Trish Cole

Trish Cole

Trish Cole is a playwright whose work explores the intersect of gender, identity, resistance, and resiliency. Her plays include AMERICAN DREAM (2023 O'Neill semi-finalist), PARADISE (2023 Maryland Community Theatre Festival Outstanding Production and Script), LIFE ON MARS (EstroGenius), WOMAN: REVISED (Maryland Community Theatre Festival Outstanding Production), BUTTERFLY (Maryland Community Theatre...
Trish Cole is a playwright whose work explores the intersect of gender, identity, resistance, and resiliency. Her plays include AMERICAN DREAM (2023 O'Neill semi-finalist), PARADISE (2023 Maryland Community Theatre Festival Outstanding Production and Script), LIFE ON MARS (EstroGenius), WOMAN: REVISED (Maryland Community Theatre Festival Outstanding Production), BUTTERFLY (Maryland Community Theatre Festival Excellence in Original Script), WHO'S AFRAID OF A HOT TIN ROOF (Watermelon Festival Outstanding Production), and FIELD GUIDE TO THE NORTH AMERICAN OSPREY (Samuel French and Maryland Community Theatre Festival Excellence in Original Script). Trish is a Samuel French finalist (WITCHHUNT), a Bakeless Literary Prize finalist (The Love Parade), the 2023 recipient of The Cliff Smith Award for Excellence in Directing (PARADISE), and is the recipient of numerous script awards, including three Maryland Community Theatre Festival Excellence in Original Script awards. She earned her M.A. in Sociocultural Feminist Criticism from the University of Northern Colorado and a post-graduate certification in Library Media from the Notre Dame of Maryland University.

Plays

  • The Infinite Spiral of Happenings by Trish Cole
    Cast: 
    12
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama
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    Keyword: patriarchy, rage + 6 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama
    Keyword: patriarchy, rage, tomboy, rape culture, origin story, Jewish, high school, hysteria
    Five high school cheerleaders attempt to navigate purity and hyper-sexualization as Adam and Eve revisit the Origin Story and Joan of Arc battles not only the English, but the high school principal, gender roles, and rape culture as well. At the intersect of these stories is Bubbe, an intergalactic prophet and Jewish grandmother, traversing time and space to weave the narrative spirals together, revealing the...
    Five high school cheerleaders attempt to navigate purity and hyper-sexualization as Adam and Eve revisit the Origin Story and Joan of Arc battles not only the English, but the high school principal, gender roles, and rape culture as well. At the intersect of these stories is Bubbe, an intergalactic prophet and Jewish grandmother, traversing time and space to weave the narrative spirals together, revealing the connections–the infinite happenings–among generations and generations of women, including the women in her own family who left Odessa to come to America in hopes of finding Paradise.
  • Paradise by Trish Cole
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: Eden, Eve + 7 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama
    Keyword: Eden, Eve, Generational trauma, Jewish, rape culture, rules, good girl, religion, origin story.
    One-act (from scenes from "American Dream"). A mother and daughter have "the talk;" an assimilated American Jew recalls the event that started her family's generational trauma; and Adam and Eve go on a first date. Somehow, they are all connected.
  • Field Guide to the North American Osprey by Trish Cole
    Recommendations: 3
    ·
    Cast: 
    2
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: nature, environmentalism + 6 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: nature, environmentalism, loss, grief, Rachel Carson, DDT, marriage, osprey.
    On a March morning, while haunted by their own catastrophic nest failure, Kari and Mark wait for the migratory return of the osprey to Horseshoe Bend on the St. Mary's River for the nesting season.

    A bed on casters allows for stage migration to mirror tonal chapters and field guide chapters, informed by the environmental crisis in the 1960s when the North American osprey nearly went extinct...
    On a March morning, while haunted by their own catastrophic nest failure, Kari and Mark wait for the migratory return of the osprey to Horseshoe Bend on the St. Mary's River for the nesting season.

    A bed on casters allows for stage migration to mirror tonal chapters and field guide chapters, informed by the environmental crisis in the 1960s when the North American osprey nearly went extinct.

    MCTF Outstanding Original Script. Sam French Off Off Broadway Festival participant.

    If looking to explore this work with lesbian couple characters, please inquire about my work "Migration Route."
  • woman: revised by Trish Cole
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: comedy
    ·
    Keyword: feminist, literary + 3 more
    Genre: comedy
    Keyword: feminist, literary, LGBTQ, gender, women.
    Four dictionary definitions attempt to literally find their meaning and their place in the dictionary, as Woman herself struggles to hold onto her identity in a changing world filled with revision. In examining their relationships to the word "woman," the definitions demonstrate that gender definition and self-definition are a living and fluid process.
  • Life on Mars by Trish Cole
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: Lesbian, LGBTQ + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, drama, political, science fiction
    Keyword: Lesbian, LGBTQ, futuristic, ethnic cleansing, space, earth.
    A lesbian fugitive spends her final ten minutes on Earth waiting in shackles to board the last penal transport to Mars.
  • Who's Afraid of a Hot Tin Roof by Trish Cole
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, dark comedy + 2 more
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    Keyword: Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams + 8 more
    Genre: adaptation, dark comedy, drama, farce
    Keyword: Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, cancer, acting, actor, Maggie, Brick, George, Martha, farce.
    Four actors playing Martha, George, Brick, and Maggie take the stage simultaneously at the start of two different plays. As the actors vie for control of the stage and the limelight, they each begin to reveal themselves--not as their characters, but as vulnerable human beings.

    Original material is re-purposed from Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and Edward Albee's...
    Four actors playing Martha, George, Brick, and Maggie take the stage simultaneously at the start of two different plays. As the actors vie for control of the stage and the limelight, they each begin to reveal themselves--not as their characters, but as vulnerable human beings.

    Original material is re-purposed from Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?."
  • Butterfly by Trish Cole
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: drama, experimental + 1 more
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    Keyword: Transgender, LGBTQ + 6 more
    Genre: drama, experimental, movement/physical
    Keyword: Transgender, LGBTQ, gender, nature, prison, butterfly, lyrical, transition.
    Lyrical one-act. A mother in prison seeks refuge in an imaginary wildflower field filled with self-defined beauty when pushed to confront the chilling memories of her relationship with her transgender child.