Craig Houk

Black Comedy/Farce • 3 Female, 4 Male, 1 Any Gender • Two-Act/Full Length • ~110 Mins

A band of aging, ego-bruised actors in a crumbling provincial theatre abduct the merciless critic who has savaged their careers and devise a ludicrously overcomplicated plan to murder him live onstage during their own performance. What could possibly go wrong? Egos outrun intellect as the conspirators – an unhinged leading man with a hero complex, a facelift-obsessed diva, a long-in-the-tooth, narcoleptic ingénue with a cocaine habit, and a gloriously mediocre drunk – attempt to carry out a revenge plot they scarcely understand. Aided by a disgruntled stage manager and a stagehand who may be the only competent person in the building, the scheme rapidly unravels into missed cues, malfunctioning tech, duplicate costumes, bungled pickpocketing, accidental concussions, and an increasingly exasperated captive critic who proves far steadier than his would-be executioners. What results is a razor-sharp backstage satire about vanity, desperation, and the thin line between performance and reality, where the show must go on even if someone doesn’t. Brute Farce is a biting, satirical look at the tangled, often dysfunctional, and sometimes explosive relationship between actors and critics.

Domestic Southern Drama • 3 Female, 2 Male • Two-Act/Full Length • ~110 Mins

In 1973 New Orleans, on the sweltering night a fire tears through the Upstairs Lounge, killing thirty-two men, nineteen-year-old nursing student Sydney “Syd” Trahan is arrested for dancing at a nearby lesbian bar, an act that detonates long-simmering tensions within her devout, working-class family. As her father, Bud, basks in public praise for a professional honor and her mother, Helen, struggles to reconcile faith, reputation, and maternal fear, their neighbors Beau and Beverly Larson confront the consequences of their own cruelty toward their gay son, Roscoe, now among the dead. Over the course of two harrowing days, secrets surface, hypocrisies are exposed, and private reckonings unfold against a backdrop of religious fervor and communal tragedy. SYD is a searing domestic drama about shame, complicity, and the cost of survival in a world that mistakes intolerance for righteousness.

Supernatural Drama • 5 Female, 4 Male • Two-Act/Full Length • ~125 Mins

Cold Rain follows three witch sisters in a small Western Pennsylvania town whose attempt to conjure the perfect husband for the youngest, Carly, unleashes consequences that ripple across decades. When the volatile Shirley adds a dangerous twist to a simple love spell and Lolly secretly attempts to reverse it, the magic binds Carly to touring crooner Joe Rekowski and sets their family on a troubled path. Years later, as rumors swirl around the mysterious drowning of the Pacheco twins at Flat Rock and suspicion falls on Carly’s sensitive, troubled son Johnny, old secrets resurface and long-buried resentments ignite. Moving between 1959 and 1989, the play blends dark humor and supernatural lore to explore fate, guilt, and forbidden longing in a family bound by blood, and black magic, struggling to outrun the consequences of a single, fateful night.

Psychological Thriiler • 2 Male, 1 Female • Two-Act/Full Length • ~100 Mins

Aging Oscar-winner Jack Dunn emerges from years of self-imposed exile in Alaska to reconnect with his oldest friend, and fiercest rival, Wade Henry, a Tony-winning stage actor weathering his own uncertain season in a well-appointed Connecticut home. What begins as a late-night poker game fueled by expensive whiskey and shared history gradually exposes old resentments, professional jealousy, and the lingering shadow of a woman who once stood between them. As talk turns to a highly anticipated new play that could redefine (or quietly diminish) a legacy, the evening slips from nostalgic to volatile. With egos bruised and memories distorted, Jack and Wade find themselves trapped in a dangerous game where performance and reality blur, alliances shift, and the stakes extend far beyond the cards on the table.

Dark Comedy • 10 Female, 5 Male (Doubling, Tripling) • Two-Act/Full Length • ~110 Mins

In present-day Clarksville, Tennessee, Cleary’s Delicatessen has been a beloved institution for nearly fifty years, built on family pride and Grandma Cleary’s legendary potato salad. But as business falters and a flashy new competitor opens across the street, owner Harlan Cleary pins his hopes on his socially awkward, unpredictable son Herb, who “means no harm” but keeps leaving chaos in his wake. When Herb takes liberties with the sacred potato salad recipe, a series of increasingly absurd mishaps spirals into catastrophe: food poisoning at a family picnic, bodies in the restrooms, a suspicious fire, and police at the door. As loyalties fracture and the Clearys scramble to contain the fallout, the play hurtles toward darkly comic disaster, asking how far a family will go to protect its legacy and whether good intentions are ever enough to save it.

Southern Gothic Tragedy • 5 Female, 2 Male • Two-Act/Full Length • ~120 Mins

Pete Anderson, a well-meaning but dangerously misguided husband whose desperate longing for a child collides with his wife Peggy Lynn’s repeated miscarriages and emotional exhaustion. As financial strain, small-town gossip, and the suffocating presence of Pete’s sharp-tongued mother Nancy Jo tighten around the couple, Pete hatches a reckless plan to secure the family he craves, entangling himself with the fiercely independent Sandra Miller in a decision that spirals into betrayal, violence, and devastating consequences. What begins as a portrait of working-class domestic tension deepens into a tragic examination of masculinity, ownership, motherhood, and the brutal cost of hope in a world that offers few choices and even fewer mercies.

Psychological Drama/Dark Comedy • 3 Female, 3 Male, 1 Bear (Doubling) • One-Act/Full Length • ~90 Mins​

In the remote woods of Sierra County, aging recluse Patrice Bean lives alone in the cluttered house her domineering father once ruled, clinging to her land, her grudges, and her failing health as neighbors and authorities circle with mounting concern. When she begins feeding, and befriending, a massive black bear she dubs “Big Bastard,” what first seems like eccentric defiance slowly reveals itself as something far more complicated: a reckoning with a violent past buried in the 1970s, when two local girls disappeared and Patrice’s tyrannical father fell under suspicion. As present-day deputy Cody Hodges – named after a teddy bear Patrice once gave his grandfather – reopens old wounds, the play shifts between past and present to uncover the truth of what Patrice sacrificed to stop a monster in her own home. Darkly comic, haunting, and ultimately redemptive, Big Bastard is a story about guilt, survival, and the complicated ways love and violence can take root in the same soil.

Supernatural Thriller/Dark Comedy • 2 Female, 2 Male • Two-Act/Full Length • ~110 Mins

Desperate to overcome a crippling creative drought, celebrated horror novelist Evelyn Wray retreats to the long-abandoned keeper’s quarters of a historic Maine lighthouse she has impulsively purchased. Hoping to write one final great novel, Evelyn clashes with her sharp-tongued literary agent Nora over money, legacy, and relevance, while forming an uneasy rapport with Thomas, the local cable technician, and Deputy Sam Chadborn, a devoted fan who shares the lighthouse’s grim legend of a keeper and his wife whose fatal fall from the tower may not have been an accident. As strange occurrences multiply, locked doors, shifting objects, unexplained lights, dizzy spells, missing time, and a mysterious clockwork crank tied to the old story, Evelyn begins to lose her grip on the boundaries between memory, performance, authorship, and haunting. In a space built to cast light into darkness, she confronts the possibility that the terror she has spent decades writing about is no longer confined to the page, and that creating one final great work may require a far more devastating sacrifice than she ever imagined.

Character-Driven Dramedy • 2 Male • One-Act/Full Length • ~90 Mins

In the basement of a worn-down Bronx apartment building, two very different neighbors – volatile, financially struggling Lou Brunazzi and analytical, newly separated André Cooper – clash over a perpetually hissing radiator on the landing between their apartments. What begins as a turf war over noise and heat gradually shifts into something far more layered, as late-night arguments give way to shared drinks, uneasy humor, and deep personal revelations. Beneath Lou’s bluster lies a complicated past tied to a partner thousands of miles away, while André wrestles with divorce, identity, and a longing for purpose. As the seasons change, the landing transforms from battleground to refuge, and the stubborn radiator, by turns aggravating and essential, becomes a symbol of survival, pride, and the fragile warmth that can grow between two people who never expected to need each other.

Anthology Dramedy • 8 Female, 2 Male, 1 Any Gender (Doubling Optional) • Six Intersecting Playlets • ~90 Mins

Lost in Place interweaves six sharply observed, darkly comic playlets set in a nearly abandoned American town buckling under a relentless pandemic. A former mob wife is recruited by a wary detective to entrap a grandmother plotting to kill her pregnant daughter-in-law; a conspiracy-minded husband drives away his family while a well-meaning neighbor makes a fateful choice; martinis, stolen rutabagas, and buried resentments culminate in a shocking mercy; a prickly recluse and her abrasive visitor reveal unexpected tenderness; two widowed neighbors memorialize love with lawn chairs and gallows humor; and a displaced mother seeks refuge from an ex-cop guarding more than just her property. By turns absurd, profane, and poignant, the anthology explores isolation, moral compromise, and the uneasy intimacy of those left behind when the world falls apart.

Psychological Drama/Thriller • 1 Female, 1 Male • Playlet • ~20 Mins

An estate attorney pays a welfare visit to Francis Carcaise, a reclusive widower living in a once-elegant country home that has quietly fallen into disrepair around him. As Francis, charming but increasingly disoriented, fixates on finding his missing shoe and reminisces about his late husband, Nelson, the conversation shifts from polite concern to mounting unease. Greer gradually uncovers troubling financial stagnation and signs of neglect, while Francis offers a poignant meditation on love, loneliness, and the hollowness of inherited wealth. What begins as a tense but civil check-in deepens into a chilling realization: Francis has already made a final decision about his unfinished business, and the missing shoe becomes the devastating clue that brings clarity to what has just occurred.

Psychological Drama/Political Thriller • 1 Female, 1 Male • Playlet • ~10 Mins

On the eve of his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, ambitious U.S. Circuit Judge Edwin Spratt and his wife Abigail share a tense, increasingly surreal dinner in their Bethesda home, where polite exchanges curdle into barbed interrogations and memory itself begins to fray. As allegations of sexual assault threaten Edwin’s ascension, Abigail probes his late-night “walks,” his evasions, and the truth behind a decades-old accusation in which his face, not just his name, has become synonymous with a woman’s trauma. While a ticking grandfather clock underscores their unraveling, the couple spar over love, loyalty, ambition, and the cost of power, revealing a marriage built on denial, performance, and strategic silence. In this taut two-hander, what begins as a quiet marital dinner becomes a chilling reckoning with complicity, reputation, and the corrosive passage of time.

Dark Comedy/Political Satire • 1 Female, 1 Male • Playlet • ~10 Mins

A retired business titan Addison Spratt and his wife Eleonore host an opulent pre-gala cocktail party at their Bethesda mansion to celebrate their son Edwin’s impending confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court. As the liquor flows, the inebriated couple begin to unravel, casually divulging unsettling details about Edwin’s adoption and the draconian measures they took to “correct” what they perceived as childhood softness. Their bigotry, political arrogance, and obsession with legacy spill out in increasingly absurd and biting exchanges, exposing the rot beneath their polished façade. Yet, in true old-guard fashion, they quickly regroup – rewriting their own history before their guests’ eyes – confident that wealth, influence, and power will once again insulate their family from consequence. Darkly comic and unflinching, the play skewers privilege, hypocrisy, and the machinery of reputation that sustains America’s ruling class.

Dystopian Satirical Drama • 3 Male, 1 Male/Trans Male • Playlet • ~10 Mins

On a smoke-choked London rooftop, three young, impeccably pink-clad men pass the time with cigarettes and brittle optimism while a new fascist regime cages others below and inexplicably spares them above. Convinced they are being preserved for their “usefulness” and cultural sparkle, Kemper, Logan, and Merrick rationalize their relative comfort even as the air grows hotter and the moral cost of their survival becomes harder to ignore. When Vince, an older outsider misplaced by a clerical error, joins them with a book and a blunt awareness of reality, their self-congratulatory logic begins to unravel. As smoke thickens and the truth becomes unavoidable, the playlet exposes the peril of complacency, the seduction of perceived exceptionalism, and the illusion that anyone can remain untouched while the world burns.

Dark Satirical Monologue • 1 Any Gender • Monologue • ~5 Mins

In Chum and Get It!, an exuberantly unscrupulous theater representative, Ray O. Sunshine, welcomes a roomful of desperate playwrights to the “New Works Initiative” at Feeding Frenzy Players, where artistic opportunity comes wrapped in absurd bureaucracy and barely veiled exploitation. What begins as a routine orientation quickly spirals into a gleefully unhinged breakdown of submission guidelines, complete with a nonrefundable entry fee handled by a reformed thief, ever-shifting formatting demands, and a literal bucket of rotting “chum” contestants must consume to earn the privilege of having their scripts read. As the stakes escalate from humiliation to possible death (and a posthumous honorable mention), Ray’s chipper sales pitch exposes the cutthroat hunger, vanity, and institutional dysfunction lurking beneath the promise of artistic validation, skewering the theater world’s pay-to-play culture with escalating absurdity and bite.