Anya Richkind

10-MINUTE MONOLOGUE: Sylvia has cancer and is playing phone tag with her daughter.  

TEN-MINUTE: Haganini, an out-of-work clown, lives alone in Asheville, North Carolina, where everything's usually the same — until he starts hearing music throughout his apartment. A virtual piece devised with Ethan Holtzman and Geo Jones.

10-MINUTE MONOLOGUE: A high school teacher attempts to bring the contact sport of theater to the virtual arena.

Monologue featured in 24 Hour Plays: Viral Monologues, published collection, 2020

FULL-LENGTH: Callie and Will just had a baby (oh my god!) and are having their favorite lesbian couple Bess and Tanya over for dinner to introduce their bundle. A seemingly normal, albeit awkward, albeit tense, dinner devolves into a wild, time-altering romp that explores the monstrosity of heteronormativity, the mechanism of motherhood, and the power of queer love.

FULL-LENGTH: An old man lives in his house surrounded by piles and piles of pancakes, which are also his memories. A meditation on the need to share memories, when sharing memories is the same as eating pancakes.

FULL LENGTH: High-schoolers Allegra and Tara meet when cast in the school play as Frances Willard and Mary Bannister — two historical leaders of the late-1800s Women's Christian Temperance Movement, who shared a "very close friendship." Through rehearsals, sleepovers and Ouija boards, Allegra and Tara explore just how similar — and dissimilar — they are to Frances and Mary.

FULL LENGTH: There is a bag of letters from Barbara that nobody has opened for many years. Mom has the bag. Somewhere in that bag is Barbara's suicide note. Letter by letter, Mom and Twig learn about Twig's grandmother Barbara, who left us when Mom was two years old. Meanwhile, Dad is building a deck and someone named Benny moves in next to Twig.

PLEASE NOTE: I'm hoping to rewrite this play COMPLETELY! Many characters may not exist in the next draft. The heart of the play will still be a daughter, her mother, and her mother's mother. The heart of the play will still be the letters, because those really exist, just like my maternal grandma really did exist, and in many ways, still does.

FULL LENGTH: Emma is certain that deep down she's an amazing guitarist. Joyce thought she'd be married or famous or signed by now. Earnest loves classical music and carefully curated seasonal decorations. With an ensemble of four to 100, this play weaves farce, fantasy and the extremely mundane into a collage of loneliness.

FULL-LENGTH: Karina wrote a ten-minute play. Mom and Dad, playing characters named Katrina and Dad, attempt to read it over dinner. Katie, a traveling knife-saleswoman just out of college, attempts to sell them knives.

FULL LENGTH: "Weird" is just the beginning of the name-calling when eight middle-schoolers ditch cross-country practice one afternoon. Left to their own devices, they are hilarious, mean, and vulnerable all at once. In this intriguing play, right and wrong blur with rumor and innuendo, as the secret unravels amid a struggle for friendship and individuality.

FULL LENGTH: Welcome to Mermaidland, the only place on earth where mermaids are real! Join us for our afternoon special starring Mermaid Bee, Mermaid Vana and our newest princess of the deep, Mermaid Marie! Please avoid the alligators and if one named Larry approaches you, do not make eye contact. Thank you. All best, Lola the Inventor of Mermaidland.

TEN-MINUTE: The world has been over for thousands of years. Only Gloria and Maybel are left. Until one day, among the steaming mush and the old filing cabinets from advertising agencies gone by, Maybel finds a rarity. A man.

TEN-MINUTE: Sharon invited you here today because Sharon needs help. A play that takes place in your imagination and can be performed in-person or over Zoom.

TEN-MINUTE: The data's been analyzed, the numbers have been crunched, and the results are here. Our country's finest scientists have just found, with 97% certainty, that everyone is gay. People react.