Christine Hodak

African-American artist Selma Hortense Burke won an international competition to create a sculpture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In early 1945, when Selma arrives at the White House for a sketching session, Donald, the African-American doorman, mistakes her for a domestic and directs her to the servants’ entrance. Their bumpy relationship develops over the following tumultuous year, during which FDR’s health deteriorates and he suddenly dies, one war ends while another begins, and Selma’s sculpture, now finished, is dedicated in the Hall of Records. After Roosevelt’s death, the minting of his dime is fast-tracked. Selma struggles to secure the design commission, but the project goes to John Sinnock, the Master Engraver of the US Mint. The new dime’s image bears a strong resemblance to Selma’s sculpture. She learns the following: that Sinnock sat in front of her sculpture and sketched; that under cover of darkness he had her charcoal drawing taken from the Hall of Records and placed in his office at the Mint; and, that earlier in his career he had been charged with a separate instance of numismatic plagiarism. Selma’s public calls for correction of the record are ignored. Her refusal to acquiesce quietly to the injustice leads J. Edgar Hoover to tap her phones and monitor her movements. Selma’s work suffers - she has to decide whether to keep up her campaign for design credit or let it go. Face on the Dime examines issues of ambition, creativity, loyalty, and intellectual theft.

Tomato Queen celebrates an 11 year old girl’s determination to raise the perfect winter tomato. The show is set at Mr. Bogs’ Commercial Success Camp, a lively, non-realistic world with an apprehensive Dormouse turned helpmate and friend, an attention-seeking Evil Scientist intent on disrupting the tomato project, and a hungry Hornworm the size of a Chinese dragon. Tomato Queen explores the many sides of Success, both commercial and personal. Book and Lyrics: Christine Hodak; Music: Scott Lamps.

Small Midwestern town, late 1940's. Bean, an eleven year old girl is running away from home. She intends to buy a bus ticket to Montana or wherever the wild horses are. She has a pocketful of silver dollars she stole from her father's sock drawer. The guy at the bus station seems nice, and needs help getting into his locked office. There's nobody else around to help him and she could easily, as he suggests, slide through the transom window and open the office for him. If he's who he says he is, and not some carny working drifter...

Formerly wealthy Cuban exiles, Gloria and Herberto, are of an unlike mind when it comes to becoming acclimated to living in America in the late 1960's. She dreams of moving home to a Castro-free Havana, or at least to Miami with all the other exiles; Herberto is happy there in Massachusetts. Edward Hopper, the artist living next door to them, with whom Herberto drank rum the night before, has re-configured the laundry Gloria hung on the clothesline in the yard. She comes home from Church, irritated by Herberto's hangover, and discovers the laundry "violation" and her husband's role in the betrayal.

Three early thirty-somethings meet at a tourist site in a small Ohio town. Sook, the new bride wants to know why her old boyfriend, Jimmy didn't respond to her pre-wedding note; Jimmy, on crutches from a motorcycle accident wants to know why the bridal couple is stopping in his town; and Luke, the secure new groom wants to meet this goofy guy he's heard so much about. Will Sook and Luke proceed, as planned, to their honeymoon on Cape Cod, or will Sook stay behind at the Falls with her Brave? Set in the present, minimal set.

While waiting for a ferry on the banks of a Wisconsin river,the wife of a philandering state senator grabs the upper hand in their destructive relationship.

On a night of historic rain in a small Illinois town, two sisters with divergent plans for their Mother's future, come together unexpectedly.
River's rising, roof's leaking, and Mother's gone missing.
Irma, a mother of two teenagers, has always managed to make things work in spite of her instinctual tendency to deny reality. But on this difficult rainy day in mid-January 2008, Irma's trusty coping mechanism, denial, is failing her. Due to a series of potentially dangerous mishaps, Irma is forced to finally join her sister in questioning her Mother's mental capability. O'Neill semi-finalist: 2013.

Driven from Indianapolis by public ridicule and scandal, a nurse and her former patient, a famous monk and author, struggle to make a new life in the Nevada desert. Married for just eighteen months, Meg runs their isolated gas station, while Patrick straddles the past and present, trying to write a book on marriage as a religious vocation. Donna, Meg’s friend and nursing mentor, arrives in the midst of a wind storm, with two bottles of Maker’s Mark bourbon, a ceramic cat collection and bad news: her terminal diagnosis of ovarian cancer.