Patrick Gabridge

At the Massachusetts State House, on February 21, 1838, exiled Southerner Angelina Grimke becomes the first American woman to address a legislative body. Her powerful speech about abolition also firmly asserts the full citizenship of American women. Four other women abolitionists–Maria Weston Chapman, Lydia Maria Child, Susan Paul, and Julia Williams–are all there to support and guide her through this pressure-packed moment, and they have their own moments of intense struggle to share. This play was commissioned by the National Park Service to be performed in the Massachusetts State Senate Chamber, under the dome where Angelina gave her original speech.

Revolution’s Edge takes us to the afternoon of April 18, 1775, hours before the signal lanterns would shine from Old North’s steeple. With war on the horizon, Old North’s Loyalist rector, the Rev. Dr. Mather Byles Jr., is pushed to ‘resign’ his post. As Byles and Cato (an African man enslaved by Byles) prepare to leave the church for the final time, they encounter Capt. John Pulling Jr., a prominent member of the church congregation, ardent Patriot, and friend of Paul Revere. These three men share a faith but have very different beliefs concerning the right path ahead for themselves, their families, and the colonies. Their conversation explores the intersection of faith and freedom on the edge of the American Revolution.

This play was commissioned as a site-specific play by Plays in Place for production at Old North Church in Boston.

A dark look at the underside of the North Pole, as detective Harvey the Elf tries to solve the murder of Frosty the Snowman. Professor Hinkle claims he was framed, but what sorts of tundra games are these folks playing. A noir tale from the land of perpetual midnight.

On October 22, 1844, tens of thousands of people in the United States were convinced by Reverend William Miller that the world was going to end. Mary Wright has suffered loss and heartbreak and maybe going to join Jesus today doesn't seem so bad. Her neighbor, Martha, tries to convince her that things might get better and the world doesn't have to end.

In a world beset by global warming, Santa has shifted to using magic dolphins rather than magic reindeer to carry him from house to house on Christmas. A comedy of forbidden love within two opposing factions.

The lives of very different farming families intertwine after a deadly pesticide accident. As two wives find themselves caught between holding on to what was lost and moving forward, Drift finds dark poetry in how we relate to the land around us and how we grow food in contemporary America.

In a world of magical realism and rising water, two sisters are reunited at their family home. Mira, the caretaker sister, had to weather her mother’s death alone, and holds every childhood slight so close that she is literally burning from the inside, shedding ashes and embers, as her wife, Amanda, attempts to soothe her. Sister Deedee has returned to bring her fiancé, Pike, to higher ground, even as her memory is vanishing faster and faster. In a slowly drowning world, everyone is searching for higher ground. The sisters battle to the end, one unable to forget, the other unable to remember. A play of lyrical magic and visual surprise, with characters who desperately need love and dry land.

This series of five site-specific plays was created to be performed at Mount Auburn Cemetery and feature stories inspired by the rich natural environment of Mount Auburn with topics such as spotted salamanders in Consecration Dell, birders at Auburn Lake, and historic debates between naturalists who are buried at the Cemetery. (The plays can be performed altogether or separately.)

Five site-specific plays written for Mount Auburn Cemetery, which was founded in 1831, during the post-Colonial era that would help define America’s identity. These bring to life the drama, philosophies, and struggles shared by Mount Auburn founders Jacob Bigelow, by sculptors Edmonia Lewis and Martin Milmore, and by strong women like Harriot Kezia Hunt and Charlotte Cushman who sought new opportunities beyond the social norms of the time. This journey through the American experience concludes with an immigrant story, featuring some of Mount Auburn’s Armenian residents. Experience the personalities and drama that lie at the heart of America’s first large-scale designed landscape open to the public.

Four unarmed civilians have been killed and eight more wounded by the King’s soldiers. The Boston Town Meeting demands that the troops be removed immediately. Militia in the outlying towns are mobilizing, and rumors say 10,000 men are prepared to enter Boston to remove the soldiers by force. Acting Governor Thomas Hutchinson is presented with a stark choice – remove the troops and give in to the mob’s demands or face another night of bloodshed. One by one, his allies desert him, leaving him alone to face an impossible decision.

Many know the story of the Boston Massacre, but few know of the events that took place the day after, on March 6, 1770, in the Council Chamber of the Old State House. Almost 250 years ago, in that very room, the leaders of Boston struggled to heal their town and unwittingly placed Massachusetts on the road to revolution.

This play was written to be performed in a site-specific production in the actual, restored Council Chamber in Boston's Old State House (now a museum). But the show could be produced in other venues.

As a young black man, trying to make his way as a handyman via the Chore Monkey web site, Dante found it impossible to get customers to look past his profile photo and hire him. So he turned to Peter, an old, white high school friend who dropped out of college to smoke pot and play video games. Now they use Peter’s white face to land jobs—Peter gets them in the door and Dante does all the physical labor.

The arrangement grates on both of them—Peter wants more money and recognition, and Dante is constantly confronted by the racism that underlies the whole situation. When Peter’s habit of stealing little “souvenirs” from their clients gets noticed and the police are called in, their partnership and friendship crashes into pieces.

Mika is a part-time baker, always on the edge, and Jake is an aspiring video game programmer living in his aunt’s basement. Both live on the margins of society, earning a slim living by being test subjects in medical and psychological experiments. With Mika’s fiery outbursts and Jake’s extreme shyness, they seem like an unlikely pair, but as they get to know each other in medical waiting rooms they develop a friendship and romance that starts to ease their painful isolation. But is a stable relationship between two people always in an altered state (physically and mentally) even possible? Lab Rats brings a fun theatricality to the lives of two people desperate to find a hand to hold on to through the twisting maze of life.

Characters:
MIKA KOVALEVSKI Mid 20s-early 30s. Funky, maybe a little punk. Tattoos or piercings might make sense. White.

JAKE (JAEQUAN) SIDWELL Mid 20s-early 30s. Black. On the geeky side, but not necessarily obvious on first glance.

Scientists claim to have discovered two people exactly alike-not twins, but two identical human beings. Their freakish celebrity power soon threatens to engulf the world. Only one reporter can see through the mass delusion sweeping the nation, and she pays for her journalistic integrity by losing her job, her boyfriend, her freedom, and perhaps her sanity. Karen Sayer will risk complete annihilation to rescue America from a stolen election and a grim future. Her twisted, comic odyssey leads her to a strange position of lies and power.

This is a fun play about America’s love of celebrity and capacity for self-delusion. It’s a fast-paced ride, great fun for an ensemble cast.

A group of suburban neighbors are strangers to each other until an alien space ship crashes into their back yards. After its arrival, they get to know each other a lot better, and faster, than they ever expected (or wanted).

The broken wing of the ship seems to have a strange ability to enhance and intensify the feelings of those who touch it. And it turns their skin blue. At the end of the first act, the four main characters–Adams, Talia, Griffin, and Melanie–all touch the wing simultaneously and experience a moment of ecstatic intimacy and connection that shakes their relationships.

After the wing is gone, the characters must deal with the loss of the connection it brought, and the aftermath of knowing far too much about each other. Melanie returns to ask Griffin to come to Houston with her, but he’s committed to trying to reconnect with his wife. Talia pushes Adams away, but ultimately they find a way to move forward together, despite the scary, intense intimacy brought to them by the wing.

Distant Neighbors is a space-age love story about loneliness and longing, and the barriers we set up between us. It looks at the possibility for wonder, not just at the skies and the universe and the thought of unknown life forms, but also at the person living right next door.

This darkly comic love story follows two people trying to stay together, despite the insanity of the world around them-the story of a man afraid of everything, and a woman afraid of nothing other than losing her husband. With a surprising surreal style, Constant State of Panic takes a twisted look at how a couple survives in a modern society thriving on fear. Lines between reality and fantasy become blurred as we journey through this strange Wonderland.

Sarah spends her days in the airport, finding comfort in its organized chaos, forced anonymity, and careful security. Little does she know that beneath its clean and shining façade, the airport – like the world outside it – is littered with lives torn apart by loss. Caught in the crossfire of the airport’s lost souls, Sarah discovers there is no such thing as an innocent escape.

1524. England. John Tewkesbury is a savvy trader and smuggler, smart enough to know William Tyndale’s illegal translation of the Bible will be a hot commodity. But, to sell the good book, he must elude the spies of Sir Thomas More and escape the fires of the Catholic bishops. In this true story about the struggle between dangerous information and powerful knowledge, one man journeys from merchant to martyr.

Mom and Dad have never gotten around to telling Jeffrey that there’s no Santa. He’s 30, and he still believes. This Christmas the truth comes out about Santa, as well as a few other family secrets.

Abigail is an impressionable young duck who is not aware of her limitations until they are pointed out to her by the man she loves. Winner of SlamBoston, Heideman Award Finalist, festival appearances at the Edinburgh Fringe, Outlaws Finland, and InspiraTO in Toronto. Ten-minute play.

A children’s musical, based on the novel by Penny Noyce.
Book by Patrick Gabridge. Music and Lyrics by Todd Bearson
Run time: about 100 minutes

When thirteen-year-old cousins Ivan and Daphne go on a treasure hunt in the rain one summer day, they never expect to stumble into a whole new world where words and numbers run wild.

After the cousins outwit a plague of punctuation, grateful villagers beg them to find Lexicon's missing children, who have been enticed away by dancing lights in the sky. Trekking between villages in search of clues, the cousins encounter a talking thesaurus, a fog of forgetting, and the illogical mathematicians of Irrationality. When a careless Mathemystical reflects them across the border into the ominous Land of Night, their peril deepens. Kidnapped, imprisoned, and mesmerized—with time running out—will Ivan and Daphne find a way to solve the mystery of the lights in the sky and restore the lost children of Lexicon to their homes?

READING THE MIND OF GOD is a fierce battle of wills between two geniuses: one a rising young star, the other fearful of losing his place in history. Forced to leave his home because of religious persecution, astronomer Johannes Kepler seeks refuge with Tycho Brahe in Prague, in the year 1600. Kepler not only needs Tycho’s protection, he is desperate for access to Tycho’s world famous collection of stellar and planetary observations. Tycho is not eager to share. These two men struggle for dominance, enough to drive each other mad, but they are bound together by a passion for the heavens. In the end, they develop a love and respect for each other, a father-son bond opens the gateway to our modern conception of the universe

Dating is never easy. It’s nearly impossible if your mind is filled with voices from failed, brutal relationships. As Wendyl and Tina get closer, ghosts from the past spring to life, needling every sensitivity and fear.

Tina is haunted by the specter of her long vanished ex-husband and the unspeakable loss of her stillborn child. The two women most active in her present life, her boss and her grandmother, seem to do everything to keep her from forgetting.

Wendyl is a puzzle to Tina-he’s seemingly just a shy editor, completely, pathologically unable to say “no” to anyone. But just like Tina, his calm exterior hides a boiling inner world, one that’s already landed him in prison for beating his ex-wife. Wendyl’s sanity is brittle, as he relives violent, omnipresent lessons from his parents and ex-wife.

Together, Tina and Wendyl struggle to silence the voices and find a simple peace together.

A desperate American farmer travels back in time for an unusual solution to his plague of rabbits. A hilarious two-hander that offers an possible origin story for "The Tale of Peter Rabbit."

(Inspired by the playwright's struggles with rabbits on his own farm. But no actual time travel was involved.)

Conflict erupts at the farmer’s market between a young woman farmer and an older conventional farmer as they battle for customers. Beware the Brandywines.

Tina is determined to become the next Santa, one way or another.

Pieces of Whitey is a comedy about well-meaning white people. Fast-paced and highly theatrical, the narrative follows two main threads.
A well-meaning white playwright, Fred, tries to lead a more racially integrated life. He’s commissioned by an all white theatre company to write a play about race, is forced to get a license to write black characters, he’s on a game show where the contests guess the race of guests, he attends a 3-minute interracial friendship club, and government agents strip him of his white privilege. He and his wife end up adopted a black baby, and even simple things like grocery shopping and going to the video store take on a surreal tinge.

A middle-aged white couple, Bill and Betty, have a daughter (Megan), who is about to marry a black man (Jalen). A new blood test reveals that their prospective son-in-law actually has no “black blood” but that their daughter is thirty percent black. Bill and Betty find out that they’re not as white as they thought, and they struggle to adjust.

Jackie’s answer to her life falling apart is drastic and just the kind of thing to catch thrill-seeker Cassie’s attention. An intense standoff over a friendship that’s been ground to dust by hard times.

A chance encounter between two old friends, one of whom is now begging for spare change on the sidewalk, raises some tough and awkward questions.

The world has suffered a catastrophic flood of biblical proportions, stranding a brother, a sister, and her fiancee. The boat seems to be missing, and there is the matter of confessions and consequences. Who does Melinda love more, her boyfriend or her brother?

Mr. Lenox is sent to retrieve one of his students who has run away from prom, but her price for returning forces him to reveal some difficult secrets.

Dr. Alex Ebeneezer Scrooge is a hard-driving quantum physicist, but they need to learn that there's more to life than just work and career. They're visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, even though they doesn't believe in ghosts, or determinism. In a probabilistic universe, perhaps there still hope for them to change themselves and the lives of those around them.

Chris returns to his boyhood home to probe into his sister’s suicide and finds himself caught in an intense tug-of-war between his mother, his girlfriend, and his sister’s ghost. A drama centered on secrets, love, ghosts, small towns, and suicide.