Rosemary McLaughlin

Rosemary McLaughlin

Rosemary McLaughlin is a 2015 New Jersey State Council of the Arts Fellowship winner in Playwriting. Her plays include: Paterson Falls (commissioned by Playwrights Theatre); A More Opportune Time; Standing in the Shadows; The Raw and the Cooked; Horsefeathers; Motherless Child and others. A member of the Dramatists Guild, she received her MFA in Playwriting from Rutgers University and teaches playwriting at Drew University.

Plays

  • Pushing the River by Rosemary McLaughlin
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy
    ·
    Keyword: writer's block, dementia + 7 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy
    Keyword: writer's block, dementia, eminent domain, black bears, memory, lucid dreaming, lake, Sisters, best friends
    Pushing the River is a darkly comic exploration of memory, consciousness and eminent domain. Set alongside the Delaware River in the area slated for flooding by the Tocks Island Dam, friends sample fine wines, re-negotiate family and try to avoid being eaten by bears.

    Bea, a playwright, runs off to her family's cabin by a river to write her masterpiece. Unexpected company shows up— Bea’s...
    Pushing the River is a darkly comic exploration of memory, consciousness and eminent domain. Set alongside the Delaware River in the area slated for flooding by the Tocks Island Dam, friends sample fine wines, re-negotiate family and try to avoid being eaten by bears.

    Bea, a playwright, runs off to her family's cabin by a river to write her masterpiece. Unexpected company shows up— Bea’s best friend Peter, followed by a black bear-- disrupting the equilibrium she was hoping to find in the liminal space created by the government’s enforcement of eminent domain. The house they're in is on borrowed time with Keesha and other neighbors pushing back the government's plans to take over all the houses in the area to create a dam. Bea’s not overly concerned that her husband, Liam, is missing or that her sister, Lydia, can’t manage Claire, their high-spirited mother, whose dementia is becoming more apparent.

    She just wants to finish this draft before the flood comes and washes everything away.

    It's a comedy. Ish. 

  • Paterson Falls by Rosemary McLaughlin
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    12–33
    ·
    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama + 3 more
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    Keyword: Paterson, silk strike + 6 more
    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama, pageant, period, political
    Keyword: Paterson, silk strike, 1913, pageant, John Reed, Mabel Dodge, IWW, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
    In Paterson, NJ, 1913, America's premiere city for manufacturing silk, workers are on strike but the newspapers refuse to give them any coverage. Finances are running low, many workers have to send their children off to live with sympathetic strangers.

    Meanwhile, in Greenwich Village, a thriving sub-culture is gathering steam. IWW organizers, led by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, team up with...
    In Paterson, NJ, 1913, America's premiere city for manufacturing silk, workers are on strike but the newspapers refuse to give them any coverage. Finances are running low, many workers have to send their children off to live with sympathetic strangers.

    Meanwhile, in Greenwich Village, a thriving sub-culture is gathering steam. IWW organizers, led by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, team up with Village artists and intellectuals, including journalist John Reed, arts patron Mabel Dodge and birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger, to try to gain more support for the strikers.

    The result is The Paterson Pageant-- a show about the strike, staged for one night only at the old Madison Square Garden, directed by Reed, designed by Robert Edmund Jones and performed by a thousand silk workers whose march from the ferry to midtown gathers thousands of supporters.

    There’s a full house, the show is a hit, but to many, it didn’t help the cause at all as the strike comes to a close with most demands unmet. Still, those who were present got a taste of how theatre in community can be a force for change.


  • A More Opportune Time by Rosemary McLaughlin
    Cast: 
    6–9
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, comedy + 3 more
    ·
    Keyword: Dr. Faustus, Washington + 3 more
    Genre: adaptation, comedy, dark comedy, drama, political
    Keyword: Dr. Faustus, Washington, selling soul, restaurant, politician
    An inexplicably powerful choir director lends a hand to an ambitious Senator interested in the White House. Bored with the ease of making high stakes bargains with politicians, he challenges himself to conquer someone seemingly incorruptible, a young chef trying to make a go with her own restaurant.