Chelsea Sutton

Dr. Kam Vandermeer is presenting her research on the mysterious Mahulley Monster at the Midland Paranormal Convention when C-List paranormal TV personality Peter McGillis starts poking holes in her story. But their bickering gradually unearths something stranger than either could have imagined.

After moving to a new corner of suburbia, a broke young mom is lured into a multi-level
marketing scheme by her new neighbors and a slick-talking bottle of tonic, and must either claw
her way to the top of the pyramid, or lose everything by leaving.

It’s Marley’s first graveyard shift at the local 24-hour Sparky’s Burger Barn and she is struggling to build the perfect burger, grasping at the last vestiges of meaning in her life, and really killing the vibe for her slacker co-worker Dev. But when a rival fast food chain throws a chocolate shake in her face from the drive thru window, it kicks off a quickly escalating prank war that distracts Dev and Marley from the real crime happening under their noses. The Graveyard Shift is a comedy grounded in the realities and absurdities of small town, minimum wage life. A fast food job is no joke – it’s war.

Finalist, Reva Shiner Comedy Award, Bloomington Playwrights Project, 2016.
This play was workedshopped with the Skylight Theatre in Los Angeles, CA and produced with MadLab in Columbus, OH.

April and Zoe have been estranged since college, and have only just agreed to meet up to go to dinner, when they stumble across a dead woman lying in the garbage outside a convenience store. Zoe, April and the store clerk Quinn are stuck in a waiting game, listening to the 911 busy signal, unsure what to do about the body when authorities can’t be reached. They pass the time guessing who the woman might be, if she’s homeless, and how she got there in the first place. In fantastical interludes, the dead woman plays out scenarios with the trio, the trash in the alley transforming into odd set pieces of their lives. But when Zoe starts seeing the dead woman talking to her for real, things spin out of control, and nothing seems quite right. The dead woman’s story begins to merge with Zoe’s, the dark past between Zoe and April unravels, and a romantic relationship between Quinn and Zoe bubbles to the surface. As the stories twist deeper, it's revealed that April is also dead, having killed herself in the wake of the loneliness and isolation created in the wake of Zoe’s behavior toward April and April’s future husband, and April’s long term disappointment in her ability to not become a mother. Zoe suddenly remembers how she got to this alley in the first place - she is on her way back from April’s funeral, going to visit Quinn to tell him that she is pregnant. Before Zoe could talk to Quinn, however, Zoe is hurt - and as Quinn finds her bleeding on the sidewalk, and calls 911, Zoe must finally make a choice to see if she lives or dies. The play explores questions around women’s relationships, our relationships to poverty and motherhood and sexuality, the ways we disappoint each other and ourselves when we are too scared to make a choice.

FAR WORSE THINGS follows two urban explorers (those who explore man-made ruins) on their last excursion documenting a forgotten, crumbling building in the middle of Hollywood that begins to come to life around them. Taking inspiration from classic Hollywood monsters, the play fuses science fiction and a haunted house story to excavate the human obsession with ruin and neglect, specifically exploring the ways Los Angeles glosses over, buries, or tears down its own history. The play asks why we abandon and erase some histories while we preserve and protect others, and how humans leave indelible marks on the environments they inhabit.

Bennett wants to tell you a story. A story about how she became a villain. No. How they cast her as the bad guy without her consent. The story really begins with a mask of a bird and a friendship betrayed, but it ends today, when Bennett’s aunt dies in the garden of a haunted house, where every night you can hear the fireworks from the theme park down the road. Bennett didn’t audition for the villain, but if the costume fits… I’ll Be Your Villain is a new dark comedy about grief, betrayal, and losing the arc of your own story.

Written by Chelsea Sutton with Rogue Artists Ensemble
Music by Adrien Prevost / Lyrics by Chelsea Sutton
**Currently in the market for touring the Rogue Artist Ensemble production. Reach out if interested.

A play with music.
A modern macabre retelling of Carlo Collodi’s “The Adventures of Pinocchio.” In this world-premiere play for mature audiences, the cricket is killed, Blue haunts us all, and the legendary Dogfish monster preys on our greatest fears in the tumbledown tourist trap amusement park of Shoreside, where a little wooden puppet comes to life at the hands of the wood-maker Geppetto.

Wood Boy Dog Fish is a visual feast that combines masks, highly expressive physical performance, dance, interactive sets, multiple puppetry traditions, projected media, and sophisticated special effects and illusions – including 3D enhancement to recreate a scene inside an old carnival ride.

After their sister Val’s funeral, Laney tries to help her bumbling brother Witt revive his failing video store. If their lives were movies, they might be categorized in the “hot-mess” section, or maybe down the” tragedic-suicidal-sister-family-drama” aisle. But when Witt’s friend Tate lends a hand to save the store and their sister’s memory, he brings more to the story Laney bargained for – a little romance.

A lone, cement block wall stands in an empty lot in a dwindling suburb of Southern California. A group of locals have submitted it for consideration as an historical monument, but are derailed by mysterious graffiti that can’t seem to be painted over.

Semi-Finalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival
Winner, Humantias PlayLA

A dark comedy about a kidnapping gone bad, dead crows, and Twinkies. In a feed shop in Jurupa Valley, California, somewhere along the 91 freeway, Kara is trying to find her own place in the world – which is definitely not here. Helping her brother Danny do one last job for their aunt/small-time-crime-boss Berdie, things do not go as smoothly as they should, and the sky above them seems to be literally falling.

Falling Slanted, Sat & Crazy was a Finalist for the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference, 2015.

A woman runs into a slew of characters on the first day she is attempting to run across America.

A possible love connection in a grocery store parking lot.

The strained relationship between three sisters hits a breaking point at the end of the world.

Sage and Stew are stuck at Union Station waiting for their delayed train, when Sage’s day dreams run away with her.