Patricia Cotter

Patricia Cotter

Patricia Cotter’s (she/her) awards include The American Academy of Arts Letters, Richard Rodgers Award, Daytime Emmy Award, and Writers Guild of America Award. Patricia is currently working with the composing team, The Kilbanes on a commissioned musical theatre project. She is writing the book for the musical HEAVYHEAD: THE MEDUSA PROJECT which received a reading in 2023 at the Jersey City Theater Center. Her...
Patricia Cotter’s (she/her) awards include The American Academy of Arts Letters, Richard Rodgers Award, Daytime Emmy Award, and Writers Guild of America Award. Patricia is currently working with the composing team, The Kilbanes on a commissioned musical theatre project. She is writing the book for the musical HEAVYHEAD: THE MEDUSA PROJECT which received a reading in 2023 at the Jersey City Theater Center. Her comedy THE DAUGHTERS, (The Kilroys Honorable Mention) received its world premiere at San Francisco Playhouse in 2019. Her play, I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT, was presented in November of 2020 as part of Centenary Stage Company’s Women Playwrights Series. Other plays include AFTER ALL I DID FOR YOU a commission from Theatre Lab at FAU as part of the Fair Play Initiative, 1980 (OR WHY I'M VOTING FOR JOHN ANDERSON) Chicago’s Jackalope Theatre 2017, Jeff Awards nominee for Best New Play, THE SURROGATE, winner of the 2016 Susan Glaspell Award, finalist at the 2016 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, produced at Centenary Stage Company, NJ, in 2017, RULES OF COMEDY, produced in 2015 Humana Festival of Ten-Minute Plays and featured on the podcast, PLAYING ON AIR. Her short play, THE STARS LOOK VERY DIFFERENT TODAY was produced as part of TheatreWorks 17th Annual New Works Festival, 2018. DRINKING ON A PLAY in 2018, and THE ANTHROPOLOGY SECTION in 2015 both produced by The Actors Theatre of Louisville’s The
Tens, THE BREAK-UP NOTEBOOK (a GLAAD Award nominee). Musicals (librettist/ adaptations) include ROCKET SCIENCEl, received readings at Playwrights Horizons in New York (directed by Kathleen Marshall) and was produced at The Village Theatre, Seattle; THE BREAK-UP NOTEBOOK: A MUSICAL (based on her play), at The Vineyard Theatre in New York. She was asked by Disney Theatricals and MTI to write MULAN, JR. (based on the Disney film MULAN), which is produced and performed nationally. Patricia adapted THE SURROGATE for Kanbar Entertainment which was released in 2021. She is an alumnus of The Bay Area Playwright Foundation’s Resident Playwrights Initiative. In addition to writing for the stage, Patricia has written for Audible, Twentieth Century Fox Television, Disney Theatrical, and Comedy Central.

https://playingonair.org/new-releases/rules-of-comedy
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/theater/playing-by-air-audio-series.html
“The bite-size offerings from “Playing on Air” in particular highlight how much ground a play can cover in just a few minutes. A production like Patricia Cotter’s “Wild and Precious Life” (which takes its title from a Mary Oliver poem) works like a sonnet: the truncated form demands an economy of language and swift turns like the final volta in the poem.” – Maya Phillips, “The New York Times”, January 2021

Plays

  • The Daughters
    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, makeout, fall in love, break up—and though they are entirely unaware—make history and change the world. A play about the...
    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, makeout, 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 epi-center of the universe.
  • 1980 (Or Why I'm Voting For John Anderson)
    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...
    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.
  • After All I Did For You (Working title)
    AFTER ALL I DID FOR YOU, a comedy about a serious subject, examines the similarities/differences between gay male relationships and lesbian relationships and the love between men and women in an alternative sense – how do we connect when sex is not a goal or an obstacle?

    Moving from the 1990s through the present day, the play centers on the long-term relationship between a gay male couple and a...
    AFTER ALL I DID FOR YOU, a comedy about a serious subject, examines the similarities/differences between gay male relationships and lesbian relationships and the love between men and women in an alternative sense – how do we connect when sex is not a goal or an obstacle?

    Moving from the 1990s through the present day, the play centers on the long-term relationship between a gay male couple and a lesbian couple. These couples are each other’s favorite people, the best of friends – family, really – and through their decades-long friendship, the play presents a specific and intimate history of the HIV/AIDS crisis and how it has impacted both the gay and lesbian communities.

    AFTER ALL I DID FOR YOU explores themes of love, loss, and betrayal while illuminating how living through trauma has repercussions that none of us can predict.
  • I'll Give You Something to Cry About (The Sister Play)
    Paulette and Ann Marie are sisters - they share some DNA, a brutal sense of humor and that's about it. So what happens when Paulette shows up unannounced to Ann Marie's San Francisco apartment from New Hampshire? Hint: fistfights, a medical crisis, a homemade musical, and a shot at forgiveness. “I'll Give You Something to Cry About" is a ruthless comedy that investigates the meaning of...
    Paulette and Ann Marie are sisters - they share some DNA, a brutal sense of humor and that's about it. So what happens when Paulette shows up unannounced to Ann Marie's San Francisco apartment from New Hampshire? Hint: fistfights, a medical crisis, a homemade musical, and a shot at forgiveness. “I'll Give You Something to Cry About" is a ruthless comedy that investigates the meaning of family, responsibility and the power of letting go.
  • The Surrogate
    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...
    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.
  • Rules of Comedy
    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 Musical
    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...
    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.
  • The Anthropology Section
    After a bad break up, two women meet in The Anthropology Section of a bookstore.
  • When You Talk About This
    A student/teacher conference takes a turn that neither student nor teacher quite expects.
  • Ladykillers
    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...
    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.