Jessie Salsbury

Jessie Salsbury

Jessie Salsbury is a Kansas City Playwright and has participated in numerous local play readings and new work development. She is a resident playwright with the Midwest Dramatists Center. Since 2014, she has been a playwright for 365 Women a Year: A Playwriting Project. She is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild.

Plays

  • Bloodied Hands
    An administrator is in the middle of a sexual harassment scandal when he miraculously saves the school from a more serious school shooting, turning him from villain to hero.
  • Route 84 House Fire: Three Miles from Train Tracks, Nine From a Hydrant
    **To perform or request please press Inquire About Rights** (10 Minute Play) A State Fire Marshal interviews a Young Girl who is the only survivor of a farmhouse fire that has presumably killed the rest of her family. However, there are no bodies, little clues, and misleading evidence. The State Fire Marshal works to unwind the Young Girl's haunting and poetic past narratives of her entire life on the farm...
    **To perform or request please press Inquire About Rights** (10 Minute Play) A State Fire Marshal interviews a Young Girl who is the only survivor of a farmhouse fire that has presumably killed the rest of her family. However, there are no bodies, little clues, and misleading evidence. The State Fire Marshal works to unwind the Young Girl's haunting and poetic past narratives of her entire life on the farm, while drawing her into the present to solve the origin of the house fire on Route 84.

    (Acceptable alternative short title: Route 84 House Fire)
  • Adoption of Grief
    **To perform or request please press Inquire About Rights** Desiree Nichols, a college student, seeks answers from a stranger after her sister unexpectedly dies. Cherise Nichols, the decedent, has left notes indicating that her nieces are to be adopted into a white family with her nephew who was secretly given up for adoption years before. Two families struggle with interracial (black/white) adoption,...
    **To perform or request please press Inquire About Rights** Desiree Nichols, a college student, seeks answers from a stranger after her sister unexpectedly dies. Cherise Nichols, the decedent, has left notes indicating that her nieces are to be adopted into a white family with her nephew who was secretly given up for adoption years before. Two families struggle with interracial (black/white) adoption, insensitivity of white women, and how legal systems favor nuclear, white families over other family groups. This play doesn't indicate right or wrong, but percolates bits and pieces of true stories of adoption into a fictional dramatic framework.
  • The Last Week
    A man reflects at the end of his life and how to have a more comfortable, if extremely lonely, ending.
  • Ava
    Ava DuVernay gives a short speech to a graduating class on art and representation.
  • Fangirls
    A young girl partners with a playwright as part of her Make-a-Wish final excursion. Based on a true person and produced with permission of the girl's mum.
  • Fangirls An Improbable Cosplay
    (60 Minute One Act) Fanboys decide that girls don't belong. Three girls decide to take over Comicon, taking what belongs to them, staging their own type of protest. "A Protest Isn't Always a Picket Line."
  • Fire Fountain
    The Ottawa Indian Tribe Chief and the Ottawa University president meet at a dedication ceremony for a new library and artistic display. They disagree on the reasoning behind the display.
  • HeLa
    (Short Play) The story of Henrietta Lacks is told by one woman playing the roles of Henrietta, her daughter, a medical assistant and a researcher. Henrietta Lacks was treated for cancer, and her cells were used for the research changing HeLa line of immortal cell lines. Her cells were used to develop the polio vaccine and cancer drugs.
  • Huiza Netherlands 1942
    Marion Pritchard has to come up with a unique solution to get rid of a Dutch policeman who would've revealed the site where she is hiding a Jewish family (Polaks) from Nazis. Fictional retelling of a real event.
  • Inevitable Responsibilities of a Successful Vow
    It is 'Until Death do Us Part,' and for a spouse that has previously been widowed himself, he has lessons for the spouse he is going to leave behind.
  • Let Us Take a Shower
    Two people take revenge on those that allowed a young boy to be abused and murdered years before.
  • Light a Candle for the EXvangelical
    On a Christmas Eve, two church employees leave their religion.
    With love and admiration for Prisca.
  • Mentally Ill / Gun Free
    (10 minute play) - A woman who lost her only child to a school shooting years before purposely submits herself to situations that will trigger her PTSD, as those are the times that she remembers her daughter the clearest.
  • New Pair of Eyeglasses
    A mother picks up her son's eyeglasses from the optometrist. Based on context clues, it is seemingly too late for her son to use or need them. As Mrs. Burg says "My, how life can change in a week, though."
  • Non Traditional Hijab
    Reserta's mother has just passed away, so Reserta is going through her mother's old scarves to see what might possibly fit her neighbor Mariam for a hijab, a recent Iranian immigrant. They discuss pieces of Mariam's past life and her reason for her immigration to American.
  • Pink Dust of Field Corn
    Work in Progress
  • Tattooed Quilt
    A white supremacist gets a tattoo covered.
  • White Women
    A Monologue about us White Women and how we use our hurt and pain and push it onto people of color.
  • Whoever Wrote This was Drinking Lysol at the Time
    An HR Representative (Josephine) and an Employee (Robert) discuss the new Covid laws written by the Trump administration and how it affects Robert and his family and paycheck. Who can make sense of what the world has turned into, and how is it fair? How could the government write a law so terrible and illegible in such a short amount of time?
  • Write Your Name on Your Arm in Black Marker
    Two new members of Antifa prepare to protest, searching online and asking friends for the best way to be prepared for the experience.
  • Angry Child
    A child plays alone at a playground on Mother's Day.