Rich Rubin

When Rose Fowler, a feisty retired schoolteacher, begins to show signs of progressive Alzheimer's disease, her middle-aged children, Ben and Sandy, grow increasingly alarmed. Ben and Sandy propose moving Rose from her apartment to an assisted living facility, but Rose is a woman who still has a mind of her own. Family tensions and laughter arise as Rose's need to retain her independence repeatedly clashes with her children's wish to ensure her safety.

Bernice and Wayne are two thirty-somethings from small-town America, still down on their luck in the aftermath of the Great Recession. When Bernice answers an on-line ad seeking a gestational surrogate, she soon finds herself carrying the baby of two gay men from Portugal. Bernice's lucrative arrangement inspires Wayne -- and his Bill Gates-obsessed best friend Gil -- to come up with a unique business plan, and a whole new take on the American Dream.

Marion Singer, an up-for-tenure associate professor of anthropology at a major university, is nominally a Christian. Her overall world-view, however, is decidedly secular, firmly grounded in fact-based evidence rather than faith. Marion's area of expertise is evangelical Christianity, and her just published text, "The Book of Revelation," focuses on evangelicals' views of science in general and evolution in particular.
When Marion's teen-age daughter Allie is struck by a car, Marion's world is thrown into turmoil, especially when she is confronted with Allie's grim prognosis. Allie's physicians predict that --even if she survives -- she will be left in a persistent vegetative state, completely unresponsive to those around her. Marion and her physicist husband Paul react to this news in different ways: Paul despondently accepts the information as presented, while Marion, after some initial equivocation, winds up praying for Allie's recovery with Sister Ivy, an evangelical Christian she met while researching her book.
When Allie's condition abruptly improves, her doctors and nurses are delighted but at a loss to medically explain her dramatic turn-around. In a subsequent radio interview with Sister Ivy that soon goes viral, Marion opines that "science doesn't have all the answers" and entertains the possibility that Allie's recovery may indeed have been a miracle facilitated by prayer and heavenly intervention.
Marion's words come back to haunt her, especially when the Tenure Committee questions her commitment to rigorous, data-driven scholarship, citing her interview-voiced implication that supernatural forces might impact the natural world. Marion finds herself trying to bridge two camps that often eye each other as opposing adversaries across a battlefield, the fact-based world of scientists and the faith-based world of much of the rest of the population, In the culture wars of modern-day America, is it even possible to reconcile serious science with serious faith?

It is late November 1864. The Civil War is still raging, and President Abraham Lincoln has just been re-elected. At New York's Winter Garden Theatre, the elite of Manhattan have gathered to watch a one-evening-only benefit performance of "Julius Caesar" starring the three most celebrated actors in America, the iconic Booth brothers -- Edwin, Junius Brutus and John Wilkes. Until this evening, the Booths, all greatly admired by the theater-loving President, had never appeared together on the same stage. John, heralded in the tabloids as "the handsomest man in America" is a fervent believer in the Confederate cause, and had already been arrested for his seditious comments about the President and the North. His older brothers Edwin and Junius Brutus, meanwhile, are ardent supporters of Lincoln and the Union. Both before and after the performance of Shakespeare's bloody tragedy, the three brothers spar about politics, theater and the roots of their heated sibling rivalry. The brothers' drama is heightened by the appearance on scene of their mother Mary Ann (whose favorite was always "Johnny") and Benjamin Waters, Edwin's dresser and a former slave, now a free man. A play based, as the saying goes, on true events.

Kai, a young African-American woman, is a conscientious student at a prestigious East Coast university. When Rebecca, her sociology professor, seeks a volunteer to portray a living-on-the-edge prostitute as part of an in-class, role-play exercise, Kai raises her hand, believing that she's helping to "give voice" to a marginalized member of society. Kai's performance in that role proves to be extraordinarily realistic -- so realistic, in fact, that unintended consequences soon result for Kai and Rebecca both.

The time, mid-July 2000.
The place, the Camp David compound, a bucolic presidential retreat in the Maryland foothills.
Over a span of fifteen days, a trio of world leaders – Yasser Arafat, Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton – employ reason and rage in equal measure as they struggle to determine the fate of two peoples, the Israelis and the Palestinians, and one entire region, the Middle East.
Meanwhile, in the world beyond their cabins, time is running out.

Wheeler and Corso, two injured Iraq War veterans, are recuperating in the rehab unit of a stateside Army hospital. Their friendship is based on a profane camaraderie and a shared, if unstated, experience of war. Both men, however, are bored and sliding towards burn-out, worn down by the weight of their injuries and the impersonal face of the Army bureaucracy. The arrival of Davis, a third injured vet, serves to rejuvenate the other two soldiers, providing them with a fresh, if unconventional, mission to focus on. Their subversive quest on Davis's behalf leads to a renewed sense of hope for all three of them.

It is the early 1940s, and the United States has just made its entry into World War II. The country is in dire need of ships and workers to build them. From all corners of the land, thousands flock to the shipyards outside Portland, Oregon in search of good pay and steady work. To house the daily-arriving workers and their families, a new city called Vanport is built on a floodplain of the Columbia River. By late 1943, its population swells to nearly 40,000 men, women and children. Many of these people are from the South and many are African-American. Over the next half-decade, Vanport becomes a cauldron in which America's nobler ideals and America's history of racial injustice uneasily mix.
"Cottonwood in the Flood" focuses on the experiences of a fictional African-American family during Vanport's rise and fall. The life the Hawkins family finds in Vanport is both new and depressingly familiar. Schools and rec halls are integrated, but housing and hospital wards are not. Unions advocate for fair treatment of workers, yet black workers are excluded from membership. The war in Europe uncovers the horrors of the Holocaust while at the same time people in America -- and people in Vanport -- are confronting many of our own troubled ways.
As their hopes are raised and their dreams are dashed, the members of the Hawkins family do their best to adjust to daily life in Vanport and grab hold of their fair slice of the American pie. On Memorial Day 1948, the entire city of Vanport is obliterated by a catastrophic flood of the Columbia River, an event that in several discomfiting respects presages the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina nearly six decades later.

Larry Lenz, an up-for-tenure Columbia professor, is writing a book on Simon Bolivar
and his ongoing influence on modern Latin American political movements. Arianna
Machado is his new research assistant, an eager-to-please grad student freshly
arrived from Venezuela. Larry’s obvious infatuation with Arianna (and the ancestry
of her socially prominent family) sparks jealousy in Larry’s fiancée, Vicky Solis, who
is well aware of Larry’s history of serial involvement with Latina women. When
Hector, a friendly doorman in Larry’s building, enters the picture, the relationships
connecting these four people become progressively more complex, with
consequences both far-reaching and comic.

In 1932, the storied marriage between Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz is shaken by professional setbacks as well as marital infidelity.

A newly-hired warehouse worker learns how to succeed on the job at Amazon – or does he?

The year: 1606.
The place: London.
As a deadly plague spreads throughout the city, the entire population is gripped in a vise of dread and panic. As neighbor turns against neighbor, Dr. Simon Munson – a noted physician and astrologer – soon finds himself in mortal combat with both a medical scourge and the fear and suspicion of his fellow citizens.

Beth, a fifty-eight year-old editor, is unexpectedly fired from the Los Angeles-based food magazine where she worked for decades. Shaken and shamed, Beth returns to to her modest family home in Grand Junction, Colorado, where she re-connects with her younger sister Pam and Pam's adult daughter Dana.
Beth and Pam's relationship is convoluted and occasionally contentious. Beth left Grand Junction after she finished high school, focusing on her career and a cosmopolitan life-style in southern California. Pam, on the other hand, has lived in Grand Junction all her life, caring for both their parents during times of terminal illness. Dana, meanwhile, is facing her own considerable challenges, as she considers reconciling with her volatile and verbally abusive husband Riley.
As Beth comes to grips with the new circumstances of her life, Pam begins to see her sister as a person of substance despite her foibles and flaws. After Beth intervenes to help Dana, the sisters seem ready to form a new relationship based on mutual respect and a shared desire to mend old wounds and escape the patterns of the past.

Clare Warren, an African American scholar, is fourteen months into her tenure as the president of Greenbrook, a prestigious women’s college in Boston. At the time of her hire, Clare had tasked a faculty committee to investigate Greenbrook’s possible ties to the pre-Civil War slave trade.
The committee’s final report concludes that John Barton – a wealthy nineteenth-century ivory merchant (and important early donor to Greenbrook) – had employed slave labor while conducting business in Africa. Their recommendation is that Greenbrook disavow its previous connection with the Barton family, including removing the Barton name from a centuries-old building on the Greenbrook campus.
Clare sets up a meeting with Royce Barton, a linear descendant of John Barton, to inform him of the committee’s conclusions and the actions that she intends to take in response. Royce questions the accuracy of the committee’s findings, and accuses Clare and Greenbrook of defaming not only his distant ancestor – an ardent abolitionist and apparent supporter of the Underground Railroad – but every current and future member of the Barton family, including Royce himself. Legal action is threatened, and Clare is suddenly confronted with the complexities of America’s messy racial present as well as America’s troubled racial past.

The place, Prague; the time, 1924.
On his deathbed, forty-year-old Franz Kafka instructs his best friend Max Brod to burn thousands of pages of his unpublished manuscripts. When the moment arrives, however, Brod elects not to carry out Kafka’s wishes, believing his friend is an unappreciated genius whose odd and disturbing narratives deserve widespread exposure. Brod subsequently devotes the rest of his life to promoting Kafka’s work, spurring the posthumous publication of all three of Kafka’s novel’s, including The Trial.
Despite Kafka’s disinterest in personal fame, Brod’s tireless efforts result in Kafka’s rise to literary prominence in the decades after his death. Brod manages to rescue the first drafts of Kafka’s work from Nazi Europe in 1939, carrying them in a suitcase to Palestine. At the time of his death in 1968, Brod seems to bequeath Kafka’s manuscripts to Esther Hoffe, his long-time secretary and presumed lover. However, Brod’s will is confusing, written in a way that is open to various interpretations. Over the next fifty years, Esther Hoffe and her daughter Eva engage in multiple legal skirmishes with the state of Israel, with Germany playing a behind-the-scenes role as a very interested third party. The existential question – who owns Kafka? – is finally decided by the Israeli Supreme Court in 2016.
KAFKA’S JOKE is a century-spanning, comic and Kafkaesque take on a distinctly Kafkaesque story, a tale so bizarre it can only be true.

The place is Portland, Oregon; the time, the early 1970s. A once-thriving African-American neighborhood has been irrevocably disrupted by urban renewal, as the construction of first a sports arena and then a freeway has forced many businesses to close and many residents to move. City planners now have a new, ambitious project in mind: a major expansion of a local hospital. As scores of additional homes and stores are razed, people in the neighborhood grow increasingly angry about their loss of community and their powerlessness in the face of it.
An exception to this widespread sense of frustration is Ty King, an ex-Army sergeant and the owner of the Left Hook Boxing Club, an establishment he inherited from his father. Where others see community disruption, Ty sees opportunity. Hoping to find lucrative work as the hospital expands and the neighborhood rebuilds, Ty uses all his savings to start a small construction company. Ty is dealing with other pressing matters as well, as his protegee Donnie, a young and promising boxer, prepares for an important upcoming bout. Donnie seems to be equally enthralled by the burgeoning Black Panther movement and Ty's seventeen year-old daughter Ava. Ty views both fascinations with great unease, as he sees himself losing control over much of what is central in his life.
Events come to a boil when the city unexpectedly runs out of money and the planned hospital expansion is cancelled, Where once there were tidy homes and flourishing businesses, there are now dozens of empty lots, with no prospects for neighborhood rebuilding. As Ty's hopes for a better future are dashed, his frustrations focus on those closest to him.

Dot, Connie and Renee are three school cafeteria workers of a certain age. When they discover a mysterious knapsack in a potato bin, they soon come to realize that the cozy confines of their kitchen -- and maybe the rest of their lives -- will never be the same.

It is 2004, and a rehearsal of Arthur MIller's last play, "Finishing the Picture," has just concluded in a prominent Chicago theater. Miller, eighty-nine and frail, is in attendance, and -- when the actors take a break -- he is approached by the young and very beautiful actress who portrays the drama's tragic, Marilyn Monroe-like character. The actress's questions prompt Miller to navigate back to the 1950s, when he first met and later married Marilyn.
Miller's memories focus especially on the disintegration of his marriage to Marilyn on the set of "The Misfits," a legendary 1961 movie that Miller initially writes as a valentine to his wife. To Miller's great surprise and dismay, however, Marilyn absolutely hates her role, which in many respects mirrors the sadness in her own life. The film, set in the Nevada desert, is directed by John Huston and co-stars Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter, all of whom become players in Miller and Monroe's real-life tragedy as it unfolds.
As the temperature on the set begins to rival that of the desert floor, Marilyn's escalating emotional instability threatens the entire production, and Miller and Huston desperately work to save the movie from self-destructing. After several harrowing months and numerous setbacks, filming is eventually completed. By that time, however, the storied marriage between two cultural icons has been irrevocably ruined in the most public of ways.

The time, October 2016; the place, Trump Tower in Manhattan.
The sudden surfacing of an eleven-year-old Access Hollywood tape has thrown the Trump presidential campaign into a state of near chaos. On the tape, Trump brags about groping multiple women without their consent, explaining that “when you’re a star, they let you do it.” With Trump’s support among Republicans plummeting – and with the second presidential debate a mere two days away – the candidate, his wife and his team of advisors plan their next series of moves, both politically and personally.

It is October 1991, and for one fall weekend the eyes of America are fixed on an unprecedented drama unfolding in a frenzied Senate Caucus Room. Clarence Thomas, a young African-American nominee for the Supreme Court, has been accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, his equally impressive former assistant. Under the hot glare of television lights, Thomas and Hill engage in a tense pas de deux fraught with sex and race, truth and illusion, while behind the scenes, Democrat and Republicans alike scramble to achieve maximum political advantage.

The place, the Montmartre district of Paris; the time, 1906. Twenty-five year-old Pablo Picasso is living with Fernande Olivier, his mistress and model, in a small and cluttered studio. With the help of Gertrude and Leo Stein, two wealthy American collectors, Picasso is just beginning to emerge from abject poverty and humiliating artistic obscurity. The Steins introduce Picasso to Henri Matisse, twelve years Picasso’s senior and an artist of growing renown in the cut-throat world of early twentieth century painting. Picasso and Matisse begin to engage in an intense and complicated rivalry, each man trying to outdo the other as they vie for leadership in the vanguard of modern art. On the home-front, meanwhile, Picasso and Fernande have adopted Raymonde, a thirteen-year-old adolescent from a local orphanage. The presence of the young woman in the cramped living quarters of Picasso’s studio puts an added strain on the already fraught relationship between Picasso and Fernande. Personal and artistic firestorms flare as 1906 turns into 1907 and the two narratives converge – with life-altering consequences for Fernande and Raymonde as well as Matisse and Picasso.

The time: May 1939.
The place: Lubyanka Prison, Moscow.
Celebrated Russian-Jewish writer Isaac Babel disappears after being arrested and interrogated by the NKVD, Joseph Stalin’s secret police. Fifteen years later – and shortly after Stalin’s death – details emerge about Isaac Babel’s whereabouts, and the mystery of his disappearance is finally resolved.

Sixteen-year-old Emily is having visions of the apocalypse, vivid nightmares about raging storms and monstrous floods, panicked voices and societal disruption. Her father and her psychiatrist are both very worried about her, while Emily is very worried about the fate of the world. Are Emily’s visions a manifestation of mental illness, or are they a harbinger of things yet to come?

Sasha is a Russian troll. Seriously, it's his job – and a well-paying one at that. But Sasha's life is far from simple. His boss, his mother and the woman he loves are all unhappy with him, and the foreign candidate he's supposed to trash is far ahead in the polls. With things so messy, how will Sasha ever achieve his life-long dream – moving to America?

When Joe Novak, an ex-Marine Vietnam vet in his late sixties, suffers a stroke, it leaves him with left-sided weakness, waxing and waning confusion and episodic
outbursts of temper. Following a three-week hospitalization and rehab stay, Joe moves in with his daughter Peggy as the next step in his slow recuperation.

Joe’s continued emotional outbursts in Peggy’s home include racist and xenophobic remarks aimed at his Mexican-American physical therapist Alex. Peggy is mystified
and embarrassed by the apparent change in her father’s previously mellow personality. She is also shaken by Alex’s question about whether Joe had ever
exhibited racist behavior in the past.

Joe’s interactions with his family become even more tumultuous when his nineteen-year-old grandson Ronnie suddenly returns home from Afghanistan after receiving
a less-than-honorable discharge from the Marines because of marijuana possession. The appearance on-scene of Wendy, Ronnie’s new Asian-American girlfriend, sparks
still more fireworks in the household, as Joe and his family are forced to confront a long-buried secret. Are some transgressions beyond redemption, even after fifty
years?

In the week following 9/11, Kevin Donnelly, a New York City firefighter who survived the collapse of the World Trade Center, is sent by the NYC Fire Department to offer the Department's official condolences to Lynn Malloy, the widow of a fellow firefighter. Kevin initially assists Lynn as she wades through a morass of administrative paperwork, but, over time, their relationship deepens and Kevin eventually breaks up with his fiancee so he and Lynn can marry. The relationship between Lynn and Kevin is complicated, however, by the fact that Lynn is pregnant with a child fathered by her former husband, Chris, and the hard reality that Chris's family is adamantly opposed to Kevin's entrance into Lynn's life, especially so soon after Chris's death. A further complicating factor is Kevin's increasingly fragile and erratic emotional state, a manifestation of the PTSD brought on by his 9/11 experience.
The play's action begins in June 2002, several weeks after the baby's birth, on the day of her christening. Then, in flashback, we get to see how Kevin and Lynn met and how their relationship evolved in the wake of national catastrophe and personal devastation. The play's final scenes bring Kevin and Lynn back to the day of the christening, as they return home after a church ceremony that was eventful in unexpected ways. At the play's conclusion, the question of whether Kevin and Lynn's marriage is indeed viable is brought to the forefront for the characters (and the audience) to ponder.

The year, 1794; the place, London.
Frank Chambers is a young physician with a dwindling income and a penchant for gambling. Horace Walpole is a celebrated British aristocrat who believes genius is reflected by the shape of our skulls. Fate brings Frank and Horace together for a singular purpose: To steal the skull of the greatest literary genius of all time. Horace is hoping to prove his theory, while Frank is hoping for a few extra coins in his pocket. Will their hopes be realized or will unforeseen events flip them upside down?
SHAKESPEARE'S SKULL is a comedy based on a legend – a legend that may be closer to truth than to fiction.

The year, 1588; the place, London.

Will Shakespeare, an aspiring playwright in his early twenties, arrives near-penniless in London, leaving his wife and three young children in Stratford-upon-Avon. Will’s goal, considered foolhardy by everyone around him, is to become the greatest playwright in all of England.

To immerse himself in the world of theatre, Will joins Major Players, a rag-tag troupe of actors led by Tom Major. Tom takes Will under his wing, teaching him all the tricks of the trade. Will, already a gifted poet, is a quick learner. His reputation as the “fixer” of Tom’s less-than-sublime scripts soon brings him to the attention of Richard Burbage, the most celebrated actor in London and the leader of a rival theatre company.

As the friendship between Will and Tom flourishes, Will recognizes the sexual chemistry between Tom and Tess, a tart-tongued widow and the proprietor of a nearby pub. Although Tom and Tess initially seem to have a highly contentious relationship, trading insults with witty abandon, Will eventually succeeds in bringing the two together. Will is assisted in his match-making by Catherine, a local seamstress and Tess’s younger sister. Catherine is captivated by Will’s highly erotic poetry, and the two soon become romantically involved as well.

Events come to a head when Burbage tries to poach Will from Tom’s troupe and Will’s wife Anne arrives unannounced in London to see what her husband is up to.

Will young Will leave Tom for Burbage? Will he leave Anne for Catherine? Will Tom and Tess’s narrative lead Will to write Much Ado about Nothing? As Will confronts all this and more, he ultimately comes face-to-face with a single overriding question: Is all well that ends well?

Jen is a young marine biologist whose life is currently in turmoil. Climate change is affecting the world's salmon, but Jen's boss won't let her report her findings. Jen's new boyfriend, a super-hero aficionado, thinks the salmon's life-story is eerily similar to Superman's. And did we mention that Jen's mother tries to help by repeatedly quoting Ronald Reagan? As Jen encounters the zigs and zags of both her professional career and her personal relationships, she discovers that going with the flow is sometimes not a viable option and that swimming upstream is the only way to proceed.

Sergeant Austin Tate, a U.S. Army military policeman stationed at a Baghdad prison, is accused of abusing multiple detainees prior to their interrogation by military intelligence officers. His media-savvy civilian attorney, Peter Conroy, contends that Tate was merely following orders, whereas Army prosecutor Robert Whittaker argues that Tate is nothing more than a renegade soldier who acted solely on his own. As Tate's court martial unfolds, Robert's brother Randy, a reporter assigned to cover the trial by his Washington newspaper, hears from a well-placed source that Tate's actions, however sadistic, may have been set in motion by secret directives issued at the highest level of the government. While Robert and Conroy battle in front of a military jury, Robert and Randy engage in their own version of civil war outside the courtroom.

The time is 2017; the place, a high-school in the heartland of America.
On a moonless night, a wall of the building is defaced by racist taunts and white supremacist slogans. Caught on a security camera are three figures clad in black, each face hidden behind a mask with the distinctive features, complexion and hair of Donald Trump.
Karl, Troy and Lance are seventeen-year-old juniors whose hero and role model is America's forty-fifth president. Heidi and Bree are two of their classmates, gamely traversing the everyday ups and downs of high-school life. Layla is also a seventeen-year-old junior, new in town and a Muslim of Somali descent.
Layla's arrival at the school results in a heightening of tension, as the students are confronted with a fundamental question: Who is a real American and who is not?