Tony Blake

In September of 1776, hoping to avoid a full blown war, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams travel to Staten Island to attempt to negotiate a peace agreement with a British Admiral. Unfortunately, the two day trip requires this odd couple of founding fathers to share a room and a bed for one night at an Inn in New Jersey and the prickly Adams is not happy having to literally bed down with the libertine Franklin. In this play of historical fiction, amidst their often amusing personal disagreements, tension is ratcheted up, ironically echoing issues our nation faces today, when Adams becomes furious at discovering that Franklin intends to offer the British a peace agreement that Adams argues is not true freedom for this fledgling nation, but a compromise that will still keep the colonies under the thumb of a mad King.

In September of 1776, hoping to avoid a full blown war, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams traveled to Staten Island to attempt to negotiate a peace agreement with a British Admiral. Unfortunately, the two day trip required this odd couple of founding fathers to share a room and a bed for one night at an Inn in New Brunswick, New Jersey and the prickly Adams was not happy having to literally bed down with the libertine Franklin. In addition to their awkward and often amusing personal disagreements, Adams is stunned to discover that Franklin intends to offer the British a peace agreement that Adams claims is not freedom for this fledging nation. With thousands of lives and the future of a young nation at stake, emotions grow heated and this play of historical fiction reveals insights into the very real behind the scenes fears and concerns these founding fathers struggled with as they attempted to avoid war. Fears and concerns that ironically are reverberating throughout our country today.

Three friends, college professors (2 Black, brother and sister) and 1 White, (sister’s fiancé) at a Southern University discover they have very different feelings about the issue of racism and its relation to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, ranging from militant (FAIZON) to moderate (FELICIA) to pacifist (ROBERT) with Faizon insisting the law is a dog whistle for White Supremacists.

When Faizon and Robert visit a local, working class Orlando bar during a break in an academic convention, they interact with three locals, and things go terribly awry in an unexpected confrontation that ultimately turns deadly and the survivors must deal with the traumatic aftermath.

Family loyalty, sexual orientation and the Catholic Church are all in the crosshairs in “Sunday Dinner,” a heart-wrenching dark comedy. Michael Matera, a young Priest, has just flown home to inform his parents of a major life decision he feels best delivered in person. But no sooner has he arrived than his father pulls him aside to “confess” an ugly family secret; a secret that is about to help some members of the family, but seriously harm others. Expecting absolution from his priest son that will free him of the weight on his conscience, he’s beside himself when Michael insists that revealing family secrets in the living room doesn’t qualify as confession and refuses to grant his father absolution.

Michael ultimately must wrestle with whether or not to reveal his father’s ugly family secret, a decision he’s forced to make over Sunday dinner with the relatives that exposes other ugly family secrets, leaving the family in total disarray .

“Sunday Dinner” leaves us with the lingering questions of whether or not the truth really does set us free and is doing the right thing worth the price when the consequences can have long lasting, crippling effects on the family structure.

A woman visits the home of a retired priest under the guise of interviewing him for an article about priests who are authors, but her real intentions soon come clear. She reveals that he sexually abused her when she was 14 and he was a High School Chaplain at her school over 25 years ago. But her accusations and attacks are met by a totally perplexed priest who insists her traumatic memories have been conflated and she’s confusing him with another priest who worked at the school, or perhaps the uncle she claims also sexually abused her. Realizing she’s been wrong all along, she accepts his offer of a referral to a therapist until she accidentally discovers an incontrovertible piece of damning evidence that makes her realize he’s been gaslighting her all along. Enraged at having been manipulated yet again, the tables turn and the victim now becomes predator seeking an apt revenge.

A “Marriage of Inconvenience” chronicles the journey of a young career woman struggling to establish her independence.

When a young Jewish career woman, SUZI ROTHSTEIN and her live-in Catholic boyfriend, TOMMY LAU finally decide to reveal to SUZI’s very religious parents that she’s living with and planning to marry out of her religion, events quickly spiral out of control leading to a violent clash over dogmatic beliefs.

The ultimate marriage causes SUZI’s parents to disown their only child and break off all communication until three years later when they suddenly and unexpectedly request to resume contact. Their first dinner together begins on good terms but quickly spirals downward as ugly family secrets on both sides get unearthed, leading to a brutal climax where SUZI finally establishes her independence from both her husband and her controlling parents.

The result causes serious damage to the couple’s marriage and SUZI’s relationship with her parents, and the after effects leave open the question of the consequences of dogmatic beliefs and parental involvement in the lives of their adult children.