Christine Benvenuto

Two very different women encounter one other at a condo complex’s indoor swimming pool.

Simon, Joel and Carly are seated at a table in an upscale restaurant where Simon has come to meet his son’s fiancée for the first time. But Simon is no one’s idea of a warm and cuddly father-in-law.

SIMON, a middle aged therapist, takes a jaundiced view of his son’s plans to marry while cultivating a preoccupation with romancing young women himself. His longtime friend and colleague VIDA provides support and a touch of humorous reality as SIMON divulges his exploits, triumphs and agonies, in conversations that have recurred over years of marriages, affairs and brief encounters. The light banter shifts when a teenage barista is murdered and SIMON’s obsession with youth, and young women, appears less benign even to the tolerant VIDA, not to mention the police.

On the winter solstice, anthropology student Graceful arrives for a trial run as a live-in caregiver to Marti, an older woman showing early signs of dementia. When a mysterious man appears—claiming to be Marti’s son—the day turns strange and unsettling. As screams echo outside, memory, grief, and guilt collide, forcing both women to confront buried truths about fear, loss and survival.

Old pals Donny and Jeff meet up again in-flight with the chance to rekindle an old connection.

In this play about unplanned pregnancy, abortion, and female friendship, Professor Alan and student Cody meet during his usual office hour, but their conversation, interrupted by Cody’s best friend Amber, isn’t a typical teacher-student exchange.

En route to a conference, CASSIE enters what she believes to be an empty airport chapel to practice a standup comedy routine. There, she encounters BILL, receiving some eye-opening information about the state of world affairs.

Immediately following the death of their husband and father, Becca and her daughter, Leila, have
a humorous, unexpectedly revealing conversation about religious and sexual identity and family
history while shuffling through the quotidian paperwork of death and strenuously avoiding their grief.

Alana crawls into the dark mouth of a caterer’s van to try to pull back what has been taken from her.

Ornah and Cal share an easy camaraderie in the trenches of early parenthood, until a television report on college dorm rape opens a rift between them.

New research assistant and graduate student LEANNE visits the home of PROFESSOR GUY WHITE for the first time in this play set at the intersection of race/ethnicity, family secrets and trauma.

A pair of new postdoctoral fellows are invited to dinner at the home of SILAS, a professor, where they meet his much younger wife, LUCY, and daughter, HOPE, who provide a memorable evening. Scenes cut between this dinner; the life LUCY, HOPE and SILAS are living two years later when SILAS suffers from dementia and LUCY encounters SILAS’s first wife, PHOEBE, for the first time; and two key occasions seven years after that, when HOPE is starting college and trying to make sense of her family history.

OLIVE arrives for an obligatory timeshare sales pitch from KELLY, but what she is asked to buy into is not a condo but a commitment to planetary survival.

A seemingly random encounter between two people on a subway platform gradually discloses their shared past, respective situations, and the domestic violence that has brought them there.

Women of different ages and backgrounds confront an iconic American painting in surprisingly Strong and personal ways.

Katherine visits her former teaching fellow, Lucy, for a revealing and memorable dinner.

SILAS/SYLVIA, newly dead, arrives in an anteroom to find his/her intake angel seated at a small table shuffling papers.

MATTHEW and LAURA are shocked by the deaths of their estranged spouses during an upsurge in the pandemic - they are shocked, aren’t they?

A woman’s monologue about laying claim to a Jewish practice traditionally reserved for men.

Bridges explores the lives of Israelis and Palestinians through a fictional first act, in which a former IDF officer recounts a traumatic experience from his service; and through a second act drawn from the transcripts of Compassionate Listening sessions conducted in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel. The first act has been performed on its own, and a version of it is published as a short story in the anthology “Home” from Michigan State University.

ANA recalls the seemingly endless, excruciating period when she and her husband were no longer a couple yet still cohabitating, entering briefly into the pain, anger and ultimately the delicious, exhilarating freedom she discovered.

Gigi describes addresses Mr. Smith, a high school teacher, describing her own and many other students’ experiences with him.

Larry and Oliver meet at the DNA lab to find out if they are father and son.

Mother-daughter relationships can be complicated, especially when mom is Isis, the goddess of life and healing, not to mention a therapist.

The lock down alarm sounds unexpectedly. Is it a surprise drill, or a real emergency? Four friends lock themselves into a small storage room and fall into a conversation about race, while one of them suffers an attack of claustrophobia that might lead to disaster.