Michael, Dianne and Emily have been best friends since their freshman year at Applegate College. They lived together on Hallway B and became best friends. Senior year, they lived off campus in a house together. They called it Hallway House, to emphasize that they had not gotten past their freshman need to cohabitate. When their personal lives crash and burn, they take refuge in each other’s company, though Michael and Emily worry that their attachment to each other can endanger their relationships with other, "normal" people.

They are all now in a house owned by Dianne: the current iteration of Hallway House. Dianne is a shut-in, who spends time by herself on the top floor with her three cats. She makes good money writing steamy romance novels – and yet she has little interest in sex, or romantic relationships. She is from a family of ruthless wits who lived in Hollywood. They wrote for film and television. Her parents divorced, and went off and did drugs – and she was raised by aunts and uncles. But they wielded their tongues like Zorro wielded his sword. They’d cut her up into little pieces. Their repartee was sparkling, and it was exciting and fun, but she was not really accepted as one of them, and it took a toll on her self-esteem. It was like being raised by the Algonquin Round Table. Yet in some ways, she wants to re-create that kind of experience. She sees herself as Alexander Woollcott, in her group.

Emily has just left her husband Brett, who was cheating on her. She has only lived in Hallway House a week. She finds her old friend Michael stand-offish toward her; he has been there for two years and was hurt that she was no help when a long-term relationship ended for him. Michael has brought a younger guy named Connor back to the house. They are thinking of collaborating on a cabaret show for Connor. They might use the living room of Hallway House for rehearsals. Emily engages with Connor; she wants to know more about him. She talks about Dorothy Parker and the Algonquinites. Michael finds it upsetting when her questioning reveals that Connor has not heard of a lot of people their group admires.

After she leaves, Connor and Michael acknowledge a mutual attraction, but also face the fact that Michael is freaked out by the prospect of getting involved with a younger guy who does not get a lot of the references that Michael and his friends make. Connor is willing to learn new things, but resents Michael’s attitude and leaves. Dianne pops up – she’s been eavesdropping – and talks to Michael about his situation. She tells him to enjoy the role of older mentor: to see himself as George S. Kaufman and Connor as Moss Hart. But Michael loves the book Act One; he sees himself as Hart ... After Michael leaves, Dianne talks to Emily about a lousy college shrink they both saw briefly at Applegate. Emily had thought she was the only one to talk to this shrink. Dianne reveals a bit more of her personal history than ever before. And she tells Emily that drinking all that red wine and identifying with Dorothy Parker is bad for her liver.

Brett comes to see Emily. Dianne gives him a hard time, Emily tells him off, and she does not accept a non-apology/apology from him. Michael comes in and also expresses contempt for Brett. As Brett leaves, Connor comes back – he left his jacket when he visited the house earlier. Perhaps Michael, Emily and Dianne can change how welcome he feels in Hallway House. The play references screwball comedies by Kaufman and Hart, and perhaps it has a touch of the pace and feel of plays like You Can’t Take It With You and The Man Who Came To Dinner.

Barbara Davenport has convinced her whole family to come together for Thanksgiving in 2018. Karen and Abigail, the grown daughters of Barbara and Karl, are both visiting their parents in the house where they grew up. The family have made it through the meal without conflict, and have headed into the living room. But the fact that Abigail unfriended her sister Karen and her father Karl on Facebook during and after the 2016 presidential election causes some strain. At first, Barbara tries to steer everyone clear of political topics. The atmosphere remains tense and toxic, so Barbara suggests they air their grievances. Abigail talks about why it is so problematic, for her, that her father voted for Donald Trump and her sister supported Bernie, then voted for Jill Stein. Barbara, as a loving mom, says that something as trivial and foolish as politics cannot break up a strong family like theirs, but that might not be the case. And Barbara does not seem to want to answer Abigail's questions about who Barbara voted for in 2016. Abigail may not be able to stay in the house, even to get through this one evening.

Sylvia, an older secular Jewish woman from NYC, has traveled down South for the funeral of an old college friend. In a terrible rainstorm, as the buses are not running, she takes refuge in the diner of Mandy, a southern woman who is around the same age. Mandy has been getting ready to close up her diner and go to her Bible study group. She invites Sylvia along to the meeting, and then, when she finds out that Sylvia is Jewish, invites her to have a conversation about religion there and then. Sylvia bristles at both suggestions and tries to explain why she is so hostile to “missionaries,” as she calls it – to the whole missionary impulse. She warns Mandy that if they have this “conversation” Mandy wants, Sylvia is not going to hold back. As the two women talk, and argue, political, cultural and religious divides in our country rear up – but the two women surprise themselves and each other with moments of connection, and perhaps some things in common.

Harry interviews Luke about possibly working with Harry and Nora on a documentary film Harry is making called Triangle. Harry warns Luke that it’s a thankless job – the dreary re-synching Luke must do of old interviews another film-maker collected for a new transfer, and the subject of the film itself: the persecution of gay men during the Holocaust – even persecution in some cases by other people in the camps. Harry says the film may make them hated. Nora says: Or so Harry dearly hopes … Harry asks if Luke is uncomfortable with the gay themes, since he went to a Southern Baptist college. Luke says no. Harry says they may be accused of making an anti-Semitic film, a film somehow justifying or cheapening the Holocaust. Luke asks how that is possible – aren’t Harry and Nora Jewish? They are, though Harry is half-Jewish, and bi, Harry says; he’s always a double agent, playing for both teams …

Nora works on getting permission from people around the world to use old photographs of people interviewed, and pictures showing gay life in Berlin. It’s particularly crucial to have visuals for the interviews for which there is audio but no film. Luke asks her about herself, and remarks that she always seems to praise Harry and defer to Harry. She talks a bit about the “Other,” and what we project onto the Other. Luke’s intense scrutiny of Nora makes her uncomfortable. He doesn’t get a lot of her references, and she gently suggests they may not have a lot in common. He insists he wants to learn from her, and asks her to tell him something remarkable about herself, leaving Harry out of it. She tells him she’s a good writer. She’s been working on a play called Triangle, but since the documentary will have that title, she’s looking for a new one. She’s interested in the idea of a love triangle that is self-contained, each person pursuing the next, everyone frustrated …

When Luke turns in some footage and he’s done a good job, the three of them celebrate with Jack Daniels. Harry baits Luke and quizzes him on his family back in Georgia who voted for Trump, and Nora goes after Harry for not voting at all. (It turns out Luke did not vote either, for different reasons.) She accuses Harry of being indifferent to women’s issues. When she and Harry are alone, he asks if she is interested in Luke. She’s not, and she can tell Harry is, but she says she hopes Harry has no luck with him – she doesn’t think it would be good for “the kid” to get involved with Harry. Luke comes in one morning when Harry is ostensibly out at breakfast, and tells Nora of a psychic friend of his who says someone where he works is in trouble; he is sure it’s Nora, who is damaged by Harry, and he asks her to come away with him, once they finish the project. She demurs. Harry emerges from the room in the suite where he works and currently lives; he returned from breakfast earlier and Nora did not hear him. The three of them confront the fact that Nora is not interested in Luke and Luke is not interested in Harry.

After each scene in Act One, one of the characters faces the audience and talks about something personal. After the first scene in Act Two, all three of them face the audience and talk, in turn, about personal concerns. Nora in her monologues talks about her friendship with Harry that started in grade school and briefly turned sexual in high school. Luke talks about a long-term friendship with an androgynous girl that had a similarly powerful effect on his life. Harry talks about Heinrich Heine, for whom he was named, and about Heine’s great-grand-nephew Lorenz Hart of Rodgers and Hart.

Gary hopes to re-connect with his estranged older sister Kay, who is visiting Kansas City, where Gary now lives, for an academic conference. Gary lives with Eytan, who was Kay’s high school best friend; now Eytan and Kay hate each other. Eytan and Gary write humorous songs which Gary sings as a character called Ovaria Strange. Kay considers drag to be misogynist: a caricature of women – a kind of minstrel show. Eytan considers Kay a humorless feminist spouting tiresome theory and jargon, ridiculously teaching African-American studies when she’s white, (which is also a kind of minstrel show, he argues), though Kay is married to Curtis, who’s black, and Eytan has a problem with Kay teaching Women & Gender Studies when (he contends) she’s too uptight and homophobic to talk to college kids about gender.

Gary and Curtis cannot stop Eytan and Kay’s infighting. Gary offers Kay money their mother left; she refuses – their mother left it to Gary, and Kay does not want any part of it. Eytan sees Curtis as a “Magical Negro” devoting his life to caring for a high-maintenence white person (Kay). Kay gives a conference paper on Harlem Renaissance writers, mainly Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes and their famous, mysterious falling out; Gary and Eytan don’t come to hear it. (Each character also faces the audience and speaks about himself/herself directly at some point – Curtis says some things in a monologue toward the end about his first wife, from Japan, that may cause the audience to see him in a different light.) Kay and Curtis see Gary perform in drag in a club.

Curtis is offended by Gary’s musical numbers mocking religious Christian women – like the women in Curtis's family. Eytan bristles at the possible implication that he, a Jew, can’t engage in satire/write certain songs. He sees this as rooted in certain anti-Semitic charges that date back to Wagner's essay about Jews in music lacking “authenticity.” Eytan thinks Kay’s hostility to Eytan and Gary comes from Eytan’s metaphorical romantic rejection of her when they were teenagers; in the middle of the night before they head home, Kay tells Curtis the real problem is she can’t deal with her brother Gary because of the primal pain of her mother loving only Gary, not her. This visit may not get Gary the close-knit family he has dreamed of. In terms of the issues that the characters debate, everybody’s right and everybody’s wrong.

A group of people gather for a songwriters' retreat in the Rocky Mountains in the mid-2000s. Their "mentor" is an abrasive, charismatic country singer/songwriter named Kyle Samperson. He humiliates some for their songwriting, personally offends some and clashes about politics with others. By the time Kyle turns up dead in Act Two, everyone has a motive for killing him. Snowed in, without internet or phone, the other characters size each other up and wonder whodunit.

This play takes place in the summer of 2001, just before 9/11. John is a downwardly mobile 20-something schoolteacher, trapped in Roommate Hell. He's attracted to Claire who is smart but a little prickly and shares his cramped apartment -- but what if John makes a pass and she doesn't reciprocate his interest? How horrible and awkward would that be? They both get bullied and baited by Ed, their defiantly working-class third roommate. Though Ed's girlfriend Annette is rich and has her own place, Ed and Annette spend all their time in this cramped apartment, all over each other, and speculate about John and Claire. John's old friends from Yale Lyle and Dianne come to visit him and are horrified by how he now lives. They all get trapped in the apartment with Sal, a pizza deliveryman who speaks little English, when the front door gets stuck. The heat has come on, in August, and in this dawn of cell phones, no one has a way to call for help. As tensions rise, John finally stands up to Lyle and to Ed -- and goes for broke with Claire.

Joan sits poolside (the edge of the stage) and Michael comes to find her. She says it was a mistake for her to have come to this Caribbean resort with him for his business conference. She's a quirky, moody artist, she wants to be home doing work, and she hates this place. She's rescuing semi-dead bugs from the water, as she did when she was a little nerd. Michael argues that they're different but their relationship can still work, and asks to be introduced to the bugs she has pulled out of the pool.

In a bleak dystopian future, a woman goes to the library to take out a young adult volume -- a life of a teen that she would like to live. A helpful librarian answers the woman's questions.

Rob and Nancy run into each other at their favorite bar at an odd hour. Since their breakup, it's been awkward for them and for friends when they are both there. They work out a "timeshare" arrangement so that they can go to the bar on alternate nights ... but as they talk, old feelings start to assert themselves.

Midge and Tina are two chronically wussy women who have signed up for an assertiveness training course. Their two instructors are Zora and Georgia who try to show them how to navigate situations with guys harassing them, and to stop apologizing when they're called on constantly apologizing for themselves. Zora and Georgia give Midge and Tina "tough love" -- goading them to the point where they stand up for themselves and each other.

Bobby tells Autumn how he can launch her music career. But he has strong ideas about how to re-make her image, and he seems to be hitting on her ... Bobby is offended when the tables seem to turn.

Two women on a soap have a cat-fight -- but when the cameras aren't rolling, the women playing them talk about writers, humor, and how the guy playing a character their characters crave has snaked another woman in the cast. This makes it hard to act opposite him, once cameras roll again and he enters the scene.

A girl disguised as a boy disguised as a girl and a girl disguised as a boy disguised as a girl disguised as a boy rehearse Olivia/Viola scenes from Twelfth Night at the Globe Theatre in Elizabethan England. Each is fighting and concealing an attraction to the other, about whose gender identity she is confused. Will Shakespeare wanders in and watches, thinks of the young man he has written sonnets to, and muses on how compelling androgynous young people can be.

Ten-Minue Play in Verse: A college student who focuses on literature is up late, studying for exams, telling himself that he's over his ex-girlfriend and ready to move on, when his Edgar Allan Poe poster starts talking to him. He's upset by how it keeps saying "nevermore" as he tries to think positive. He yells at it.

Margaret talks to teenager Meg about why she sent her to her room and the tension between them -- replacing years of closeness. They are very alike in some ways, but it develops that this is not the case of mother/child conflict it appears to be on the surface; it's a situation complicated by cloning.

An older woman, and a young woman who may be dropping out of college are unhappy with their lives, as they stay in a hotel near the highway. They find dealing with their families stressful, but a middle-aged woman they encounter in the hotel lobby is eerily detached from her emotions, and from everyone else.

Kiley and Erica go to the new art "installation" by Kiley's friend Hecuba Rosenblatt, a piece called Performance Art. As far as they can tell, a bunch of people have been paid to sit in rows and act like an audience at a play. They peer at them, and wonder what Hecuba means by this piece. Kiley thinks it's exciting, but Erica thinks it's pretentious -- and is Hecuba manipulating everybody? Maybe the people sitting in rows think they're really watching a play -- and Kiley and Erica are in it ...

Bi-Lingual Ten-Minute Play: Ariel has been called to the principal's office to interpret for Ivania, who has been in this country for a while but refuses to learn English. Ariel tries to tactfully translate back and forth between English and Spanish -- some dull and pompous things Mr. Miller says and some things Ivania says about how she dislikes English and the US. What Ariel and Mr. Miller don't understand is that Ivania is still mentally living in the world she has been forced to leave, and she does not want to give it up.

Andy and Marsha are trying to have a civil exchange, post-breakup. But there are underlying issues and goals for both of them, including cat custody issues -- and these come to the surface.

Janet is hanging out with Molly, a friend she has not seen in decades. Molly's marriage has ended in the midst of her husband's mid-life crisis. Janet wants to help her, and is willing to be friends again, but feels hurt at how Molly allowed her husband to cut Molly's old friends, including Janet, out of Molly's life. They compare notes on people they know, (and Janet has lost other friends when the friends coupled up) and talk of their grown children. Janet shows Molly the terrarium in which she is raising Monarch butterflies; some of the caterpillars have turned into chrysalises on its roof. Janet's husband Stanley wanders in several times, talking about an article he's reading about nebulae formed from gases sloughed off of dying stars. Janet tries to use both the butterfly metaphor for change and the nebula metaphor to get Molly psyched about it. Molly says change sucks; she just wants a drink.

In the Spring Term of 2019, Debbie Baskin is teaching Jewish Humor and Jewish SF for Jewish Studies and a Shakespeare course for the English Department of a small college. Things are trickier in Jewish Humor with Senator Al Franken having been pressured to resign, and renewed charges against Woody Allen. Debbie faces flak from administrators and a student for including those men in her course and saying they may not be predators. She's also launched a new romantic relationship, and she sounds off about Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice, and about the Dark Lady in the sonnets. This play started out with a large cast -- but it may work better in this version as a monologue play, with a strong woman playing Debbie.