Kristy Thomas

Memories Of The Game is a drama that centers on the challenges of a family working to accept the illnesses they can control and those they can’t. The action takes place in the McIntosh home, a middle class African American family of four in Kansas City, MO. Kenneth; the head of the household in his late fifties is suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s disease. It is a difficult reality for him to accept. When his mind is on the joy he has for life it’s evident and heart warming, but when he looses himself our heart breaks for the man that he was and wants to be again but can’t. Kenneth’s love for football has always been his solid hold on reality, but soon even the love of the game is fighting against him. This harsh reality is even more difficult for his wife Karen who wants nothing more than to help the man she has only known to be independent accept that he cannot be that man anymore. Karen continues to work on keeping her husband’s mind as present as she can while also being pulled into the sadness of her son, Michael and his addiction to crack. Michael has gone from the top of the mountain to sinking into the deepest part of the valley without the hope of recovery. He yearns for the freedom he had when he was clean, but like his father it is only a memory and one that he can no longer reach. Their daughter Sharon presents herself as the perfect child while hiding behind the loss of a child and her husband that has left her to grieve alone. Sharon tries to assist to keep her mother balanced; her father strong and as independent as possible, but Michael is on a downward spiral and unintentionally taking the family with him. He loves his family but the addiction has a hold on his soul. The theme of the play is the ability to wrap our minds and hearts around people that we love who are sick. Realizing that some sicknesses are chosen and others are not, they are still sick and still hold a piece of our hearts. As Kenneth forgets, Michael tries to balance on the edge, Sharon fights to find her footing after her personal loss and Karen tries to hold all of the pieces of her life together, life still continues to happen, to all of them. Sometimes it is what we are willing to live without for the sake of moving forward that makes the next breath possible.

"Gray" is a play that was written as a response to #blacklivesmatter and more specifically to African American men and the rise of deaths by police officers. The take on this situation is a different one with the play beginning in the midst of a crime scene. Someone has been shot on the street of Anytown, USA. As the neighbors come down and the police try tin investigate we meet the participants of this play. The play is set in inner woven scenes that all begin with the meeting of two boys on the basketball court. One from the present time and one clearly from a different time. As the scene progresses we realize it is Trayvon Martin an Emmitt Till, two boys doing what boys do, playing basketball. Emmit shares with him that he has a job to do, assist young black boys in letting go so they can move on, the anger isn't going to subside but letting go is the only way to move forward- this is his position. As they speak the play continues round them: stories of a black female reporter in Ferguson, MO, a mixed race couple watching Ferguson unravel, Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin's mothers meeting at a football game, a white teenager who's father has killed a black boy- guilty or innocent, and an elderly back couple remembering the Civil Rights Movement and deciding to march again in the resent. All of the scenes weave in and out of each other while Emmitt and Trayvon travel with it. In the end we find out that the crime scene isn't what we once thought it was. There is black and white, but often we live in areas of gray.

In the early 1980s in the midst of the AIDS Epidemic America as well as countries around the world we're trying to figure out exactly what it was, how it was transmitted, and whom it was affecting. Set mostly on the 5th floor AIDS ward of a hospital in San Diego CA., a special group of people are living and approaching their deaths together. Jayce, the artist, wants nothing more than to be able to be accepted. Robert, the lover, with his partner by his side hopes that they will be able to love longer. And Nick, the silent writer, the youngest of the group expresses his voice in a journal rather than speaking it out loud. Leading the pack is their charge nurse Emily and Dr. Bare who are giving them the best care they can in the given circumstances. Their shining light is a group of women called The Blood Sisters who come to the aid of their brothers who were dying at alarming numbers in hospital beds because the decision was made that gay men could not donate blood. There is also presently a massive blood shortage across the country and blood was being allocated to specific people in specific places. These women come together for the sake of their brothers to assist them in getting the blood that they need to potentially prolong their lives as the day-to-day of this epidemic continues to unfold. This is a play about the human soul and the ability that all of us must lend a helping hand. But more than anything else it is a play about looking back on our history and hoping that we don't continue to make the same mistakes when it comes to health care coverage and whom we decide should and should not be cared for. A play about a group of women most people have never heard of who made a difference, in this place, at this time, for people they didn’t know because it was the right thing to do.

Dr. Kevin Watkins is a superintendent in a local school district. In this moment he is working diligently to tie his tie but realizes that it is not his strength. It joyfully reminds him every day just how dynamic his father was at everything including ties. He talks about his life as a teacher. All he wanted to be was a teacher so that black children could have support and an adult outlet and also so that his white students could experience a black male teacher, usually the first for both groups. What his life turned into was a fast- paced push from classroom to administration. He is the only black man in the district office when racial matters in America boil over. He is always the face of the district in all racial matters. This time they want him to tell the cameras that they are working on their race relations, to make children feel safe, so that the news can move on to the next district, using him as a puppet to do their bidding. It made him realize his true purpose in his position, be the black talking head, say what people want to hear even when it's not true. But as he figures out how to tie his tie and boxes up his office, he shares his revelations and his need to be honest in this situation and tell the news the truth, even if it costs him his job. This is truly his character and his father would be disappointed in him if he didn't. Realizing he is the only black man in his high- level position also forces him to decide if that is the place he ultimately wants to be. *Can be performed on stage or on a digital setting.

On the day of the Michael Brown shooting Mason, an African American man, arrives home to see his white wife Maryann watching the news as it unfolds. Mason wants to take action and stand with people protesting. He sees this as his time to stand for what he believes is an injustice. MaryAnn doesn’t understand why this is so important. Through the scene we get to see how Mason feels about this shooting as it relates to his life as a black man and how Maryann works to understand this life through his eyes. She is opinionated and supports him but is nervous about what the cause is exactly. Their relationship is based on love but it is situations like the one at hand that makes both of them look at their lives and accept that love may be blind but in life they are black and white. Mason desperately wants Maryann to support his decision and MaryAnn wants Mason to follow what he believes is right while seeing the dangers of his decision.

Leroy “The Supreme” Robinson is an African American man in his late thirties remembering how his life changed. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY where he learned how to fight and that is exactly what he did, all the time. He had so much misdirected anger that after he graduated from high school his father took him to the local boxing gym and it was there that he finally found his way. He stopped being violent towards other people and started directing his skills into the ring. He became the man his father always knew he could be. But one night after a fight, the first fight that Leroy brings his eight-year-old son to, he finds himself in the alley with his son and father walking towards his car and looking down the barrel of a gun. He had fought so hard to not use his hands for harm but as he stands frozen in time listening to his son cry in fear he does what he must do to protect him. When he comes out of his rage and the man is dead Leroy realizes that he didn’t even know his greatest fear until now and even though it was self-defense a life is a life. He ends much like he began, standing in front of a mirror remembering how he got there, getting prepared for his son’s high school graduation realizing that he did change his life around for the better, through every fist he threw.

When Betty, an African American woman is first seen she seems frozen. Frozen in time but also encapsulated in a painting. One of the most difficult concepts in history is the idea that the people who get their pictures done are always the people in power. But behind every person of power are the people that they have used in order to get where they are. In the case of American history many of our forefathers owned slaves. this particular story takes place in an art gallery where pictures from many many generations ago are on display. But a painter decided that instead of looking at the white man who ran this country we are going to look at the Black slaves that built it. Betty will come forward, step out of the painting and have a conversation where she tells us about what life was like before she was captured and brought to a country that was not her own, separated from her family, and enslaved. Betty sees this moment in her life as a celebration, because she recognizes by being apart of this portrait she is forever memorialized and remembered. This emotional feeling is more than she ever thought that she would get from being a slave. This story is a beautiful example of the importance of art and also recognizing that behind every portrait where there is a house there is someone that built it, where there is a man there is a partner standing behind them that helped to support them, and where there is a dive into American history there are slaves who have been forgotten, unappreciated for the forced labor that built this country.

Stephanie is an amazing woman, she is also a mother, a wife, and a teacher. Her story is one that we saw a lot during the COVID pandemic that hit the world in 2020. As many different aspects of life began to rain down on the laps of education. There was a moment at the beginning of the pandemic when educators were hailed as frontline workers, very important people to the machine that runs America. But unfortunately, as the pandemic continued and the rhetoric about issues that were never a part of the educational system began to take over, and the lives of many teachers changed. And like them Stephanie found herself being accused of teaching falsehoods to the students in her history class when in fact she was teaching what she had read, what she had learned, and what everyone knew to be fact. She now stands before the school board, the community, her administrators, other teachers and her students and their parents to give her letter of resignation. She can no longer be an educator. She can no longer stand in front of her students with the freedom to teach them the things that they need to know in order to leave her classroom saying that they have an understanding of what American History truly is. This resignation did not come lightly. It came on the heels of an attack on her and her family that was led by a group of people that decided that they would be judge and jury as to who she was as an educator. The number of teachers that are retiring early or leaving the field of education altogether since the beginning of the pandemic is staggering, numbers like we have never seen before. This is just one of the many stories of educators who had to make the most difficult decision, to leave the job that they love, the students that they live for, in the field that they are passionate about because they no longer felt safe in their own classroom and in their own skin.

In a time when school shootings have become an unfortunate way of life a teenage Rachel Woodard is living in her own private hell. The challenges of being a teenager, not being understood by her peers, not feeling loved at home and no one to talk to when the worst day of her life happens, she shifts, breaks and does the unthinkable. Often after these shootings in the midst of mourning those who lost their lives, the world wonders, “why?” More often than not this question is never answered. For Rachel, who finds herself a viral sensation when her classmates bully her, take unspeakable pictures of her and post them online ruining the little piece of self-worth she has left, she reaches out to everyone for assistance. No help from her schools’ administration, no help from her peers but the most disappointing moment is the realization that her mom/dad doesn’t care to support or help her. Sometimes the answers are right in front of us, but we don’t want to see them, we don’t want to take responsibility for being the person or group of people that could have made a difference in this young person’s life and didn’t. Her mom/ dad always wanted Rachel to be a “star.” Sadly, when Rachel is waiting for her execution for the shooting that she orchestrated that day her mom/dad comes to visit, and a lot of these questions are addressed. In her final moment all Rachel wants it to be told by her mom/ dad that they love her. Instead their focus is on the crowd of reporters outside and how they can make this her shining moment as the first female school shooter. Hence, making her a “star.”
*This piece specifies that Rachel’s mom or dad can be either or for the purpose of the script.

Mercy

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina an investigation was opened into “Mercy killings” at local hospitals. This fictional scene follows Dr. Laura Callon as she maneuvers through her trial and the day that Katrina hit as well as the days after. She goes through the memories of the levees breaking, the hospital filling with water, the generators not working, the doctors and nurses leaving and the moment that she was confronted by one of the family members of one of the patients that died during the storm at the hospital. It is an emotional conversation on both sides where we see the pain of the loss of a loved one, but we also begin to understand why the mercy killings may have been humane. This scene opens up the doors to the conversation of people making life and death decisions in an instant and what the aftermath can look like. We go from past to present as Dr. Callon stand by her decisions given her circumstances. In a courtroom that is against her, families that are against her, coworkers that don’t even stay long enough to assist. Hard decisions were made by her that day and as the verdict is being handed down will she be found guilty or not guilty of first-degree murder or will the jury understand that walking a mile in someone else’s’ shoes can sometimes mean literally walking through a hellish storm. Katrina is a name that will never be forgotten in American History.

Chase and Nina have been friends since they were three years old and Chase stole Nina’s bike. They are now adults and living in New York City. On this day Chase is preparing for the biggest interview of his career and like always Nina is patiently waiting for him. She addresses the audience about her life with Chase and their love for each other is clear. It isn’t until they arrive at work at 7 World Trade Center. Chase has his interview and gets the job. As he heads to the donut shop where he is to meet Nina to celebrate as the first plane hits. He frantically calls his best friend who is in the other tower and the clock beings. The clock is counting up as the chances of survival are counting down. Chase watches as the towers fall and Nina is nowhere to be found. At the 9/11 Memorial he gets to see Nina again. She tells him that she is always with him, they laugh, they cry and as Chase makes his way into the Memorial Nina watches him knowing that he will continue to live past losing her.

Jerry is a veteran from the War in Afghanistan. After serving three tours he is finally home with his wife and son. Unfortunately, Jerry has some skeletons in his closet that he brought back with him that will not be hidden for long. He can’t sleep. He can’t focus and the two reasons he had for living, his son Jesse and his wife Stacy are the two people that he ends up hurting the most. When the dreams turn into nightmares that won’t go away, when light is always too bright and all sounds are always too loud Jerry starts to lose his mind. He starts to see innocent people as his enemy. Passing cars start to sound like the engines of military tanks. The longer that Jerry is not on the battlefield the more that his mind takes him back there and he can’t fight it anymore. His breaking moment comes on the saddest of days when his head is fighting against him in such a way that he can no longer fight it. The only thing a soldier can do is go to war, the war home in his own head. The sound of his sons footsteps become the boots of militant insurgents that want to kill him and in an instant Jerry does what a warrior does best, he kills. In the silence that he has been waiting for he holds his son, the reason that he lives.

Imagine a world where all of the inanimate objects that we take for granted and use every day had the ability to talk. Taking for granted the simple things, the watch that we wear tells more stories than just that of time. If these things had the ability to tell us exactly how they felt about the things that we are forcing them to be used for. What would their story be if we actually took the time to think… and listen? In this story we hear from inanimate objects that we have turned in to items of power and items that sometimes result in violence. The voices of the walls of a long-standing university that has been through over a century of change, a tree and a noose that don’t want to hurt people anymore, and the badge and the shirt of a police officer we finally hear their voices. They speak of racism from a very different perspective, and yet still a valid voice. If they could talk, if they had an opinion, if we were forced to listen, would we be concerned about what they have to say about humanity or the lack thereof? A story that uses poetry for transitions the hope is that we get a better understanding of the things that we use and have used for centuries if they had feelings. The hope is to gain a better understanding about our actions and the things that we do that create a history that we cannot hide from, we cannot erase, sometimes we cannot see from another perspective, but we cannot ignore.

Lena and Leonard are twins, and they act like it. Through their childhood they fought like siblings do but when their father passes away Leonard learns to cope, and Lena became an alcoholic. Lena found that the only way she could see her father was when she was drunk, and this drove her to continue drinking. As much as Leonard tries over and over to help his sister get clean, he finally decides that the best thing to do is to cut her off. Lena continues to sink until she stands outside of an AA Meeting and takes the first step to get clean. It is through Lena working on her steps to sobriety that she realizes that what she needs to move forward is to go back to her brother. Leonard made it clear that their relationship is over until she gets clean, and it is in their reunion that she is able to reflect on the death of her father and sees it for what it really was and not what she remembers it to be. Through it all, Lena and Leonard work to love each other for who they have been and eventually for who they are.

A short educational play that addresses how a principal deals with assisting a student who is experiencing mental struggles and stress in the midst of a difficult world, being a teenager. The principal must have a meeting with a hardworking blue collar and busy father about the changes that they are seeing in his child. It is clearly not a meeting he wants to be at but when the information is given to him it is a dynamic response from a man who thought he was doing the right thing by working until all hours but then he realizes how serious the truly situation is. After speaking to his child he must reflect on who he is as a person and as a father. It is a beautiful moment of a father realizing that there are steps that have been missed on his part but in the end all he wants is what is best for his child. *This play takes place in an online setting but can definitely be done in person as well.