Richard Manley

Ending years of self-exile following the death of his wife, semi-famous poet Derby Walters accepts a house-sitting invitation for a Manhattan Co-Op. Wanting to inconspicuously slip back into society slowly, Derby is thwarted by an inquisitive female neighbor, her pushy mother, members of the Co-Op Board, and a lawyer determined to have him thrown out of the building for what seems like a murky past. His hopes for privacy fail, but for one infuriating exception, who forces the overly intellectual Derby to recognize that happiness is often a matter of recognizing the potential of “breaking a few plates.”

Ending years of self-exile following the death of his wife, semi-famous poet Derby Walters accepts a house-sitting invitation for a Manhattan Co-Op. Wanting to inconspicuously slip back into society slowly, Derby is thwarted by an inquisitive female neighbor, her pushy mother, members of the Co-Op Board, and a lawyer determined to have him thrown out of the building for what seems like a murky past. His hopes for privacy fail, but for one infuriating exception, who forces the overly intellectual Derby to recognize that happiness is often a matter of recognizing the potential of “breaking a few plates.”

This Rough Magic takes place tomorrow, when overcoming loneliness and feeling loved are no less difficult, but technology offers more solutions to those who can afford them.

David is a wealthy, middle-aged businessman. A year before the action of the play begins, he bought the love of his life from a technology company called Nureál, which offers products that satisfy both physical and emotional needs. Due to the success of that first purchase, David has just made a significantly larger commitment to this bleeding-edge company, a new set of parents, programmed to provide the emotional support and cultural status his birth parents, now deceased, never did.

David’s personal life is working for him until his long-estranged brother Donald arrives unexpectedly. Donald is dying from cancer. He wants to spend the end of his life with the only family he has left. However, his doubts about Nureál threaten to undermine David’s newly acquired faith in technology. Since David’s endorsement and continued business is a key to the early beta marketing of the company’s brand, and his happiness is essential for that endorsement, Donald forces his brother to choose between the reality of a flawed human and the loving embrace of advanced technology.

David and Noah are brothers who shared a troubled childhood, during which they relied upon each other for survival. As adults, David went into business and made a great deal of money; Noah chose academia, and became a professor of literature and a published poet.

Although successful by all outward signs and still very close, the fear and self-doubt of their early days lie just beneath the surface of their apparent confidence. As well, they have made words their weapon of choice. Life is Mostly Straws is a literate play, where one character uses language like a scalpel while the other wields it like a bludgeon, but each understands its power.

The event on which the drama turns is David’s chance discovery and misinterpretation of love poems that his wife Joanna has written, which he finds while alone in Noah’s apartment. Random coincidence fuels imagined fears, which escalate quickly into a confrontation that threatens to destroy everything the brothers consider sacred.

“Betrayal trumps pity,” David says, early in the first act, to justify a financial retaliation. Noah repeats the line back to David at the end of the play, as the deepest insecurities of each rise from shallow graves to attack.

Quietus takes place today, or perhaps tomorrow. An influential group of investors has taken advantage of a liberal interpretation of existing laws to open the first for-profit bioemporium, attached to Johns Hopkins Medical School. It’s a place where bodies are kept functioning after brain death to enable their use for medical, scientific, and pharmaceutical purposes. After its first year of operation, it is a financial success and a medical leap forward, overcoming centuries-old religious bans and many of our oldest cultural fears. The enterprise is threatened, however, when exigent circumstances force the three key characters to confront all the issues that have kept such a facility fictional.

Note: Although the narrative is fictional, the science is not. Everything suggested or used in the course of the play is legal and possible now. In limited cases, it is already in practice. Resistance to the broader idea, and thus implementation of the technology necessary, is driven by long-standing cultural norms and religious practices.

A Question of Words is a literate comedy. On the surface, it celebrates word play and the notion that even the intolerant need love. On a deeper level, however, as with each of my plays, it challenges the audience to think about the difference between mere conversation and true communication: the idea that language, when used by those who respect its potential, can be a force to inspire, provoke, and enchant.

When the play opens, Derby Wright, now 45, has just returned to Manhattan from France to borrow the vacant condominium of an old friend who has been trying to convince him that it is time for the reclusive writer to rejoin mankind. Although feeling the pull of words again, and missing the sound of his native language, Derby is reluctant to engage with society. At the age of 40, he was a tenured professor at Wellesley and a poet of growing fame, who suddenly became a widower (his wife was killed in a botched carjacking). Overcome with grief, he resigned his position and fled to France for five years of self-imposed exile, where he not only stopped writing and teaching, but also cut off virtually all correspondence with the world he had known. He disappeared.

Five years of isolation, and the events that prompted them, have only deepened the cynicism and social aversion that were integral parts of his character. As well, he is afraid that the prolonged inactivity may have sapped whatever creativity he had left. He has decided, however, to find out where (and if) he fits, by slipping back into society, provided he can do it quietly and at his own pace. For much of the play, he fails miserably, and humorously, one character at a time.

Accidentally, he meets his next-door neighbor, a successful advertising executive and copywriter. She finds him just slightly more interesting than annoying, but she’s curious enough to track down some of his early work, and thus becomes intrigued. Less accidentally, he is approached (he would say stalked) by the publisher of a highly respected literary magazine. Learning that he has returned to the States, she is determined to bring him back into the poetry fold. Add to the mix the President of the condo board and his wife, who are determined to entice Derby into their social set. However, once Derby’s method of refusal embarrasses the couple, they make it their mission to get him thrown out of the building, soliciting the help of their uncle, a powerful lawyer. The mission goes awry though when the connection between their uncle’s daughter and Derby’s days at Wellesley are discovered……

A Fish Story is a literate comedy. David, a senior copywriter in an ad agency, always wanted to be a playwright. Maybe it’s too late. Time to find out. When he learns the risks, fear holds him back, until an unlikely fan shoves a “sign” in his face, and he’s forced to choose.

High school is now a crucible. Kids become young adults, ready or not. Future expectations wrestle with the joy of present accomplishments. Sex has morphed from naïve discovery to blatant revelation. Communication skills and friendship are fashioned on devices. The troll has arrived. Suicide is growing rapidly as the leading cause of death. How do you find balance if you don’t know what to put on the other side of the scale?

Anna is the quintessential high school success story – AP smart, disciplined about her studies, and all the while building a transcript that is filled with the subjects and variety any Ivy wants. And she’s cutting herself in desperation. Pinsky is also smart, but a misfit in every social setting.
If he hadn’t discovered the beauty that can be found by a camera lens, he might have been one of the victims of the tragedy that brings them both together beside the tracks.

The Sum of Me – synopsis

Crandal is a high school student. Her father died in Afghanistan last year, so her mother works two jobs to make ends meet. And she fears for her bright young daughter’s future in a world where she vehemently believes the good guys seldom win. Fortunately, Crandal has a funny old grandmother with time on her hands, a house full of books, and lots of affection.

As Crandal starts the ninth grade, however, her grandmother’s health takes a very sharp turn for the worse, and Crandal’s forced to face the fact that she’s never learned to trust anyone but Nanna, not even herself.

The Sum of Me explores the difficulty of one teenager’s search for identity and confidence amidst the trolls and trials of a modern American high school experience.

An Hour Upon the Stage – synopsis

A very young hooker on the run from her bosses is forced to take temporary refuge in the studio apartment of an ex-cop, now a building super, who hates everything about her business and its effects on the neighborhood where he lives.

The play takes place in real time and the tension quickly escalates when he learns that she has hacked the company’s records, which implicate not only the hierarchy, but many high-ranking members of the local police force.

Both sides are eager to get her silenced fast. And the cop is caught in the middle. There are no good guys, and he wants no part of either side, but he’s forced to choose if he wants to avoid becoming a target himself.

While waiting for their fate to play out, her imagined future and his dark past become shadow characters of sorts, forcing what she calls “big words “– truth, betrayal – to the surface, presenting moral problems with which neither has had to deal before.

This is a political play (NOTE, however - this play is not about, nor does it mention Trump)
about the implications of the fact that the Neanderthal is separated from the Sapiens by the blink of time’s eye – “we are no less the savage now than when the lightning bolt was god.” And technology notwithstanding, we consistently behave in large numbers like sheep, willing to follow blindly those who promise ice cream and the settling of grievances.

What if the best of the worst, meaning the smartest, were to step forward as shepherd?