John Rodriguez

The audience has come to see “A Night with Miguel de Cervantes Reading from Don Quixote”. At the last minute, Lope de Vega takes the stage for Miguel who he says has a previous engagement. Then, when Miguel shows up unannounced, Lope doesn’t want to give up the stage. Miguel eventually gets his way and starts reading Don Quixote in Spanish to an unsuspecting American audience. Fortunately, Lope saves the night. As luck would have it, he’s written a play for the modern age. A two-hander to be read to the audience by Miguel and Eve DuBoney a part-time actress the Stage Manager found outside. As the play progresses Miguel and Eve stop reading from their scripts and assume their roles and Lope’s play becomes a play about two people trying to connect.

The play is set during the present day. Two young men, David Guzman and Ernesto Alvarez, are in love with the beautiful, statuesque Susanna Lopez. Ernesto in a jealous rage visits David at his studio apartment and shoots him point blank with three blanks. David survives but is so incensed by the attack that he wants retribution. Juan Carlos Avila DeMonton, a retired professor who collects firearms, provides him with a solution. He suggests the two men meet in Central Park at night to settle their differences as gentlemen and shake hands. David and Enrique refuse to shake hands at which point Juan Carlos proposes they have a duel. He will provide the weapons. Frightened, but showing a brave front, they both agree to duel the following morning. The duel will take place at Breezy Point which has a beach facing the Atlantic Ocean. That night, David spends the night with Susanna and Enrique spends the night with Rosa, Juan Carlos’ daughter, who has snuck into his bedroom. The morning comes, and the three men meet and take an Uber to Breezy Point where the duel will take place. Olivia, who’s Enrique’s mother, Susanna, Carmen, who’s Olivia’s best friend and Juan Carlos’ sister-in-law, and Rosa get wind of what’s going to happen and arrive just as two shots are fired. The play also centers around Olivia Alvarez's attempt to find a suitable female partner for her son Ernesto.

It's 1908 in Renada, Spain. Raquel Lagut wants a child. She cannot have one because she’s barren. Berta can and does have a child with Raquel's rich, young lover Juan who’s given Raquel his fortune. The child is called Raquel. Then, Juan who feels he’s been used by both women, kills himself, and Raquel, now wealthy, brings up the child, Raquel. In 1918, Raquel and Berta die in the flu epidemic and the Yanez family, friends of Raquel and Berta, is entrusted with Raquel's money and adopts the ten year old Raquel. It's now 1926, and Raquel, now eighteen, wants to leave home and get married for love. Her stepfather has lost all the money he was given by Raquel to the infamous, conman Charles Ponzi and is now broke. Her stepfathers, without her knowledge, marries off Raquel to the rich Alejandro Gomez who pays off his debts.

Raquel, realizing she was purchased by Alejandro for her looks, asks him whether he loves her for who she is. Alejandro refuses to acknowledge that he loves Raquel for herself alone and not for the fact that she’s his wife and legally his possession. She has his child, a boy. He thinks he is beyond being deceived by her and has an affair with another woman. Raquel, feeling she's unloved and depressed, has an affair with a Count, who does love her for who she is. When she confesses to Alejandro of her affair, he places her into a sanatorium because he’s convinced she’s insane and can't believe she cheated on him. To get out, she denies the affair to him and the Count and says it was only a hallucination. She then becomes ill and before she dies asks Alejandro again if he loves her for herself and not because he bought her. Alejandro tells her he does loves her for herself alone. She then dies, and, vowing to find her in death, he kills himself.

It’s 2015 in Connecticut, United States. The time is six years after the financial crisis. Limen Alejandro Gomez, an ailing, wealthy stock trader and the grandson of Alejandro Gomez, owns a family run hedge fund in Greenwich, Connecticut. The body of Clea Gomez, his wife, has just been laid to rest in the garden behind the Gomez estate. Barbara Gomez, his eighteen year old, step-daughter, arrives from a private school in Switzerland and confesses to her mother Bea Frank, Limen’s mistress (who’s lived with Limen and Clea for many years), that Limen molested her when she was eleven.

Barbara wants revenge. She wants Bea to get Limen to put her name in his will; otherwise she’ll tell the media he molested her. Bea learns that Limen wants to leave his fortune to his unborn grandchild but can’t because his son, Ernesto, and daughter-in-law, Frances, hate each other, and refuse to have sex. They also want to be put in his will. Limen asks Bea to intervene. She does so by seducing Ernesto, and then getting rid of Frances. Then, when the fortune is within her grasp she loses both Limen and her daughter, Barbara.

Sara, Jewish (60’s), Katherine, Jewish (70’s), and Anna , Latina (50), appear at a theatrical space run by Jane, German-Irish (70’s). The occasion is to try to reminisce, in a new, therapeutic way, about their connection to their friend, lover, and husband, Henry, Latino (70’s) who is trying to understand how the sexual interactions he had with these women affected his life.
Jane was his wife during the first half of the seventies. Sara was his lover during the last half of the seventies. Katherine was his second wife during the first half of the eighties. Anna was his lover during the last half of the eighties. Sara was again his lover for the first half of the nineties, and Anna has been his wife from the nineties to the present. Henry, in turn, reminisces about his connection to them and other people he’s come across in his life. Their conversation centers around love, sex and death.

It's 1908 Spain. Raquel Lagut wants a child. She cannot have one. Berta can and does have a child with Raquel's rich, young lover Juan who’s given Raquel his fortune. The child is called Raquel. Then, Juan who feels he’s been used by both women, kills himself. Raquel, now wealthy, brings up the child, Raquel. In 1918, Raquel and Berta die in the flu epidemic. The Yanez family is entrusted with Raquel's money and adopts the ten year old Raquel. It's now 1926, Raquel, now eighteen, wants to leave home and get married for love. Her stepfather has lost all the money he was given by Raquel to the infamous, conman Charles Ponzi and is now broke. Her stepfather sells and marries off Raquel to the rich Alejandro who pays off her stepfather's debts.

Alejandro refuses to acknowledge that he loves Raquel for herself alone and not for the fact that he bought her. He thinks he is beyond being deceived by his wife and has an affair with another woman. Raquel, feeling she's unloved and depressed, has an affair with a Count, and when she tells Alejandro, she's placed into a sanatorium because he can't believe she cheated on him. To get out, she denies the affair to him and the Count and says it was only a hallucination. She then becomes ill and before she dies asks Alejandro if he loves her for herself. Alejandro, realizing he does love her, tells her he loves her for herself alone. She then dies, and, vowing to find her in death, he kills himself.

An elderly couple in their eighties, Jose and Maria, who live in relative seclusion, and have only each other and a Woman, who occasionally appears with medication and groceries, to rely on.

The Diner takes place in 1996 and 2016. Roberta#2 and Robert#2, a white couple, are the main characters. Roberta#2 loses her daughter due to her husband's, Robert#2, intransigence. She then cuckolds him with her black lover, and then is tricked by Robert#2 into having sex with her mixed race son. Then befriending a young white prostitute brought to her by her husband, she succeeds in finally getting rid of him.

It’s Saturday, June twenty-third, 1962 aound five in the afternoon. During a family get together at her Long Island home, Carlotta Colon life’s turned upside down when she realizes her husband Sebastian’s impregnated the mentally challenged, eighteen year old Dorotea whose care they’re charged with. Meanwhile her oldest, married son who’s visiting with his wife is having an affair with their sixteen year old babysitter, and her eighty year old father-in-law has just taken the three year old daughter of a friend to the bathroom upstairs. Before the end of the first act, her born again sister-in-law Delilah, who entrusted her with Dorotea's care, and her brother Jose arrive and hell breaks loose.

Nina Paloma looks back to pre-war 1940 America and what was happening right after England entered WWII. The play’s a struggle to the death between the strong man and the women of the play. Cordilla Meron’s the main character of the play. She’s fallen in love with her sister’s husband, Pablo Paloma, who’s obsessed with her. Unbeknownst to Pablo, Cordilla’s carrying his child. Cordilla wants to tame Pablo while her sister, Nina Paloma, has an affair with David Belantre. Unfortunately, for everyone involved, Pablo can't be tamed.

The play takes place in the year 1995. Madeline Rodrigo, a native of the Upper Eastside, who died of a brain aneurysm a few days before, walks into her own funeral at a funeral parlor in Spanish Harlem. While verbally accosting her mourners, she learns from the spirit Bevy, an African-American elder of the kingdom of heaven, that in order for her to get into the kingdom of heaven to see her husband Willie she must first be judged by him at the funeral service. She must be judged by him because of something horrible she did to someone in her life. If she doesn't atone for what she did by the end of the funeral service, she will be banished into the darkness forever.

The play takes place on a hot day during August 2015. Min's a twenty year old who lives in a one room house near Death Valley. At first it seems as if Min wants nothing more than to be left alone, but gradually we come to realize that she hungers for companionship. Unfortunately, she falls victim to two tourists from Westchester, New York - Duane Marshal, and his manipulative, wife Felva.