Three Generations of Imbeciles

The historical background of this play is the U.S. government’s involvement in the forced sterilizations of genetic “defectives” – over 70,000 American citizens – which was made possible by the Supreme Court’s notorious Buck v. Bell decision, which legalized forced sterilizations in an effort to prevent future “generations of imbeciles.”

In the operating room at the Delaware Colony for the Feebleminded in 1927, Dr. John Campbell is forcibly prevented from sexually mutilating Abigail Smith against her will. Later that day, David Prescott, a former prosecutor, agrees to try and prevent Abby’s forced (and legal) sterilization, and he’s assisted by an experienced Eugenics expert, Rebecca Dawson. As Abby’s trial gets underway, all of Prescott’s friends turn against him as he struggles to prevent the sterilization of a “white-trash moron.”

Winner: The New Works of Merit National Playwriting Award
Reading: The 13th Street Theatre, Greenwich Village, NYC
Second Place: The Lake Erie Playwrights Competition
Reading: Cuyahoga Community College, Cleveland, OH
Full Production: Cuyahoga Community College, Cleveland, OH, seven nights
Reading: The Long Beach Playhouse New Works Festival, CA
Full Production: Chosen for the regionals of the 2013 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, Saginaw, MI

Lighthouse

Luce Fouchet is the keeper of the Beach Haven Lighthouse and a professional travel writer. Despite her generally sophisticated, up-beat demeanor, she’s struggling with a number of things in her life: an unresolved past, a new intruder into her present, and the devastating ramifications of an extremely-rare, skin disorder known as Xeroderma Pigmentosum (XP).

This play deals with two young women suffering from the rare and terminal skin disorder known as Xeroderma Pigmentosum (XP). The victims of this disease, which causes multiple skin cancers and early death, can never go out in the sunlight due to the devastating effects of ultraviolet rays on their skin.

Published by Dramatic Publishing, Available on Dramatic Publishing

Winner: AACT NewPlayFest Award
Full Production: Windsor Playhouse, Windsor, CO, six nights
Winner: James H. Wilson Playwriting Award
Second Place: Jewel Box Theatre Original Play Competition
Play Lab Selection: Last Frontier Edward Albee Theatre Conference
Reading: Playwrights’ Circle, Palm Springs, CA
Reading: Fells Point Theater, Baltimore, MD
Reading: Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Valdez, AK

 

Yellow Jack

Yellow Jack is the story of the 1901 medical war in Havana, Cuba, against the deadly Yellow Fever, which had already killed over 150,000 people in North America. This struggle is seen through the eyes of a young America nurse, Clara Maass – and also witnessed by both Dr. Walter Reed, the head of the Yellow Fever Commission, and Flavivirus (the virus itself). The Reed Commission’s efforts to scientifically comprehend how the virus transmits itself is naturally complicated by the difficulty of finding volunteers who’ll be willing to expose themselves to the “Yellow Jack.” Eventually, in desperation, a number of the medical staff begin to experiment on themselves.

Reading: Long Beach Playhouse, CA

The Amistad Case

Based on the true historical events of the 1837 slave revolt on the Cuban schooner Amistad, this play also deals with the subsequent imprisonment of the Africans in New Haven and the resultant cause-célèbre trials. The Amistad Case focuses on Cinqué, the leader of the revolt; Lewis Tappan, the famous abolitionist who supports the Africans; and John Quincy Adams, the ex-President who defies both the U.S. Congress and President Van Buren by taking the landmark case before the Supreme Court.

Arthur Miller wrote of this play that: “It moved me, and I admire it a great deal.” He claimed that the story is well-balanced “between seeing and feeling”; that the “language is apt and telling”; and that play “would work very effectively on the stage.”

This play is available through Eldridge Publishers

Full Production: Florence Little Theatre, SC, eight performances
Full Production: Acrosstown Repertory Theatre, Gainesville, FL, fourteen performances
Staged Reading: Futurefest, The Dayton Playhouse, OH

Some Remote and Distant Place

A young girl has been abducted, and a stranger, Eric Montgomery, arrives at the beachfront home of Thomas Baxter demanding help. In the ensuing confrontation, Eric reveals to Baxter’s daughter Katie, a high school teacher, that Captain Baxter (now retired), was once a legendary “remote-viewer” in the Pentagon’s Top-Secret “Grill Frame” Program, and that he still has the ability to psychically “locate” the missing child. The situation is further complicated by the Captain’s disabilities, which are repercussions of his past “viewings,” and by the arrival of his disruptive oldest daughter, Melanie, who once had a traumatic relationship with Eric Montgomery.

Staged Reading: Lake County Repertory Theater, Clearlake, CA

Guiteau

Alan Richardson, a reporter for The London Times, witnesses the assassination of President Garfield on July 2, 1881. The assailant, Charles Guiteau, announces that he was instructed by “divine command” to murder the president. Determined to find out why a man would do such a thing, Richardson receives unusual access to Guiteau and learns about his bizarre past. At the sensational “Trial of the Century,” Guiteau’s lawyer offers the previously untried “insanity defense,” but the assassin, despite his peculiar behavior at the trial, is convicted and executed.

Staged Reading: The Metropolitan Playhouse of New York, NYC

 

Quiz Show (A new play)

In 1957 New York City, Maria Mendoza, a highly-intelligent law school drop-out who’s working in a bakery, reluctantly decides to compete on one of the new and highly popular television quiz shows. Her goal is to make enough money to relocate her asthmatic mother from Spanish Harlem to Arizona. When Maria appears on the quiz show Twenty-one, she becomes suspicious that the contest is rigged, leading to multiple and serious consequences in her personal life.