Mardee Bennett

June 1963. The Highland family gathers at their beloved cottage in Oak Bluffs, the historically Black Martha’s Vineyard enclave. The patriarch, David Highland, a successful author, hopes the seaside retreat will provide peace and tradition for the family as he finishes the final draft of a new novel.

His wife, Judy, a recently retired Broadway star, struggles with the calm of salt air after a life in the theatre. Meanwhile their son, Simon, an aspiring artist, returns to the Vineyard fired up by the Civil Rights Movement and questioning the power of his privilege and the complacency of his family’s elite status.

When Richard Fitzpatrick, a white diplomat and Kennedy clan hanger-on, arrives for the weekend, the family is forced to confront its place within a segregated America. Generational tensions, sexual indiscretions and competing visions of Black identity rise like the tides around them.

The Highlands is a poignant, dark comedy that explores race, class, and the meaning of home at a critical crossroads in American history.

Winner of the Blue Ink Award
Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference Finalist
Seven Devils Playwrights Conference Finalist

Three generations of Black women—steadfast grandmother Loretta Reaper, her spitfire daughter Nell, and pragmatic teenage granddaughter Tamar—share a modest rowhome on Woodbrook Avenue. Bound by blood but burdened by generational wounds, they navigate their place in a rapidly changing world. As the women prepare to sojourn to South Carolina for a funeral, tensions flare over respectability politics and a legacy of familial silence.

How does grief move through bloodlines? And who are the reapers—those who harvest pain, or those who sow change?

Blue Ink Playwriting Award Finalist
Ashland Festival of New Plays Semi Finalist
Bay Area Playwrights Festival Semi Finalist
Eugene O’Neill Semi Finalist

Amid the controlled chaos of Cane, an upscale Black-owned restaurant in the heart of Philadelphia, this intimate play explores ambition, love, and legacy through the life of Jefferson, the restaurant’s manager. He is charismatic but exhausted, worn down by long hours, constant pressure, and a growing reliance on substances just to keep going.

At his side is Donna, a principled, globe-trotting flight attendant who loves Jefferson deeply but is increasingly troubled by his self-destructive habits. Overseeing the restaurant is Ellen Bowen, the regal and demanding owner of Cane, whose high standards and old-money sensibility help the restaurant succeed, but also create an atmosphere that can feel suffocating.

When Donna is offered a dream job in New Orleans, Jefferson begins to unravel. He is forced to confront a painful choice: hold on to the life he knows at Cane, or risk everything for the chance at love and a healthier future.

In the sticky heat of 1980s Baltimore Loretta Reaper—a sharp-tongued, newly retired factory worker—watches her world shift from the familiar rhythms of work and routine into the uneasy stillness of home. Sharing her space with her grown daughter Nell, a restless postal worker who can't quite find her footing, Loretta imagines retirement as a long-awaited reward. But when Reverand Al, her steadfast and long-devoted companion, unexpectedly proposes marriage, Loretta is faced with a new kind of decision.

As old roles—mother, caretaker—begin to chafe, Loretta must confront the woman she's become and the one she might still choose to be. Caught between obligation and liberation, between history and hope, Loretta and Nell find themselves reckoning with their past and redrawing the boundaries of family and freedom.

A tender portrait of reinvention in the later chapters of life, The Ballad of Loretta asks: what do we owe each other, and when do we finally get to live for ourselves?