Patricia Cotter

A gutsy comedic romp over 60 years, from the first secret meeting of the first lesbian social club in San Francisco to closing night of the last lesbian bar. As women loving women gather in defiance of convention (and the law), they drink, debate, politicize, flirt, drink more, dance hard, make out, fall in love, break up—and though they are entirely unaware—make history and change the world. A play about the transformation of identity, gender, and sexuality across generations in the queer epicenter of the universe.

1980 (Or Why I’m Voting For John Anderson) is comedy about class, race and learning to believe that anything is possible, before you learn that it actually isn’t. For a sliver of a shining moment in the fall of 1980, it looked as though a little known congressman from Illinois, John Anderson, might actually have a chance to be a contender for President of the United States. At least that's what the campaign staff of John Anderson For President believes. In a bare bones campaign office in Boston, Massachusetts four very different (and slightly lost) people search for answers and hope that their long shot candidate will change their country and their lives.

"The Sister Show" is a raucous comedy about two wildly different sisters, Ann Marie, an uptight, withholding writer, and Paulette, a chaotic semi-grifter. After the unexpected death of her estranged husband, Paulette leaves New Hampshire and shows up unannounced at Ann Marie’s apartment. What follows? Fistfights, a medical emergency, a homemade musical, and maybe—just maybe—a shot at forgiveness. It’s a journey through dysfunction and responsibility. It’s about love despite our differences, and perhaps our better judgment.

THE SURROGATE is a comedy about the slippery slope of bioethics and just plain ethics. When Billy and Sara ask their best friends Margaret and Jen to be the guardians of their precious Tallulah (and yet-to-be-born baby Carroll), lives change and friendships are tested. The surprise arrival of surrogate Crystal and Sara’s mother, Rita, bring the issues of motherhood, desire, class and sexual politics to a head in unexpected ways. THE SURROGATE explores what happens when we become casual about de-intimating the rituals of life into a business plan.

Caroline is really, really not funny. Which is why she hires Guy, a stand-up comedian with some hang-ups of his own, to teach her how to tell jokes. But it turns out that they both have things to learn from one another, about life as well as laughter.

The Break-Up Notebook: A Lesbian Musical is the award-winning, hilarious, touching and sexy musical comedy for anyone and everyone who has ever had a broken heart and lived to tell about it. Based on Patricia Cotter’s critically-acclaimed hit play of the same name, The Break-Up Notebook: A Musical has music and lyrics by Lori Scarlett.
The musical tells the story of Helen Hill, a 33-year-old lesbian who has recently been dumped. She is heartbroken, slightly stunned and determined to go out there and do it all over again. With the support of her best gay boyfriend, Bob, and her gal pals, Monica and Joanie, she jumps back into the dating pool. What she finds takes her a bit by surprise…two-stepping twelve-steppers, anxiety prone lawyers, a dominatrix, Match.com, rebound bad dates, rebound great dates and maybe…just maybe… the girl of her dreams.

After a bad break up, two women meet in The Anthropology Section of a bookstore.

A student/teacher conference takes a turn that neither student nor teacher quite expects.

Ladykillers is a pitch-black musical comedy based on the true story of Olga Rutterschmidt and Helen Golay, two older women who killed homeless men for insurance money.

Olga and Helen, two casual sociopaths and grifters, living in Santa Monica, have been friends for decades. Feeling past their prime and at the end of their rope financially, they devise a plan to take in homeless men, purchase multiple life insurance policies on them, and murder them after two years (the Period of Contestability for insurance companies to investigate fraud).

After successfully executing their plan on the villainous Chadsey by housing him for two years and then running him over with their Mercury Sable, Olga and Helen discover that they not only have a real gift for this but a real passion as well. They warehouse and murder more homeless men and the money keeps rolling in. As the women become greedier, they also grow more reckless, and suspicious insurance adjustor (and all around good guy) Todd Winslow is soon on their trail.

When a mysterious new man enters the women’s lives, he threatens to blow apart both their murderous scam and their friendship.

With a pop score encompassing elements of film noir, tropicalia, and Bakersfield outlaw country and western, Ladykillers asks the question: What is the value of a human life?

Ladykillers also offers a warning to its audience: Be careful about who you ignore.