous, she goes herself. Carol meets a woman she believes to be Lainy, they dig up the capsule and Carol cannot help but feel betrayed by the secret she finds inside.

Rachel, the woman who pretended to be Lainy, returns to her half empty apartment. When Eli, a transgender man formerly known as Lainy, shows up to take away the rest of his belongings, Rachel taunts him with the remains of his time capsule and false information about its unearthing.

Since Africa chronicles the tensions between a Dinka refugee — one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan” — and three people who help acclimate him to his new urban surroundings: a recently-widowed socialite, her reluctant and grieving college-age daughter, and an African-American Deacon from the local Catholic parish. A look at American culture through the eyes of an African, this play explores the tensions between blacks and whites, Africans and African-Americans, the devout and the non-religious.

As he clumsily navigates this new land, the Dinka refugee is confounded by American’s self-centered nature and our notions about art and ritual. He would like to embrace this new life with all its opportunity, but the tug of home and the ache of displacement is ever-present. Meanwhile, the wealthy socialite’s misconceptions and romantic notions about Africa are turned on end. As she attempts to help the “Lost Boy,” she finds herself battling with the Deacon, with her daughter, and with her own inability to grieve for her husband. The Deacon’s inability to connect with this refugee forces him to question his own identity as an African and as an American.
Guiding each of these characters through the journey of the play is the Nameless One, a non-speaking, dancer spirit who embodies the commonality of human experience and the under-lying spirituality in even the most lost souls.
(A great play for adult audiences and student matinees. Subject matter easily linked to social studies curricula.)
SINCE AFRICA can be purchased here:
http://www.broadwayplaypubl.com/SINCE%20AFRICA.htm

In a well-to-do Chicago suburb a local spa sparks controversy with a billboard ad featuring a picture of a gorgeous woman in a bikini, superimposed with arrows suggesting how she could be cosmetically enhanced. The model, the photographer, the spa-owner, a local feminist activist and her daughter, and the barista (who observes them all) comment on the events leading up to the billboards ultimate removal. A look at how body image and societal and cultural pressures affect both men and women’s perceptions of themselves and of each other.
FYI, Impenetrable is sort of a monologue play. But not entirely. Because I don't like monologue plays.
Also, I say that 4 of the characters are white, but the play has been done by a mostly-Asian cast with a few lines changes, so there's flexibility.

When Brad, an unhappy investment banker, gets stuck on the train with Michael-Ann, a manic, multi-racial young mother who is fleeing an abusive past and grappling with mental illness, Brad is forced to face his own inability to aid her.
This brief, innocent encounter prompts Brad to confront his headstrong wife Claire with his desire for a different kind of life. He wants to do something “good.” He wants to be a better person. He wants to jump off the agreed-upon trajectory and start anew. Claire, grappling with a secret pregnancy and fear of miscarriage, is not emotionally in a place to have Brad decimate his income and/or alter her life plans.
A week or so later, Brad encounters a woman – a woman he believes to be Michael Ann – prostituting herself on the train. Desperate to act instead of avoid, Brad brings this woman home with him, hoping to help her, and this act of attempted charity splits the cracks in his marriage wide open and pushes the prostitute to the edge of her sanity.
Spare Change is an exploration of what it means to help one another, and how race, class, privilege, and idealism complicate matters further.

Taking Care chronicles the last years of an elderly woman and the mentally ill adult son who has lived with her for almost three decades. Stuck in a cramped, one-bedroom apartment, Ma and Benny have spent much of the past thirty years pretending the other wasn’t there. Now that the old woman is more or less house-bound, she foists conversation upon her unwilling son and threatens to institutionalize him if he doesn’t clean up his act and start behaving more responsibly.

When she breaks her hip, Ma convinces her alienated daughters that their brother is well enough to look after her in her “recovery.” Realizing that failure to do so could result in institutionalization for both them, Benny tries to rise to the occasion and care for his mother, even as she begins a quick decent into dementia. His new responsibilities test his limited capabilities and force mother and son to forge new bonds in the waning days of her life.
Taking Care can be purchased here:
http://www.broadwayplaypubl.com/TAKING%20CARE.htm

ECHOES OF ANOTHER MAN chronicles the recovery of the recipient of the first-ever "successful" brain transplant. The donor body is from a professional golfer, the brain from a famous and somewhat notorious artist. Though the center of the story is the Patient's struggle with memories that no longer seem to match his identity, we also see the surgery's effect on three women in his life. The artist's lover/manager no longer feels connected to him in this new body, the golfer's widow cannot help but visit the walking image of her dead husband, and the Patient's primary care nurse finds herself increasing invested in the Patient even though she does not entirely agree with the surgery on ethical grounds.
Using elements of art, music, athletics and medicine, Echoes of Another Man is an exploration of medical ethics and identity.
Echoes of Another Man can be purchased here:
http://www.broadwayplaypubl.com/ECHOES%20OF%20ANOTHER%20MAN.htm

This is the story of a couple’s life together in their dream home told from the end to the beginning.

The play begins just after Evers untimely death, his widow Marie grieving alone in her dismantled house, but as the story moves back in time we find that the marriage died long before Evers. It becomes clear, as we watch the home-improvements reverse and the house return to the dowdy state they found it in years before, that Marie and Evers’ relationship was fragile and could not tolerate disruption. While they had the tools to strip the layers of paint, peel the wallpaper, chip away at all that was distasteful, we find they didn’t know how to maintain the integrity of their house. Marie’s sudden decision not to have children, Evers quitting his job without warning, even Evers’ friendship with the next door neighbor contributed to the slow deterioration of their foundation. As the marriage falls back together, as we witness the choices each spouse made that widened the chasm between them, we also discover the dreams and the optimism with which this couple began, and we see all that they have lost.

Fredrik Rundstren is an isolated and lonely retired surgeon. Once lauded and respected, his experimentation with alternatives to anesthesia put him at odds with his colleagues. His eccentricities and his acute arthritis eventually forced him into retirement. His second wife has not quite aged past the trophy stage and, being younger and far more mobile than Fredrik, she has gone on with her life without him, playing the resentful and reluctant caregiver.

To ease his loneliness, Fredrik plays chess on-line, and has befriended a teenage girl — a cello prodigy — who is home-schooled by her over-protective mother. This mother, suspecting Fredrik is an internet predator, sets the local police on him. Michael Guttierez, the detective sent to investigate is, like Fredrik, a sufferer of chronic physical pain. An unlikely friendship forms between these two men as Michael attempts to uncover Fredrik’s true motives.