ABOUT the PLAYS

Homecoming

by Fred Dennehy

Odysseus returns from 7 years of infidelity with the seductive goddess Calypso, but his wife Penelope is ready to welcome him with a deadly surprise.

 

Fred Dennehy is an attorney in New Jersey. He has appeared frequently as an actor in New Jersey Community Theater and off-off Broadway, and in more than 15 Shakespeare roles. He has written and co-written six plays produced in New Jersey and New York.

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Heart in Her Mouth

by Tina Howe

As her premonitions get more and more dire, Cassandra’s repeated visits to Dr. Orfeo’s dental office reveal a burning, unrequited love for more than just his dentistry.

 

Tina Howe’s best known plays include Birth and After Birth, Museum, The Art of Dining, Painting Churches, Coastal Disturbances and Pride’s Crossing --  all published by TCG.  In 2010, she launched the Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA in Playwriting at Hunter College, after teaching there for twenty years.  She has proudly served on the Council of the Dramatists Guild for just as long, garnering the usual awards and humiliations along the way.  

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Helen at the Gym

by Anya Martin

It is 2009 and Helen of Troy runs on a treadmill at an LA fitness in Pittsburgh, where centuries of violent obsession and lust are about to explode in a horrific tragedy. 

 

Anya Martin is a writer, director and Founding Artistic Director of Hiawatha Project (www.hiawathaproject.org.) She received her BFA in directing from Carnegie Mellon School of Drama where she teaches as an Adjunct Professor, and her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College with a focus on devised and experimental work. She is a 2011 Flight School Fellow with Creative Capital/Pittsburgh Filmmakers, a Pittsburgh Magazine "40 Under 40" honoree for 2013, and a Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Award nominee for 2016. She has proudly worked at numerous theaters in NYC, DC, and Pittsburgh, which she calls her home.

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Echo and Narcissus

by Amanda Quaid

A girl condemned to repeat the words spoken to her falls in love with a narcissist. Of course, he is all too happy to hear himself echoed.

 

Amanda Quaid is an actor and writer from New York. Acting credits include Broadway: Equus. Off-Broadway: The Witch of Edmonton (Red Bull), The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence (Playwrights Horizons), Cock (Duke), Luck of the Irish (LCT3, Lortel nom), Pericles (Public, Bayfield Award), A Public Reading...Walt Disney (Soho Rep), They Promised Her the Moon (Miranda), Galileo (CSC), The Illusion (Signature), The Weir (Irish Rep). Regional: La Jolla, Old Globe, Shakespeare Theatre, Barrington, Folger. TV/Film: I’m Dying Up Here, Masters of Sex, English (actor/director), Toys (animator/director).  amandaquaid.com

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The Fields of Asphodel

by Aubrey Saverino

When Hades kidnaps Persephone from the world of the living and whisks her away to the Land of the Dead, Persephone must teach him a thing or two about wooing women.

 

Aubrey Saverino is a writer and actor with an MFA from The Old Globe/USD. Her writing credits include Dido & Aeneas (selected for the Red Bull Short Play Festival in 2015, published in 2016), the television pilot Monogamish (selected for IFP’s 2015 Film Week at Lincoln Center), and episodes of the award-winning web series "The Digressions" (www.thedigressions.com). As an actor, Aubrey has performed on screen (recently in Adam Sandler’s The Week Of) and in professional Off-Broadway and regional theater productions. She is a member of Epic Theatre Ensemble and Artistic Director of Daughters of Troy.  www.aubreysaverino.com

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In Ireland They Speak Irish; In Cornwall They Speak Cornish

by Samara Weiss

Tristan, a knight of Cornwall, doesn't speak Irish, and Iseult, an Irish princess, knows no Cornish, but it hasn't stopped them from understanding each other, until now.

 

Samara Weiss's plays include AK-47 Sing-Along (HERE Arts Center), Lines in Code (3LD), and Dirt (Part 1) (HERE). She is the screenwriter for the animated short films Still and Feast in a Fallen City, as well as the Princess Grace Award-winning The Red Witch. Outside of New York, her work has been produced in Los Angeles, Chicago, St. Louis, and Hyderabad, India. She is a frequent collaborator with the Lucrece Project, an NYU Humanities Initiative Working Group which fuses scholarship and the arts, and with ERA, the premiere experimental theater company of St. Louis, MO. MFA Columbia; New Georges Affiliated Artist.

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The Gertrude Variations

by Daniel Wilson

When Claudius proposes an elopement, the young Gertrude gives her infatuated lover a test of his passion, with a series of wild linguistic themes and variations.

Daniel Wilson is the Associate Artistic Director of Thalia's Umbrella Theater Company in Seattle. For Thalia, Daniel has directed David Wright's verse play When Love Speaks, Athol Fugard's A Lesson From Aloes, Peter Nichols' A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Richard Nelson's Sorry and the world premiere of Y York's The Impossibility of Now. Daniel has directed opera, plays and musicals for theaters throughout the Pacific Northwest. He is writing a stage adaptation of his uncle, Michael Wilson's classic blacklisted film Salt of the Earth. Daniel graduated with an MFA in Directing from the Drama Department of Carnegie-Mellon University.

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Me Too, We Three

by Doug Wright

At Evelyn Nesbit’s tea party, an unlikely bond is formed across the centuries as two surprise guests share their #metoo stories in rhyming verse.

 

Doug Wright earned the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for his play I Am My Own Wife. Other stage works include Grey Gardens (Tony Nomination), The Little Mermaid, Hands on a Hardbody, and War Paint. Film: Quills, based on his Obie-winning play, nominated for three Academy Awards. Television: “Tony Bennett: An American Classic,” directed by Rob Marshall. Honors: Benjamin Dank Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters; Tolerance Prize, Kulturforum Europa; Paul Selvin Award, Writers Guild of America. Professional affiliations: President of the Dramatists Guild; member, Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, board of the New York Theatre Workshop. Wright is married to singer/songwriter David Clement.