Melissa Toomey

Melissa Toomey

Mel Toomey writes plays and comics. After wandering the West for a number of years, she is currently based in NJ/NYC. She has developed plays with The Actors' Studio, Luna Stage Company, The Tank, Fresh Ground Pepper, INKubator @ Art House Productions, Playdate @ Pete's Candy Store, NJ Play Lab, Theatre for the New City, and more. Her work has been published by Smith & Kraus. Current member of The...
Mel Toomey writes plays and comics. After wandering the West for a number of years, she is currently based in NJ/NYC. She has developed plays with The Actors' Studio, Luna Stage Company, The Tank, Fresh Ground Pepper, INKubator @ Art House Productions, Playdate @ Pete's Candy Store, NJ Play Lab, Theatre for the New City, and more. Her work has been published by Smith & Kraus. Current member of The Actors Studio Playwrights/Directors Unit, and alum of the 2021 Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive with Gary Garrison and Mark Bly.

She has recently been a Semi Finalist for the Premiere Stages Play Festival (2022), Pipeline Play Lab @ Pipeline Theatre Company (2021), Valdez Theatre Conference (2022), NJ Play Lab Residency (2022), and the Women's Playwrights Circle @ Speranza Theatre Company (2021).

She creates outdoor theatre whenever possible, most recently with her group, Leave No Trace Theatre (www.leavenotracetheatre.org). She was once a full time traveler. She once lived at the Grand Canyon. BFA, Acting: SUNY Purchase.

Divergent in more ways than one, Mel is a neurodivergent artist.

Plays

  • ashland: a shakespeare play by Melissa Toomey
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    5–6
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    Genre: adventure, drama + 2 more
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    Keyword: Ashland Oregon, inspired by Shakespeare + 5 more
    Genre: adventure, drama, fable/folktale, political
    Keyword: Ashland Oregon, inspired by Shakespeare, homelessness, mental illness, street musicians, hippies, wandering
    Aliena, a brilliant street musician, arrives in Ashland, Oregon in search of her mentally ill and homeless estranged father who has a gift for music/magic, and a Shakespeare obsession. Disguised for protection, her efforts to find him—and a home for herself—are complicated by the growing police crackdown on homelessness, and the volatile spirits she has inherited.

    A play about street musicians,...
    Aliena, a brilliant street musician, arrives in Ashland, Oregon in search of her mentally ill and homeless estranged father who has a gift for music/magic, and a Shakespeare obsession. Disguised for protection, her efforts to find him—and a home for herself—are complicated by the growing police crackdown on homelessness, and the volatile spirits she has inherited.

    A play about street musicians, Shakespeare, "the homeless problem," and what it means to look for home in all the wrong people.
  • the devil smokes American Spirits by Melissa Toomey
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: adventure, fable/folktale + 3 more
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    Keyword: religion, delusion + 3 more
    Genre: adventure, fable/folktale, fantasy, horror, immersive
    Keyword: religion, delusion, patriarchy and feminism, female power vs. violence against females, Cults
    After fleeing an abusive religious cult, a mysterious young woman teams up with a mandolin-playing drifter who believes himself to be the devil, as they seek to navigate the underworld of the American Mother Road in search of a place to call home. The lines of belief, delusion, and religion are blurred—as are the definitions of good and evil—as a new, disturbing power emerges in this young vagrant woman who has...
    After fleeing an abusive religious cult, a mysterious young woman teams up with a mandolin-playing drifter who believes himself to be the devil, as they seek to navigate the underworld of the American Mother Road in search of a place to call home. The lines of belief, delusion, and religion are blurred—as are the definitions of good and evil—as a new, disturbing power emerges in this young vagrant woman who has nowhere to call home and nothing to lose.
  • danse macabre : a kiss of death by Melissa Toomey
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: drama, fable/folktale + 2 more
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    Keyword: dark western, western gothic + 7 more
    Genre: drama, fable/folktale, fantasy, horror
    Keyword: dark western, western gothic, hobos, runaways, railroads, historical, fable/folktale, almost all female cast, magical realism/supernatural
    at a run down strip club in the American West, a freight-train-hopping Maiden joins with the lost soul of a missing indigenous woman to seek vengeance against her stalker, their enemy: a vagabond known as Death. in a surreal acid-Western ghost story spanning through time, we are questioned : How lost do we have to become to finally be free? And are we born to die?
  • Call of Queens by Melissa Toomey
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: adventure, fantasy
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    Keyword: childhood trauma, Adventure/Fantasy + 2 more
    Genre: adventure, fantasy
    Keyword: childhood trauma, Adventure/Fantasy, nostalgia, 90s
    A set of estranged twin sisters are called back as adults to the make believe world they had created as children, in order to fulfill their destiny, save the world, and save each other from the past. The play explores questions of what it means to reclaim identity after shared trauma, and what it is to believe, make believe, or play pretend, in both our imaginations as children and in real life as adults.
  • Cicada by Melissa Toomey
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: drama
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    Keyword: Love with Mental Illness, bipolar disorder + 1 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: Love with Mental Illness, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorder
    As the sun sets, beneath a tree covered in cicada shells, Lara and Ryan reckon with their friendship and the mental illness that threatens to destroy it.
  • Inside the Mask by Melissa Toomey
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: drama, experimental + 3 more
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    Keyword: Surreal dystopian, autism spectrum disorder
    Genre: drama, experimental, movement/physical, mystery/thriller, science fiction
    Keyword: Surreal dystopian, autism spectrum disorder
    In a mysterious future (or maybe present), human beings wear masks to conceal and control their identities in the outside world. A couple struggles with the consequences of stepping out the front door. A dystopian allegory inspired by autistic reality.
  • the wheel: yule by Melissa Toomey
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, fable/folktale + 1 more
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    Keyword: ritual, Celtic folk tale + 6 more
    Genre: adaptation, fable/folktale, pageant
    Keyword: ritual, Celtic folk tale, alternative Christmas, Yule, dinner theatre, Festival, pagan, paganism
    a solstice ritual
  • Off the Ditmars by Melissa Toomey
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy
    Genre: dark comedy
    Out with the old, in with the new...Astoria actresses that is. The search for a new roommate with a twist.