Michael Goodwin Hilton

FULL-LENGTH. Judith and Caroline, two characters inspired by "To Kill A Mockingbird", have died. Caroline, a Black woman, appears in the afterlife version of the house belonging to Judith, a white woman, in the 1930's Jim Crow South. Reflecting on and wrestling with the betrayals, triumphs, and failures that marked their lives, both women will need to transcend the distances which defined them in life in order to find their peace in death.

FULL-LENGTH. Nell Persons (a poet loosely based on Anne Sexton) is dependent on her daughter, Katie, after attempting to take her own life. Can Katie break free to fulfill her own potential despite her mother’s neediness and instability? Centering on the intricate relationships among a playful and poignant quartet, the play explores the perils of overdependence, the limits of helping others, and the creative impulse – above all – to understand why we create and how we discover joy in living.

FULL-LENGTH. Cassie and Teague, two siblings from the Traveler community in Ireland, have been summoned to Northern Ireland in an effort to recruit Teague, a renowned sniper, to join a nationalist paramilitary group known as The Army. Cassie foresees despair and devastation ahead, but will she succeed in convincing her brother to lay down his arms before it’s too late? Building on themes from Greek tragedy – most notably that of Cassandra and her visions – the play interrogates the conflicting loyalties to and fundamental tensions between family and country, myth and truth, love and war.

FULL-LENGTH. When is that moment in a father-son relationship when everything changes forever? How do we make peace with personal and political disillusionment? Henry and Max Turner must face these questions as their relationship evolves during the course of their afternoon drives across Monmouth County, New Jersey as part of Henry’s job as a school bus driver. Discussing, among other things, the heyday of ‘60’s folk rock, world literature, American junk culture, Bob Dylan, the Iraq War, and the trials and travails of adolescent romance, Henry and Max’s journey is one which transcends the miles they cover; and it is headed toward complete transformation.

FULL-LENGTH. A collection of ten short plays, all of which take place in a dive motel at the Jersey Shore. Characters from Homeric epics and the Book of Genesis appear alongside regular New Jerseyans, thereby examining the porosity between myth and modernity and inquiring into their shared truths. The collection explores and explodes the notion of the ordinary, investigating the everyday enchantments that stitch together human reality.

FULL-LENGTH. Sandra was sexually assaulted at a party. She has no memory of what happened. Years later, one of the men involved, Daniel, applies for a job at the deli where she works. He is intent on making amends for his behavior. Will Sandra be able to forgive him, and herself, for something so unforgivable?

FULL-LENGTH. Terry McNeil needs to have the ten-speed bicycle. Red, the owner of the bike shop, cannot allow him to have it. What does this object mean in the lives of these men? How does it define them? How can we better communicate in the modern age?

FULL-LENGTH. What happens when the present refuses to learn from the past? Cloudy and Gene are determined to rescue their loved ones at any cost: Cloudy, her elderly father, Heinrich – a German immigrant and World War II veteran, as he battles alcoholism and dementia; Gene, his emotionally disturbed son, Kyle. Despite their best and bravest efforts, Cloudy and Gene must come to terms with the fact that not all demons can be banished and not all heroes save the day.

FULL-LENGTH. The Zimmerman family returns to their home in New Orleans three years after Hurricane Katrina. A still-ruined house and the unquieted ghosts of their shared traumatic past await their return.

ONE-ACT. Gene decides to sell his boat that he and his son, Kyle, a convicted felon and arsonist, had taken care of for years. How do we let go of the past? How do you help someone who refuses to be helped?

ONE-ACT. After an eternity apart, Adam and Eve have finally reunited on an empty beach on the Jersey Shore. Adam is manically depressed; Eve is on welfare. Their reunion opens up new possibilities for their personal journeys as well as their relationship, if only they can move on from their shared traumatic past once and for all.

ONE-ACT. Ralph Persons, a once famous American writer, is dying. His longtime friend and fellow writer, Nelle, nurses him in his final hours. Determined that he not die before reconnecting with his estranged son, Jack, Nelle invites Jack to pay Ralph one final visit. The characters Ralph and Nelle are loosely based on iconic Southern authors, namely Tennessee Williams and Harper Lee.

FULL-LENGTH. Lindsey and Loretta live alone in rural Upstate New York. Lindsey is determined to move out of her mother's house, and to escape small town life, but the path to her future will first lead her through the trauma of her past.

ONE-ACT. Red, an elderly lawyer and army veteran, hires Winter, a young prostitute, to spend the night with him in order to help alleviate the "nothing noise" of living away from his wife, who has dementia. Winter, however, with her boyfriend Seb, is setting Red up to rob him. What is the true value of memory and what does it mean to those who've lost it, or wish that they could?

MONOLOGUE. John Freebody desperately needs to contact his brother after spotting a classic car, an old white Lincoln, which reminded him of a trip he and his brother took out west in their father's truck when they were boys. John wants to reconnect with his brother about this childhood dream, only to end up reliving a dead end journey.

MONOLOGUE. Kate is waiting with her family to board a plane at JFK. The world is quite literally burning down around her, but all she can think about is the outsized and extraneous role that Charles Manson plays in American culture. The story is framed as a closet drama, i.e. a play that is meant to be read rather than watched, and is, in part, a tribute to David Foster Wallace.

10-MINUTE. Diane sits in front of an empty television screen, day in day out, at a nursing facility. Her daughter, Anne, tries to lead her away from it, but what Diane sees on the screen is the show of a lifetime.

10-MINUTE. Ben and Samantha are both waiting in a hospital emergency department, one of the few places where both feel "warm." They begin the play on their phones and finish it in each other's arms. What does it take to reforge the bonds of basic human connection in today's world?

10-MINUTE. Tom converses with the spirit of his sister, Rose, on the porch of their childhood home, reflecting on past grievances and present ghosts. The play is inspired by the life and work of Tennessee Williams.

10-MINUTE. Chicago, 1955. The day of Emmett Till's funeral. His mother, Mamie, withdraws to a separate room where a photographer from Jet magazine, Travis, approaches to ask what he should do with the photos he's taken - leading to a decision that will soon change the world.

10-MINUTE. Redford has died. He cannot leave the earth, though, without first making peace with Holly, his girlfriend once upon a time and his biggest opportunity missed. What he realizes, though, is that what he has failed to do in life might be every bit as important as what he had accomplished.

10-MINUTE. Jane awaits her lover in a highway motel in Iowa on a day of heavy rainfall. The man who eventually shows up, however, is not the one she was expecting. A young man, Garrett, who claims to be her grown son from the future, confronts her about the choice she is about to make, a choice which will result in his own conception and have devastating consequences for their future lives.

10-MINUTE. Brian has come back to New York after an extended road trip out west. His girlfriend, Leonie, has mixed feelings about his return. Set in a West Side apartment in the present day, “The Mountaineers” observes the moment in a relationship when it becomes painfully and poignantly clear that love is not always enough to hold two people together.

10-MINUTE. The human race has evacuated Planet Earth. Simon, elder Member of Parliament, sweeps the floor after his effort to secure a budget for cultural events, including a circus, has failed. Shortly after this defeat, Simon meets Welder, who seeks his help to make sense of a vision whose essence might be enough to bolster Simon’s spirits in the twilight of his career.

10-MINUTE. Marlon travels with his son, Jacob, to Princeton University to meet with an Admissions Officer. On the way, Jacob has a profound and transcendent experience in a roadside port-a-john, one which transforms his ideas of happiness and personal fulfillment yet will lead to a total breakdown of communication with his father.

10-MINUTE. Years ago, Peter Mayhew left an unfinished manuscript on a shelf in his local library. After coming back to retrieve it, he is confronted by the abandoned heroine of his imagination, Winter Dallas. Do our stories haunt us or do we haunt them?

10-MINUTE. Set in a country beset by permanent warfare, Hector and Achilles are two young brothers hiding from soldiers in their basement. Through the eyes of these boys, the perennial dynamic of war, that of the powerful overwhelming the powerless, is examined with piercing and tragic clarity as the play demands to know when the nightmare which consumes so many lives in this world will finally end.

A collection of eight one-page plays on a variety of themes and genres, including absurdism, satire, science fiction, slapstick comedy, coming of age, play without words, and magical realism.

"Phases", "The Cure", and "The Salt Gatherer" have been selected for the 1st Annual One Page Play Festival in Stuttgart, Germany - the first English-speaking festival of its kind in Europe. "Phases" was honored as a runner-up for Best Drama and was an audience favorite during the festival.
"Revolution" was featured in the One-Page Play Festival at the Kelley Barracks U.S. Military Base in Stuttgart, Germany, winning an award for best actor at the closing ceremony.