Rita Anderson

Rita Anderson

Rita Anderson is an internationally-published and an award-winning playwright with an MFA Creative Writing and an MA Playwriting. She served as Dramatists Guild Regional Representative and as Faculty for Interlochen. She went on scholarship to The O’Neill, and Frantic is the Carousel won a National Partners of American Theatre nomination. Rita won the Ken Ludwig Playwriting Award, the top national prize from...
Rita Anderson is an internationally-published and an award-winning playwright with an MFA Creative Writing and an MA Playwriting. She served as Dramatists Guild Regional Representative and as Faculty for Interlochen. She went on scholarship to The O’Neill, and Frantic is the Carousel won a National Partners of American Theatre nomination. Rita won the Ken Ludwig Playwriting Award, the top national prize from The Kennedy Center for “Best Body of Work.” She has had 100 productions, including plays in Paris, London, NYC, L.A., Dubai, Barcelona, Canada, and Australia. Her publications include the Smith & Kraus anthologies: Best New Ten-Minute Plays, Best Men’s Monologues, and Best Women’s Monologues (2019, 2020, 2022, 2023). Early Liberty, Final Conversations, The 27 Club, Woman Hollering Creek, Saint Somebody, and Threes are “Best Selling Plays,” and Rita is published in She Persisted: Thirty New Ten-Minute Plays by Women 40+. (Introduction, Theresa Rebeck. Applause Books.) Rita was Playwright in Residence (Lakeview Performing Arts Center), and she has developed work with Axial Theatre, The 24-Hour Plays Project, Madison New Works Laboratory, Soul Rep Theatre Company, Woven Theatre & The Loom New Works Festival, HBMG Foundation & Creede Repertory Theatre, JumpStart Theatre, Illinois College, The PlayGround Experiment, The Barrow Group, Pegasus Theatre, Texas State University, Missouri State University, James Madison University, Reading Theater Project, Mildred’s Umbrella: Museum of Dysfunction, Our Lady of the Lake University, Siena Heights University, and Mélange Theatre Company. Rita was a pilot playwright with Hyde Park Theatre Writers’ Group, but the highlight of her emerging career so far was sitting on a playwriting panel with Christopher Durang—and sharing a playbill with Caridad Svich. Rita is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee for The Entropy of Rocketman, and Watched Pots (A Lovesong to Motherhood), and she is Moderator for HONOR ROLL!, an advocacy group for womxn playwrights 40+ whose goal is our equal representation in theatre. Contact Rita through her website: www.rita-anderson.com

Plays

  • THE ART OF MARTYRDOM (A Comedy) by Rita Anderson
    Recommendations: 5
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    Cast: 
    8
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    Genre: adventure, biography + 9 more
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    Keyword: History, comedy + 6 more
    Genre: adventure, biography, comedy, dark comedy, docudrama/historic, faith-based, fantasy, movement/physical, parody/spoof, period, political
    Keyword: History, comedy, Hrosvitha, herstory, dark ages, feminist spin on Shakespeare, colleges and high schools, All female world
    THE ART OF MARTYRDOM is an irreverent look at Hrosvitha, our foremother and the first female playwright, and the script is an exploration of the 10th century nun’s secret playfulness and about how her "secret" plays got out. –But, if our first female playwright lived 500 years before Shakespeare, then why has no one heard of her? An historical play that’s told with a comic, magical-realism bent, and...
    THE ART OF MARTYRDOM is an irreverent look at Hrosvitha, our foremother and the first female playwright, and the script is an exploration of the 10th century nun’s secret playfulness and about how her "secret" plays got out. –But, if our first female playwright lived 500 years before Shakespeare, then why has no one heard of her? An historical play that’s told with a comic, magical-realism bent, and its new eyes on an old world telling will resonate with contemporary audiences. One-Act (90 minutes).
  • SAINT SOMEBODY [Published] by Rita Anderson
    Recommendations: 5
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    Cast: 
    6
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    Genre: biography, docudrama/historic + 7 more
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    Keyword: war, Civil War + 8 more
    Genre: biography, docudrama/historic, drama, faith-based, fantasy, mystery/thriller, period, political, tragedy
    Keyword: war, Civil War, irish, slavery, women in the military, Buffalo Soldiers, Abolition, colleges and high schools, Women Nurses, American race relations and racism
    When an African-American “deserter” wanders into the camp of the Irish Brigade near Gettysburg, conflicts intensify, but the soldier carries an old statue that his family calls “Saint Somebody,” since they don’t know her real name. Based on real events at The Wheatfield, SAINT SOMEBODY suggests one solution as to how the Brigade of 600 held back Confederate troops for three days when they were outnumbered by...
    When an African-American “deserter” wanders into the camp of the Irish Brigade near Gettysburg, conflicts intensify, but the soldier carries an old statue that his family calls “Saint Somebody,” since they don’t know her real name. Based on real events at The Wheatfield, SAINT SOMEBODY suggests one solution as to how the Brigade of 600 held back Confederate troops for three days when they were outnumbered by thousands. What the Irish Brigade needed—and found—was a miracle. A play about the women and other unsung heroes in the Civil War, Saint Somebody explores a part of history that has not been dramatized. It confronts the brutalities of war, and the characters demonstrate love’s resilience and the necessity of hope to keep the spirit alive in dire circumstance. Full-length, Next Stage Press.
  • CUPID & PSYCHO by Rita Anderson
    Recommendations: 4
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    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: adventure, comedy + 6 more
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    Keyword: Ancient Greek Myth, cupid + 6 more
    Genre: adventure, comedy, fable/folktale, farce, holiday, parody/spoof, romantic comedy, young audiences
    Keyword: Ancient Greek Myth, cupid, classical mythology, singing telegrams, cupidandpsyche, Valentine's Day, valentine, college age characters
    Two "down-and-outs" meet on Valentine's Day after both receive bad news.
    Lindsay is scalping tickets for the show she was to see with her cheating boyfriend, and
    Jimmy has just been fired from a temp job for "Cupid's Singing Telegrams."
    [Title is a twist on the mythical lovers, Cupid & Psyche.]
  • FRANTIC IS THE CAROUSEL by Rita Anderson
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: drama, mystery/thriller + 2 more
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    Keyword: family, love + 8 more
    Genre: drama, mystery/thriller, political, tragedy
    Keyword: family, love, authority, fate, karma, coincidence, violence, secrets, American college students, class struggle
    When a rock is dropped from a bridge near a university, the worlds of three “couples” who are all somehow affiliated with the college are forced into collision and, as the tragic details unfold, an alarming degree of overlap is revealed. --Differences (in gender, age, sexual orientation, and social status) affect who we are, but are any of us as unique as we hope or as alone as we fear? Or are our lives more...
    When a rock is dropped from a bridge near a university, the worlds of three “couples” who are all somehow affiliated with the college are forced into collision and, as the tragic details unfold, an alarming degree of overlap is revealed. --Differences (in gender, age, sexual orientation, and social status) affect who we are, but are any of us as unique as we hope or as alone as we fear? Or are our lives more intertwined than seems possible, and just how random is circumstance?

    Frantic is the Carousel is what might happen if characters like Albee’s George and Martha were lost in O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night—but with the roles reversed, and as told from a female perspective. Action spans one day.
  • GLIDERS by Rita Anderson
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    6
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    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama + 4 more
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    Keyword: NASA, Moon Landing + 7 more
    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama, faith-based, period, political, tragedy
    Keyword: NASA, Moon Landing, sexual assault, domestic violence, family, stem, All female world, almost all female cast, colleges and high schools
    In the summer of 1969, three generations of seemingly ordinary women begin to uncover secrets about themselves even as the extraordinary events of the Apollo 11 mission unfold overhead. With space flight on their minds, five women struggle to break free of the expectations and obstacles that confront them on earth. It will take every ounce of courage they have to bust through the atmosphere that contains them...
    In the summer of 1969, three generations of seemingly ordinary women begin to uncover secrets about themselves even as the extraordinary events of the Apollo 11 mission unfold overhead. With space flight on their minds, five women struggle to break free of the expectations and obstacles that confront them on earth. It will take every ounce of courage they have to bust through the atmosphere that contains them.

    GLIDERS is a magical exploration of what it feels like to be lost in space in a changing world as the cast “glides” into and out of reality--and the present. “(S)he who does not know history is condemned to repeat it.”
  • TO FETCH A PAIL OF WATER by Rita Anderson
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: adaptation, adventure + 6 more
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    Keyword: Ten-Minute Play, Nursery Rhymes + 2 more
    Genre: adaptation, adventure, comedy, fable/folktale, farce, movement/physical, romantic comedy, satire
    Keyword: Ten-Minute Play, Nursery Rhymes, Comedy with fantastical elements, Farce
    Jack & Jill of nursery-rhyme fame are adults now, and they celebrate their anniversary by revisiting the site of their infamous “fall” from grace, in the hopes of reclaiming their reputations, but they meet a Genie who propositions them with a deal they cannot afford to lose. [A fun & twisted tale on the nursery rhyme.]
  • DIVORCE PARTY by Rita Anderson
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: adventure, comedy + 1 more
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    Keyword: Gay and LGBTQ, features LGBTQ characters + 5 more
    Genre: adventure, comedy, romantic comedy
    Keyword: Gay and LGBTQ, features LGBTQ characters, African American and Latinx women, gay marriage, colleges and high schools, Role Playing Games, trains
    To celebrate their anniversary, Mariah answers an ad in the paper, hoping the weekend adventure helps get her and Juanita out of the rut they’re in, but each has a secret that explodes. Will Juanita gamble on her relationship for a change or will Mariah get that “Divorce Party” she’s gunning for? [CAST 2W. Comedy.]
  • POUR CHOICES (Tracking The Servant Girl Annihilator) by Rita Anderson
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: adventure, biography + 6 more
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    Keyword: zoom, Famous Serial Killers + 5 more
    Genre: adventure, biography, docudrama/historic, horror, mystery/thriller, political, radio drama, zoom
    Keyword: zoom, Famous Serial Killers, American college students, theatre, gay and lesbian, based on historical events and characters, historical feminism
    SHERRY takes INGRID on what is probably the Worst Date Night ever, as they walk the Historic District of Austin, Texas, to track the last two murders from America’s first serial killer, The Servant Girl Annihilator.

    [This ten-minute drama for 2W+ is part of The Walking Plays series. Set during the pandemic, it is designed for ZOOM and Audio Plays, as well as full-productions. LGBTQIA. WOC.]
  • WINDMILLS by Rita Anderson
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    6
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    Genre: adventure, biography + 9 more
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    Keyword: american immigration, bias against immigrants + 7 more
    Genre: adventure, biography, comedy, docudrama/historic, drama, experimental, faith-based, movement/physical, mystery/thriller, period, political
    Keyword: american immigration, bias against immigrants, melting pot, revisionist history, Love with Mental Illness, cultural anxiety, class struggle, political bias, Family. Gay. Straight. LGBTQ
    Feeling lost after Nana’s funeral, Sophia is visited by the deceased. As Nana posthumously recreates the vivid landscape of cultures lost to the “Melting Pot,” she sheds light on modern-day Sophia’s life, revelations which resolve dark, family secrets. WINDMILLS is a fantastical journey from disillusionment to identity, and from loss to acceptance. [While inspired by my grandmother’s life—as well as by that “...
    Feeling lost after Nana’s funeral, Sophia is visited by the deceased. As Nana posthumously recreates the vivid landscape of cultures lost to the “Melting Pot,” she sheds light on modern-day Sophia’s life, revelations which resolve dark, family secrets. WINDMILLS is a fantastical journey from disillusionment to identity, and from loss to acceptance. [While inspired by my grandmother’s life—as well as by that “weird" Great Uncle I did not know I had but with whom I identify, this script is part-memoir, part-fantasy. And it is not your typical "walk down memory lane"...]
  • THREES (Published) by Rita Anderson
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    5
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    Genre: adventure, comedy + 9 more
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    Keyword: actor life, fame + 5 more
    Genre: adventure, comedy, dark comedy, experimental, fantasy, farce, movement/physical, mystery/thriller, parody/spoof, satire, science fiction
    Keyword: actor life, fame, Urban Legend, one-act, comedy, college age actors, office comedy
    THREES is a spin on the urban legend: “All actors die in threes.” A darkly comic look at the absurdities of fame, and what happens to three old actors (former classmates) whose careers took very different turns. They meet up at the Advance Obituary Office, after their fifteen-minutes of fame has faded and the gig is up.
  • THE 27 CLUB (Published) by Rita Anderson
    Cast: 
    3
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    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 5 more
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    Keyword: the 27 club, Sylvia Plath + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, docudrama/historic, drama, experimental, period, tragedy
    Keyword: the 27 club, Sylvia Plath, women poets, female poets, small cast, college age actors
    Pulitzer-prize winning American poets, SYLVIA PLATH and ANNE SEXTON, meet up with British badass, AMY WINEHOUSE, in Limbo in the Afterlife. When Winehouse suggests that they create a 60s girl group called "The Soul Sisters of Suicide," the women drink, they fight over who is the most famous, and they play Truth or Dare—until someone figures out why they are there and they band together to get out. (Dark Comedy for 3W)
  • WOMAN HOLLERING CREEK by Rita Anderson
    Cast: 
    7
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    Genre: adventure, comedy + 12 more
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    Keyword: comedy, Farce + 5 more
    Genre: adventure, comedy, docudrama/historic, drama, fable/folktale, farce, holiday, horror, mystery/thriller, pageant, parody/spoof, romantic comedy, tragedy, young audiences
    Keyword: comedy, Farce, la llorona, colleges and high schools, costumes for Halloween, Texas lore, femme non-binary
    [This BEST-SELLING PLAY (Next Stage Press) is available at The Drama Book Store, NYC.] WOMAN HOLLERING CREEK is set in the fictional town of Dark Cloud, Texas, at the DRESSY BBQ FISH TACOS, a restaurant, dress, and bait-and-tackle shop that also offers fishing and hunting tours, as well as massages. DRESSY BBQ FISH TACOS is doing a booming business since the ghost town hopes to get into the Book of World...
    [This BEST-SELLING PLAY (Next Stage Press) is available at The Drama Book Store, NYC.] WOMAN HOLLERING CREEK is set in the fictional town of Dark Cloud, Texas, at the DRESSY BBQ FISH TACOS, a restaurant, dress, and bait-and-tackle shop that also offers fishing and hunting tours, as well as massages. DRESSY BBQ FISH TACOS is doing a booming business since the ghost town hopes to get into the Book of World Records for their Largest Ball of Dental Floss. The shop is like an old-fashioned General Store on steroids. It prides itself in finding you whatever you need, and they dabble in just about everything. But, when a “stranger” comes to town and promises to make them all rich, we learn that no one is who they claim to be in Dark Cloud and everyone has a secret. [WOMAN HOLLERING CREEK, a seriocomedy with a farcical flair, takes its name from the creek that runs through San Antonio, and the script was inspired by the legend of La Llorana, the “weeping woman.”]

    Logline: Sometimes, it really does take a village.
  • "AVALANCHE!" by Rita Anderson
    Cast: 
    2
    ·
    Genre: drama
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    Keyword: a military LGBTQ character, college age actors + 4 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: a military LGBTQ character, college age actors, small cast, Award-Winning, easy to stage, Published Play
    Two opposites—each of whom has a secret—meet at a bus stop downtown and bond through bizarre circumstances in an, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” moment. 10-minute. CAST 2.
  • THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD [Deconstructing The Servant Girl Annihilator] by Rita Anderson
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: adventure, biography + 15 more
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    Keyword: underrepresented voices, true crime + 6 more
    Genre: adventure, biography, dark comedy, docudrama/historic, drama, experimental, fable/folktale, fantasy, horror, immersive, movement/physical, musical, mystery/thriller, parody/spoof, political, science fiction, tragedy
    Keyword: underrepresented voices, true crime, cold case, black history, college actors, experimental narrative structure, collateral grief, Wild Theatricality
    At one marathon rehearsal, four friends negotiate how to mount their project on The Servant Girl Annihilator, a cold case in Austin, TX—that is also America’s first serial killer. But is a universal solution possible with diverse perspectives (not to mention all the holes in history)? Can the cast solve a century-old case and shed some light on current problems? A play about grief & survival, the creative...
    At one marathon rehearsal, four friends negotiate how to mount their project on The Servant Girl Annihilator, a cold case in Austin, TX—that is also America’s first serial killer. But is a universal solution possible with diverse perspectives (not to mention all the holes in history)? Can the cast solve a century-old case and shed some light on current problems? A play about grief & survival, the creative process, and the labyrinth of modern living. An experimental drama in one act. Based on actual events.

    LOGLINE: Four women. A rehearsal room. And a cold case about America’s first serial killer. --A play that looks at one case through thirteen lenses.
  • RETURN TO SENDER: The Minnie Cox Story by Rita Anderson
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: adventure, biography + 8 more
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    Keyword: 21st century black urban history, based on a true story + 4 more
    Genre: adventure, biography, docudrama/historic, drama, fantasy, immersive, mystery/thriller, period, political, tragedy
    Keyword: 21st century black urban history, based on a true story, 21st century women, Black Magical Realism, US government, Historically Black Colleges and Universities
    The true story of MINNIE COX, the first female African-American Postmaster, 1880s-1900s, who worked for the administration of 4 US Presidents. Based on events that happened in Indianola, Mississippi, during Teddy Roosevelt’s administration. --But this isn't just an "historical biography" of a powerful, Black woman, as time shifts, mostly from 1903 but has forecasts of the future. As the style is...
    The true story of MINNIE COX, the first female African-American Postmaster, 1880s-1900s, who worked for the administration of 4 US Presidents. Based on events that happened in Indianola, Mississippi, during Teddy Roosevelt’s administration. --But this isn't just an "historical biography" of a powerful, Black woman, as time shifts, mostly from 1903 but has forecasts of the future. As the style is infused with a magical realism bent.
  • FINAL CONVERSATIONS (Published) by Rita Anderson
    Cast: 
    2
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 10 more
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    Keyword: absurdism, drama + 5 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, experimental, fantasy, farce, horror, mystery/thriller, romantic comedy, tragedy, young audiences, zoom
    Keyword: absurdism, drama, dark comedy, a mother's love, accepting death, university, colleges and high schools
    FINAL CONVERSATIONS explores a Mother’s wish to have one real conversation with her Son before his accidental death. --One morning before school, she suddenly knows that he has one hour to live and, with a kitchen-sink approach, she attempts to get it “right,” using often absurd methods to reach him, none of which alters destiny.
  • EARLY LIBERTY (Published) by Rita Anderson
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 11 more
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    Keyword: colleges and high schools, love + 7 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, docudrama/historic, drama, holiday, horror, mystery/thriller, period, political, romantic comedy, tragedy, young audiences, zoom
    Keyword: colleges and high schools, love, military, Reagan-era, mental illness, plays about disabilities, American politics, American society and politics, 20th century American history
    When Mark Haywood follows the beacon into Lighthouse Cove nothing is what it seems. But if Mark’s world is falling apart—despite increasingly-frantic efforts to keep it together, then the hotel proprietor and his family need a special kind of rescue from each other. Just what will it take for Selma to grow up and for Mark to wake up? Can these dueling opposites save the hotel and find a way to be together? Set...
    When Mark Haywood follows the beacon into Lighthouse Cove nothing is what it seems. But if Mark’s world is falling apart—despite increasingly-frantic efforts to keep it together, then the hotel proprietor and his family need a special kind of rescue from each other. Just what will it take for Selma to grow up and for Mark to wake up? Can these dueling opposites save the hotel and find a way to be together? Set in 1985 on the Atlantic shore, Early Liberty explores the limits and boundlessness of love and hope, and the darker side of what it means to dream.

    “Life is about paying attention to the right things,” but what happens when the people and places you consider safe aren’t? What is “safe” and who spells “Home”? Early Liberty is a play about false fronts and true love, about crossed wires and yardsticks we never measure up to.