Ken Weitzman

A father makes a recording for his son, a week prior to his son's first birthday. In it he strangely tells him about Norman Morrison, a Quaker from Baltimore, who in 1965 drove to the Pentagon and, in protest over the U.S. policy in Vietnam, doused himself in kerosene and lit himself on fire. In his arms as Morrison did this, was his one-year-old daughter. Morrison died within minutes, Emily (his daughter) somehow survived.

The father makes this recording for his son, wrestling with what Morrison meant and exploring how it has intersected and affected his own first year of fatherhood. Ultimately he finds the courage to reveal to his on why this is so important to convey to his son via this first birthday video.

45 minutes in length. Suitable for zoom, recording and broadcasting, audio, or socially distant in-person.

In 1965 Norman Morrison, a Quaker from Baltimore, drove to the Pentagon and, in protest over the U.S. policy in Vietnam, doused himself in kerosene and lit himself on fire.

In his arms as he did this, was his one-year-old daughter.
Morrison died within minutes, Emily (his daughter) somehow survived.

Fire in the Garden explores this act through the eyes of a father, present day, whose son is one week away from his first birthday. The same age Emily was when Morrison took her to the Pentagon. As this new father struggles with the challenges of modern parenthood, he finds himself haunted, unsettled, and obsessed with Morrison’s act.

Winner of the Fratti/Newman Political Play Contest.

Retired NFL player Don Devers has had more surgeries than he can count, experiences violent outbursts, and relies on Post-It notes to offset his struggle with traumatic brain injury. Just when things seem their darkest, a desperate longtime fan arrives at his doorstep. With the help of Don’s daughter Stephanie and Ed’s wife Sarah, both pregnant and plotting from the sidelines, the fan and his hero discover they may be able to help one another in a way that neither of them could possibly expect.

Recognition is based on the true story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, who's study of Shakespeare uncannily leads to her becoming one of, if not the leading figure in the creation of the science of cryptology. Her work, along with her husband’s, formed the basis of this country’s modern intelligence community, from the NSA, to CIA, to FBI. Smith Friedman’s story was hidden until recently because J. Edgar Hoover buried her contributions to steal credit for himself.

Meg has given birth to a seal. But what kind? Predator? Prey? And if she doesn't know, how will she know how to keep him safe. Or others safe from him. A contemporary fable about the complexities of parenting an unconventional child, about love, and about growing up.

"More than 25 million people in seven states - Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming - rely on the Colorado River for water and power. The combination of limited water supplies, increasing populations, warmer temperatures, and the specter of recurrent drought point to a future in which the potential for conflict among existing and prospective new water users will prove endemic, and the basin will face increasingly costly, controversial and unavoidable trade-off choices.”
--The National Research Council, 2007

It’s the near future in the American West, and water shortages are forcing entire towns (not deemed sustainable) to relocate to “conservation clusters”. A water manager and his hapless nephew try to strike deal for water with Winona, a representative from a local Indian Reservation who have recently received a federal water allocation. But something very odd is in the air as the two men wait for Winona; they see a rabbit. And there haven’t been any rabbits around for decades. That a rabbit is a classic trickster animal in Native American lore is all the more unnerving. Power games ensue, with underpinnings of historical wrongs, reparations, and some very extreme negotiations as the mythic meets reality.

A play about the founding of the U.S.’s largest and most (in)famous Indian boarding school and the amazing story of a football game the school played against the US Army at West Point in 1912. This was Native American kids and US Army players facing off barely 20 years removed from Wounded Knee where many of the players’ fathers and grandfathers actually fought and killed one another on the battlefield. The lead player for Carlisle was Jim Thorpe, the most famous athlete of his era. On the Army side, the lead player was Dwight Eisenhower. Coaching the Carlisle Indians was legendary coach, Pop Warner. A play about the true meaning of this historic game and about who gets to tell the story.

1994, the inaugural year of the Women's National Basketball Association. Maja and her mother, Bosnian Muslims, have escaped the war in Bosnia for the U.S. but Maja's panic attacks prevent her from playing the game she's obsessed with, basketball. That is until a new coach suddenly appears at her high school. He helps Maja to face her fears but his unorthodox tactics alarm Maja’s war-scarred and fiercely protective mother.

America’s national pastime meets America’s financial meltdown. Through a mix of willpower, determination, and sheer optimism, a ruined dot-commer plots to regain his fortune. His plan: to catch a star slugger’s record-breaking home run ball. This tragic comedy explores our national obsession with instant wealth, optimism, sports and America's tragic flaw.

Robert Reich on the success and possible tragic flaw of American Optimism: "American optimism carries over into our economy, which is one reason why we've always been a nation of inventors and tinkerers, of innovators and experimenters and why we're the most productive economy in the world. Optimism also explains why we spend so much and save so little…Our willingness to go deep into debt and keep spending is intimately related to our optimism and our deepest assumptions about future peace, stability, and progress."

Inspired by The Glass Menagerie, reset as a contemporary, urban, young-adult play. Inspired, as well, by work with the amazing students in the Alliance Theatre's Collision Project.

Winner of the L. Arnold Weissberger Award. In the dungeon-like basement of a flower shop, a strange yet beautiful friendship blossoms between amateur slam poet Robby and obese and outspoken Donna. By charting a series of intertwined relationships, this darkly comic play explores the relationship between chaos and order, consumption and abstinence, and the modern day notion that “we are what we eat.”

Hebrew legend has it there are thirty-six people who must carry all the pain of the world. When Aaron discovers that his sister, who has suddenly fallen ill, might be one of them, he sets off on a comic misadventure to help heal her; a misadventure that includes everything from quantum physics to professional football as he wrestles with the question, is it ever really possible to heal another person?

Play in-progress. Sexual abuse in a big-time college sports program. Two acts, two different time periods, 1987 and 2014, two very different approaches to the problem. Each act takes place in the office of the top administrator of each program: the Athletic Director's office.

A bris, bagels, and a cross-eyed mohel.