Will You Lead Me to the Garden of Bees? (2022)
Reading at the Ethel M. Barber theatre At Northwestern, 2022
When twenty-four year old Paul is struck by a rare and mysterious heart condition, he begins to rely on his girlfriend, who then breaks up with him. Also, he gets covid. This combination of factors leads Paul, an aspiring playwright, into a series of fever dreams, memories, and mirages which are populated by all sorts of angels and demons. And bees—buzzing metaphors for danger, threat, anxiety. A disembodied voice, who may or may not be the actual playwright (AKA me) speaks to Paul whenever he attempts to swat these bees away. “Do not swat the bees,” he says. Will Paul heed the call? Will Paul be led to the Garden of Bees?
Will You Lead Me to the Garden of Bees? is a raucous play for a cast of 6—five of whom play “Chorusmembers,” who each play about 7 characters. It works by making abject horror and anxiety into a huge, loud, and funny theatrical experience. It also is not afraid to occupy the world of the pandemic, without being about the pandemic. Think Inside Out combined with Contagion combined with The 39 Steps.
Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen (2021)
Reading At The WIrtz Center Chicago, 2021
In an attempt to repair her fractured relationship with her mother, twenty-five year-old Midge takes her on a road trip from New Jersey to Tennessee. Because she and her mother share a love of true crime, the goal of the trip is to see Ted Bundy’s famed VW Bug in Tennessee, stopping at famous locales from serial killer history along the way. Midge’s charge to Annie at the beginning is that they will be “loving and respectful to each other…” a charge which is not exactly upheld. The play wrestles with themes of family, love, sex & fetish, violence, obsession, and American-ness.
Production at Sportslab Gym, 2018
Gain! (2018)
Masculinity, mores, and morals go head to head in a particular American zone: the weight room of a college gym. My most theatrically adventurous play to date, I produced and directed Gain! as a site-based show in a gym near Bryant Park. The show follows Paul, the novice, Alex, the righteous, Kevin, the traditionalist, and Serj, the scientist, through one session in their holy room. Reaching back to the greek body of 400 B.C., Gain! strives to reveal what’s behind the steroid-fueled strong man of 2018.
Overnight (2017)
I produced and directed Overnight for the 2nd Annual Pennington Alumni Theater Series. I wrote it after returning from Berlin, where I studied for a semester. It begins with a young married American couple, Paul and Susan, in 1983. Susan has been hearing an ominous moaning sound in her dreams. The couple invites the new neighbors over for dinner, a family of four from Germany who are defensive of their past. The dinner is funny and pleasant, but the neighbor’s son, Max, has a severe social difference, and his father, Karl, is rather rough with him. Late that night, Susan hears the moaning again. It’s Max, who barges through the door and bars it shut with furniture. Max tells a story of Karl’s abuse, which sparks sympathy in Susan and fear in Paul. The couple argues about what to do while they await the inevitable coming of Karl.
Production at the Mclarty Blackbox, Pennington, NJ, 2017
Production at Governors Island, 2017
Under a Foreign Flag (2016)
Part one-man play, part living history event, Under a Foreign Flag tells the true story of Eugene Jacques Bullard, the first African-American fighter pilot. I was commissioned to write the show by Art Collins and the Ebony Doughboys, an all-black WWI reenactment troupe. The story of Bullard is one of denial, retribution, and denial again. Because the US Air Force wanted nothing to do with him, Bullard joined the French Foreign Legion, and became a decorated French aviator. He then lived in Paris, running a jazz club. From then on, various (mostly racist) external forces dragged him down, and he died as an elevator operator in Manhattan. The US Air Force didn’t recognize him until 1996. Bullard was played by my dear friend and brilliant actor Chadd Gray at a WWI Centennial event on Governors Island and a Veteran’s Day event in Charlottesville, VA.
Charlie and Bruno (2016)
Charlie and Bruno follows two stories across time. In modern day, Kay, a 13 year-old girl, plays war games while waiting for her brother to come home from Afghanistan. Meanwhile, in 1918, Charlie, a Black American soldier, and Bruno, a Jewish German soldier, find that they are the only two living souls at the end of a battle. Through a series of tense-yet-tender conversations, they find that they have more in common than they thought. Kay, in the meantime, digs herself deeper and deeper into her war fantasy, eventually shocking her returning brother with the scene.
Production at the McLarty Blackbox, Pennington, NJ 2016
Production at the Labowitz Theatre, NYU, 2015
Dirt (2015)
Dirt is a 15 minute lyrical fantasy which explores the psychology of a particular one night stand. It’s comprised mostly of poetic monologues in which the characters battle with casual sex: its connotative power, its physical intimacy, and its psychic distance. When the female character discovers she has the power of telekinesis, she begins to toy with her partner, acting against her ethical timidity through her desire for power.
Common Room (2015)
Common Room is an autobiographical play which dramatized my troubled yet intimate friendship with a college roommate who struggled with alcoholism. The events in the play were simultaneously fogged and intensified by my proximity to them. It is a memoir-play.
Tornado Cat (co-writer) (2014)
Composed by a seminar of a dozen high-school seniors, Tornado Cat was my first ‘writers-room’ experience as a playwright. What we had were scenes - lots and lots of disparate scenes - and the role I took on was that of primary organizer of the script. I remember sitting at home, all my other homework on the floor downstairs, computer on my lap, looking at the script, thinking: ‘This is the hardest assignment I have ever had.’ Little did I know.