The Conditions of Unconditional Love
An Educated Man
CoHo Productions' First Annual New by Northwest Play Competition, honorable mention
In the decade before the Civil War, a homesick young soldier is stationed at primitive-but-growing Fort Vancouver in the Oregon Territories and wants desperately to raise money to be reunited with his wife and babies back home in Ohio. At the same time, a group of sheltered nuns are sent to a “mission” near Fort Vancouver to build, they have been told by various superiors, either a hospital, a school, or an orphanage. What they find when they arrive is only a cabin and a barn—no convent, no mission—and a priest who has spent their building money on helping a needy pioneer family and an Indian tribe battling a measles epidemic.
Hebrew Lessons
Winner of the 2006 Oregon Literary Fellowship in Drama
Hebrew Lessons is set within the boundaries of Israel in the early 90's. The Horowitzes, a retired couple from California, teach Hebrew to Russian immigrants in their large, old apartment, assisted by their over-educated, under-employed Palestinian housekeeper, Jamana. The Horowitzes have every confidence in Jamana, but her son is rapidly becoming a man and begins to behave in a way that troubles them. A set of circumstances plant questions and doubts in everyone's minds about everyone else. Suspicion and fear--based perhaps on false information, but perhaps not--grow and inflame already frazzled emotions until more than one of the play's characters--and the audience as well--learn many different kinds of Hebrew Lessons.
Lonnie and Nora want to put some steam in their romance and turn to the Kama Sutra for inspiration. Lonnie and Nora have very different ideas, however, about what will add that steam, or indeed, what "steamy" even means! Enter Preshy, short for Precious, in the mix, and Lonnie and Nora have some work to do on their relationship.
1970’s Olongapo City, the Philippines—the largest US Naval Base outside of mainland USA—and where America sends its servicemen for their “rest and recreation” during the Vietnam War. Taking care of the sexual needs of the soldiers is serious business, and big business for the U.S. and the Philippines alike. Everyone in Olongapo is making a living somehow from the soldiers’ needs. The women and children of Olongapo are born and raised into the life—Asia’s “Little Brown Fucking Machines” as Playboy Magazine dubbed them—and they all need to cooperate, follow orders and smile. And if they don’t? Well—disobedience is dangerous. When one woman attempts to change the status quo and one very young girl is too innocent to realize what the status quo is, the other women are endangered too. Torn in a million different directions in their allegiance, they have to make some quick decisions to save themselves—and each other!
Poor Micky Spencer's Daughter Ordeal
Winner of the Lakewood Theatre Company and Lake Oswego Foundation for the Arts' 2006 Playwriting Competition
It is the sizzling Chicago summer of 1917. The 18th Amendment—Prohibition—needs only to be ratified to shut down every bar in the country, and World War I plays out far off in Europe, but in the “Old Neighborhood” the only worry is, will Poor Micky Spencer—a hard-drinking, hard-headed musical savant and the father of five daughters—get the son he has declared that God “had better” give him? When his sixth daughter is born, Micky goes to war with God, the Catholic Church, and especially the local priest with wild antics only his best drinking buddies can overlook—but there’s a limit to what they will put up with too!
A Room of My Own (And I'll Probably Have to Clean It Myself)
The Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, honorable mention
It is the 1980’s, in the Chicago housing project apartment of Marika Carmichael, an aspiring young black writer who works for a fast-food chain by day and attends community college at night—all the while sharing with her equally-enterprising husband the care of their infant daughter.
In a literature class, Marika has been assigned to read Virginia Woolf’s classic essay, “A Room of One’s Own,” Woolf’s speech to aspiring young women writers in 1929. Marika does not expect to find much in common with the upper-crust Woolf, but while reading, she conjures up the spirit of not only Woolf herself but also that of Judith Shakespeare, Woolf’s imagined younger sister of world-renowned William.
The three travel to Woolf’s and Shakespeare’s Londons, and Marika also tries to teach them about her life in the tenements of Chicago. The women find that although their lives differ in some very fundamental ways, they have each been searching for one and the same thing—a room of her own.
