Benn Farrell

Benn Farrell

I am originally from Providence and Foster, RI, and ended up in Colorado Springs in 1991. In college, I studied film, literature, theatre and television and nearly all formats of writing and scripting. Helping pay my way through college, I started producing video archives for events around the region.

After graduating with an Associates of Arts degree with a major in English, I soon took a...
I am originally from Providence and Foster, RI, and ended up in Colorado Springs in 1991. In college, I studied film, literature, theatre and television and nearly all formats of writing and scripting. Helping pay my way through college, I started producing video archives for events around the region.

After graduating with an Associates of Arts degree with a major in English, I soon took a position as a general assignment reporter and photographer for the smallest daily newspaper in the state of Colorado where I was required to file three fully researched and source attributed stories every day. My stories covered a wide variety of subjects including education, local government, agriculture, sports and human interest. After more than three years with this outlet, I took a job in Geneva, Switzerland for six months.

When I returned stateside, I took a position with what is presently known as Colorado Community Media which published newspapers for nine communities in South Metro Denver. I was responsible for covering the sports beats in those areas with a staff of one full time and five freelance reporters under my management as well as two freelance photographers. During my eight years with this outlet, I consistently met both weekly print and daily online deadlines and I earned two Colorado Press Association awards (first place 2009, first place 2011) for my sports column at the time.

After leaving this outfit, I went into sales management for a storm restoration company where I had worked and learned about the multiple facets of exterior and interior home restoration, renovation and construction. However, I continued to freelance for a variety of clients in an effort to not lose my highly developed skills as a journalist, writer and researcher.

In my younger years, I have appeared in several theatrical productions including The Day They Shot John Lennon, Jeffrey, Da, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten and Inherit the Wind.

I have written and produced–sometimes directed, sometimes appeared in–several video motion picture projects under the name DockRat Entertainment and Comatose Picturez since 1993 including In the Darkness, Between Friends and Wonderbred. In 1999, I partnered up with regional stand-up comedian Napoleon Hudson to create the Rocky Mountain-based sketch comedy television show Loosen Up, which aired on cable TV in Colorado Springs and Denver for two seasons before I left the show to enter the field of journalism.

My first full length stageplay saw its world premier in 2000, in Colorado Springs, titled 24 Hours and Something Original. The production had a successful run and was welcomed with great to good reviews from regional critics. Since then, I have written written several other stageplays including The War Over Tigger, Slow Kidz at Play, The Twilight of Nantucket, This Girl from Providence, Mourning News, Fat Farm, Ink’d, Skin In the Games, Hook and Ladder, Simon and the Great Gap and the musical Dadly Intentions, two of which I wrote during my six month stint in Switzerland. More information and samples from each of my stage works are available at www.BennFarrellWriter.com and clicking on “Stageplays.”

From 2006-2010, I produced a popular movie review podcast titled Brian and Benn’s MP3 Movie Talk Show with cohort and fellow thespian Brian G. Felts, which until its end had been downloaded nearly 20,000 times by online subscribers. It was also used as a pre-loaded source of entertainment for many MP3 players sold in stores at the time.

Plays

  • Simon and the Great Gap by Benn Farrell
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: amnesia, mixed family + 6 more
    Genre: comedy, drama
    Keyword: amnesia, mixed family, infidelity, Dissociation, self awareness, mental health issues, adult depression, anxiety disorder
    Simon comes home one day to find his family now belongs to someone else and he has somehow missed years of his life, estranged from his marriage and daughter. Thinking he is caught in some kind of nightmare, he reaches out to his best friend Noel for answers and soon seeks the aid of a counselor, Patricia.

    As Simon, Noel and Patricia figure out how Simon may have developed a large gap in his...
    Simon comes home one day to find his family now belongs to someone else and he has somehow missed years of his life, estranged from his marriage and daughter. Thinking he is caught in some kind of nightmare, he reaches out to his best friend Noel for answers and soon seeks the aid of a counselor, Patricia.

    As Simon, Noel and Patricia figure out how Simon may have developed a large gap in his recent memory, the once father and husband attempts to work his way back into what has become a “mixed family.” Hoping to gain a better understanding of how he could have lost the life he new and watch his wife become involved in a romantic relationship with another woman, Simon looks to his young teenage daughter Gabbi for possible answers.

    Simon’s journey takes him from the humorous to the heartbreaking, from the ridiculous to the insightful, while he struggles to piece together the puzzle of what happened to his life and how it slipped from him.
  • Hook and Ladder by Benn Farrell
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: Professional sports in America, Sports writer + 6 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: Professional sports in America, Sports writer, magazine, ex-football players, American football, integrity, National Anthem, reputation
    Hot shot sports writer Dunkin Scott’s career is on the rise as the top reporter at Sports Review Monthly magazine. His readership is at an all-time high and is a frequent guest on major sports radio and television networks.

    As if things couldn’t be going better for him, Dunkin is about to get the opportunity of a lifetime when he is assigned to an exclusive interview with future Hall of Fame...
    Hot shot sports writer Dunkin Scott’s career is on the rise as the top reporter at Sports Review Monthly magazine. His readership is at an all-time high and is a frequent guest on major sports radio and television networks.

    As if things couldn’t be going better for him, Dunkin is about to get the opportunity of a lifetime when he is assigned to an exclusive interview with future Hall of Fame football linebacker Tony Backlund, the writer’s childhood sports hero.

    However, Dunkin soon finds himself pressured by his publisher Rachel Montgomery to spotlight the gridiron great and humanitarian as a fraud because Backlund had taken a knee during the U.S. national anthem at a playoff game six months prior. Quickly, Dunkin finds himself struggling to write what is fair and truthful to his sports hero after he begins to find a disconnect of facts involving Backlund’s abrupt and mysterious retirement as well as his on-field protest.

    The play culminates into a mess of journalistic malpractice, unworthy ideology and Dunkin caught at a cross roads to decide what kind of journalist, sports fan and person he wants to be.
  • Skin In the Games by Benn Farrell
    Cast: 
    10
    ·
    Genre: comedy
    ·
    Keyword: filmmaking, separation + 8 more
    Genre: comedy
    Keyword: filmmaking, separation, business failure, making a movie, pornography, fast money, real estate, renovation, adult relationships, situational comedy
    Levi is struggling. His house flipping business is on the verge of collapse, barely able to pay is subcontractors. He’s separated from his wife, Mandy, who moved to New York while he now lives in a run-down apartment in Boston. Things could not be worse.

    However, opportunity comes knocking in the form of a no-risk property located in the region’s most high-end neighborhood, a family estate which...
    Levi is struggling. His house flipping business is on the verge of collapse, barely able to pay is subcontractors. He’s separated from his wife, Mandy, who moved to New York while he now lives in a run-down apartment in Boston. Things could not be worse.

    However, opportunity comes knocking in the form of a no-risk property located in the region’s most high-end neighborhood, a family estate which is offered to him cheap by his best friend and entrepreneur, Gavin, who owns a growing private security firm.

    With 60 days to buy the property and no capital to purchase it, Levi devised a plan with the advice of an old college friend to temporarily buy video production equipment and shoot a pornographic movie to sell and raise the funds he needs to turn his business around for good. Levi enlists the talents of a handful of actors including a private dancer named Courtney, a jilted exotic dancer Gretchen, an erotica author Emma, his drywaller Kevin and security guard Jake to be in his movie, an adult parody of The Hunger Games, hoping to sell the final product to John Brozo, one of the largest adult entertainment distributors in the North East.

    Soon, Levi finds himself in a mess, racing to find a way to complete the movie in time, especially after he hires an experienced adult film star named Lexxxi Diamond to command a higher sales tag for the final product. Of course, things don’t get easier when ex-wife wife Mandy returns with the possibility of rebuilding their marriage as he tries to keep the fact he’s become an amateur pornographer a secret from her until the film sells.
  • Ink'd by Benn Farrell
    Cast: 
    8–9
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: keeping secrets, secrets and lies + 7 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: keeping secrets, secrets and lies, tattoos, dating, hiding, adult relationships, single father, crime scene, police investigation
    Cole and Ayla are good friends who have been working as artists in the same tattoo shop for almost three years; however, they aren’t as close as one would think.

    Cole, a single father to sharp but smart-ass teen Britt, meets Lori and soon falls for her, but he refuses to allow himself to get close to her for unknown reasons.

    Ayla is starting to feel trapped in her life with her cop...
    Cole and Ayla are good friends who have been working as artists in the same tattoo shop for almost three years; however, they aren’t as close as one would think.

    Cole, a single father to sharp but smart-ass teen Britt, meets Lori and soon falls for her, but he refuses to allow himself to get close to her for unknown reasons.

    Ayla is starting to feel trapped in her life with her cop boyfriend Kent. Against his wishes, she takes a day or two to visit family in New England. Before she can return, Kent is shot and killed by a strange man named Manny.

    Cole quickly starts to pack up shop much to the dismay of Lori. Ayla becomes racked with guilt and starts to pull up the tents herself but knows if she doesn’t open up to Cole completely, he and his daughter may be in danger as well.

    However, as we learn more about what Ayla is hiding, an investigation into Kent’s murder starts to point fingers at Cole.

    The play culminates into an example of how protecting oneself from others who care about you can actually be harmful in some cases, as we learn what secrets both Ayla and Cole have been keeping from each other for three years.
  • Mourning News by Benn Farrell
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: journalism, journalist + 6 more
    Genre: comedy, drama
    Keyword: journalism, journalist, Small town life, integrity, adult relationships, divorce, bad writing, extortion
    Recently divorced, off-Broadway playwright LEWIS GREEN visits his ex-wife TANYA in an attempt to make good on their divorce decree. However, he soon finds himself on the edge of professional peril, stuck in the middle of her hometown in southeast Colorado.

    Tanya, who recently inherited her father’s daily newspaper, the Rockford Daily Informer, is trying all she can to keep the publication’s...
    Recently divorced, off-Broadway playwright LEWIS GREEN visits his ex-wife TANYA in an attempt to make good on their divorce decree. However, he soon finds himself on the edge of professional peril, stuck in the middle of her hometown in southeast Colorado.

    Tanya, who recently inherited her father’s daily newspaper, the Rockford Daily Informer, is trying all she can to keep the publication’s dropping revenue afloat since taking over operations. Attempting to keep the quality of writing contributed to the paper, she formulates a scheme to keep Lewis in town.

    After a call to their judge, Tanya snares Lewis into paying the $96K he now owes her by reporting for her small town news rag over the next three years. Realizing he is being extorted, Lewis quickly phones his manager, trying to get the judge’s approval reversed.

    Meanwhile, Lewis becomes aquainted with the paper’s colorful staff, including ALISHA, the seasoned news writer, MATT, the youthful sports reporter, and the easily annoyed BO, their editor. As his stay in Rockford grows longer, under his wife’s rule, Lewis formulates a plan of his own, attempting to get fired by writing falsehoods and insults about the town’s people.

    However, Lewis’ plan backfires, as his readers find his parodies hilarious, boosting the newspaper’s advertising and subscription sales. The more outlandish the story, the more popular he becomes, except with Bo. Convicted to keep quality news in the RDI, Bo builds resentment towards Lewis, which only grows with his secret feelings for Tanya.

    As Lewis continues to sink the paper with lies and inuendo, his plan is soon derailed after being assigned to write a story about NELDA, a junior high school teacher unfairly terminated for having her students read “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

    The play culminates to Lewis discovering why his marriage failed, why some people prefer rural living to metro lifestyles, and most of all, news that’s important to only one town is still important enough to write about.
  • Fat Farm by Benn Farrell
    Cast: 
    9
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: journalist, pharmaceutical industry + 5 more
    Genre: comedy, drama
    Keyword: journalist, pharmaceutical industry, Obesity, corporate corruption, corporate greed, conspiracy, adult humor
    Lee Delano, an investigative journalist for The Baltimore Herald, attempts to further his stagnant career by joining a weight loss clinical trial group, hoping to get a story on the commissioned facility and its subjects.

    On his first day volunteering, Lee meets the trial’s other participants, including Maggie the single mom, Dean the loud mouth, AC the bodygaurd, Tammy the housewife and Gayle...
    Lee Delano, an investigative journalist for The Baltimore Herald, attempts to further his stagnant career by joining a weight loss clinical trial group, hoping to get a story on the commissioned facility and its subjects.

    On his first day volunteering, Lee meets the trial’s other participants, including Maggie the single mom, Dean the loud mouth, AC the bodygaurd, Tammy the housewife and Gayle the romance writer. All of them are visited by Dr. Jeanne Markus, director of testing at the Sunstar Herbal Science Group facility, and learn they are about to endure four weeks of side effects to a new fat burning pill.

    As the side effects begin to take effect, Lee gets the others to share reasons why they volunteered. However, not everyone is playing by the rules of the trial. One of its volunteers is having junk food snuck in.

    The group realizes the dangers of their situation, as Dr. Markus reports severe problems with the facility’s West Coast trial. Maggie, whom Lee has befriended, begins to experience the same severities.

    After one in the group is thrown into isolation as punishment, and Maggie’s condition continues to get worse, Lee uses a facility technician named Lance to obtain confidential information about the trial. Together, they discover Sunstar’s engineers have been corrupted, and more importantly, find out why.

    In the end, Lee discovers how people who crave change, including himself, are usually nursing a variety of disorders in their lives, and battling stereotypes, other than obesity.
  • Dadly Intentions by Benn Farrell
    Cast: 
    9
    ·
    Genre: comedy, musical
    ·
    Keyword: musical, fatherhood + 6 more
    Genre: comedy, musical
    Keyword: musical, fatherhood, raising children, husband, chasing your dreams, career change, writer, losing a parent
    Indie movie producer and screenwriter Harold becomes the father of boy/girl twins about the same time he learns his own father is terminally ill. Harold, with the help of his new friends and his wife Wendy, goes through a spectacle of a journey learning to be a good husband, father and honorable son while keeping his own dreams alive.
  • This Girl from Providence by Benn Farrell
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: comedy
    ·
    Keyword: being online, dating + 4 more
    Genre: comedy
    Keyword: being online, dating, being single, secrets & lies, false expectations, adult family drama
    Troy convinces his cousin Katie to pose as a new girlfriend, whom he met over the Internet, so his friends will stop harassing him. That is until Katie’s overly-jealous girlfriend and Troy’s mother catch word of their new affair.
  • Slow Kids at Play by Benn Farrell
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: special education, adult relationships + 6 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: special education, adult relationships, elementary school, single mom, single dad, student council, election campaigns, Family Feud
    With an interest in helping others have more fun at school, two special education students, KYLE BARNES and RILEY WOOLEY, decide to run for the position of student body president at Paine Elementary School.

    However, what they considered to be a fun social studies activity soon turns ugly when their parents become involved.

    NOLAN BARNES, Kyle’s father, is a single dad who has made...
    With an interest in helping others have more fun at school, two special education students, KYLE BARNES and RILEY WOOLEY, decide to run for the position of student body president at Paine Elementary School.

    However, what they considered to be a fun social studies activity soon turns ugly when their parents become involved.

    NOLAN BARNES, Kyle’s father, is a single dad who has made his son the top priority of his life. Kyle is at the center of his every decision, and he has made many sacrifices to ensure his son does not fall behind the other kids.

    ERICA WOOLEY, Riley’s mother, is an Internet entrepreneur, having received much notoriety for her Love Therapy websites and chat rooms. However, her devotion to her success leaves Riley to fend for himself emotionally.

    Once Erica hears her son is campaigning for civil service, she becomes very interested, especially when she finds out the son of Nolan Barnes is running against him. The two adults carry a deep resentment for each other aging nearly 25 years.

    The upcoming student election forces Nolan and Erica to spend more time at the school, where Erica starts up a smear campaign against Kyle, focusing on the poverty of his family and his learning disability. She does not realize Riley has a long neglected disability as well.

    Nolan fights back with slander of his own, making both kids feel running for office is a mistake. Kyle and Riley, fed up with their parents embarrassing behavior, decide to throw the election with a series of ridiculous allegations during a debate assembly.

    The story culminates into a series of revealed secrets both parents have long kept from their children, including the whereabouts of Riley’s father, the boys’ relationship to each other, and the bitterness both parents have carried since their high school love affair.
  • The War Over Tigger by Benn Farrell
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: neighbor fight, friends + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, drama
    Keyword: neighbor fight, friends, lovers, bad marriage, love, filmmaker
    A neighborhood rivalry ensues over Mark’s pet cat named “Tigger,” while his roommate Rebecca must risk her marriage to save her long time friendship with an indie screenwriter named Aaron.
  • The Twilight of Nantucket by Benn Farrell
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: television, actors + 3 more
    Genre: comedy, drama
    Keyword: television, actors, Politics, cancellation, egos
    Four voices for the animated television series “Nantucket” discover not only has the show and their jobs come to an end, but they may be the victims of a network coup to rid them of the show’s eccentric young creator.
  • Baby Boy...or the Unexpected Problem with Zombie Parents by Benn Farrell
    Cast: 
    2
    ·
    Genre: comedy, melodrama
    ·
    Keyword: racism, bad parenting + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, melodrama
    Keyword: racism, bad parenting, zombies, rednecks, hillbilly, infidelity
    Two hillbilly zombie expected parents at an OBGYN office discover they are going to have an alive human child.
  • Tabor, Take One by Benn Farrell
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: American football, ice hockey + 2 more
    Genre: comedy, drama
    Keyword: American football, ice hockey, celebrities, documentary film-making
    Amanda, a documentary filmmaker looking to make a name for herself, visits the home of two-sport phenom Jay Tabor and his mother for an exclusive interview with the young athlete to uncover why he went missing for three months.