Jennie S. Redling: Play List
Play List | Up and Coming | Reviews | Drama Instruction | Contact | Home
|
It’s 1949; the latest marvel - television - is changing American homes. Changes are also afoot in the home of Celeste Braverman when she learns that the love of her life, Kip Winston, has recently been divorced. It was in their senior year of high school that Celeste coached Kip, a football hero, into a magical performance as her lover in the class play, Shaw’s "The Millionairess." Then, inexplicably, Kip married a cheerleader. Celeste is now convinced that she and Kip are, like the characters in Shaw’s play, fated. Celeste concocts a daring plan. She invents a match-making agency and offers Kip one month of dating – free! By disguising herself as Kip’s dates - all outrageous caricatures of what he asks for - Celeste succeeds in making Kip doubt his earlier choice in a mate. She is all set to reveal herself so Kip recalls their romance and realizes he chose the wrong girl, when Kip’s reveals that a head injury in the Navy left him with limited recall. How can she get him to remember what they had? Why - television! "The Millionairess" is scheduled to be broadcast live. Celeste is convinced that if they watch the show together and re-live their shining moments, Kips memory will be restored. But television played a big role in Kip’s divorce and he now hates the damn things. Can the course of true love be altered by changing the channel? |
|
Two years ago when Georgia married Michael, her brother Ben forced her to settle on Michael or himself to receive her loyalty. Her choice of Michael resulted in a bitter quarrel that sent Ben traveling across the country on a trip that he and Georgia had fantasized about since childhood. The rift between them propelled her into sabotaging her marriage until it is all but over. Then a package of Ben’s property arrives at her and Michael’s doorstep. Georgia is terrified that this means her brother is dead and she is to blame. As she desperately searches for a clue that will exonerate her among Ben’s belongings, memories, both bidden and unbidden veer toward the fearful truth. If she wants to keep from losing Michael, the one person she loves, Georgia must fight her own fear of love and loving and face the only member of her family she failed to rescue - herself. |
|
For nine years, a Caucasian mother steeped in Roman Catholic rituals has insisted that her abducted child is still alive. Since her daughter’s disappearance, she has frozen herself, her husband and their mentally handicapped son in a changeless state. Now, with the missing girl's twentieth birthday approaching, a young woman of Native American origins appears at the family’s doorstep, a supposed psychic who is persuaded to recover the lost child. Soon racial and cultural beliefs clash as questions are raised about God, ghosts and the rituals we trust to protect us. |
|
In the 1930s, the Depression has curtailed finances at Thomas Mallory College in Glorious, Pennsylvania. Joan, a young art student, is working on a sculpture of Joan of Arc when she learns that she has lost her tuition funding and will have to return to her Orthodox Jewish home where her father severely limits her artistic freedom. Desperate to remain, she applies for a scholarship overseen by her English professor. Attracted to her, he grants it. When it is discovered that the professor has raped her, the College Board of Directors holds an inquiry. Joan faces the prospect of incriminating her professor, the only faculty member who, like her, is Jewish. With her confidence and integrity shattered by the assault, she soon finds herself mistaking Joan of Arc’s trial with the ordeal in which she is embroiled. Confused about her own morality and motives, Joan is torn between betraying a fellow Jew or her own personal honor. |
|
In the summer and fall of 1955, the country seems focused on the World Series, none more so than Brooklyn Dodger fan, Russell, awaiting not only the outcome of the Series, but his sixteenth birthday. Russell was only three when his glamorous mother Irene divorced his father and moved in with her own mother, Millie. When Irene died, Russell’s father allowed Millie to raise his son. When Russell uncovers a journal his grandmother has hidden of Irene’s writing, he becomes fascinated with the mother he scarcely remembers. Enthralled by Irene’s accounts of studying dance in Manhattan, Russell finds himself wanting to be a dancer himself. When his father shows a sudden interest in drawing closer to Russell and taking over his care, father and son clash over Russell’s fierce adoration of Irene. Their conflict forces all concerned to confront their unsettled grief and love. |
|
In New York of 1914, widow Amelia Vane, her volatile daughter, Autumn and their entire home is a stir with plans for the approaching wedding of Amelia’s youngest daughter, Helen, whose engagement to James, a wealthy businessman will secure all their futures. When James introduces an artist, roguish Henry Lafont, into their midst to paint Helen's wedding portrait, the charming facade of propriety Amelia has created begins to crumble. When Autumn discovers her father’s correspondence with European doctors about his illness, raising questions about her own changeable moods, the threat she poses to Amelia and Helen can no longer be concealed. Her relentless search for the truth not only endangers her family's future, but may ultimately cost Autumn her sanity. |
|
Nicky, convinced that her violent husband Joe might kill her, appeals to Suzanne, a New York police officer, who is interested in Nicky romantically. The two women hatch a plan to threaten Joe by provoking him into attacking Suzanne’s partner and being shot and injured as a result. The ruse of a social evening they arrange is all going according to plan when a few drinks unleash Joe’s racist and antisemitic views. Silently steaming, Suzanne, who is Jewish, makes it clear that the plan has changed. Not long after Suzanne’s partner arrives to taunt Joe, Nicky realizes that they are going to kill her husband. She tries to communicate secretly that she wants to cancel their scheme, but it is too late. Joe’s behavior has fanned Suzanne's violent mission into a deadly personal flame. |
|
MUSICAL |
|
Book/Lyrics: Jennie Staniloff-Redling Music/Lyrics: DeeAnn Macomson Based on the life of a young Russian hero, THE HARVEST is set in the Byelorussian town of Minsk, late June, 1941. Here a 17-year old student, Masha Bruskina, impatiently awaits her coming high school graduation. Against the State’s dictate for her future, she plans to compete for acceptance into the State Theatre. More than anything else in a land that suppresses individuality, Masha dreams of making a name for herself and being unique. When Anton, the boy she loves, warns that his politically active fellow students hear that Germany will attack Russia and that they kill Jews, Masha and her family refuse to believe it, insisting that under Communist doctrine, they are not Jewish. Terrified that her dreams of fame will be destroyed Masha refuses Antons urging to join their camp in the forest. She changes her name and lightens her hair so that when Minsk is attacked, her family is sent to a ghetto while she is taken for a non-Jew and given work in the local hospital. But despite her passion to survive, Masha soon begins stealing supplies for Anton and the forest partisan forces so they can smuggle her family and other Jews out of the ghetto. NY Times Journalist Judith Miller was one of the first to report that Masha Bruskina was famous from photographs - a series displayed in a Belorussian Museum where she and two male companions were the first executed on Soviet soil by Nazis. The names of the men beside her are printed clearly but beneath Masha's image is the legend "Nietzvisnaya" or "unknown." Yet Masha Bruskina is widely known, described by those interviewed as a bright, romantic and personable young woman who, in the course of the German occupation, was galvanized into a hero. As Ms. Miller and others conclude, the only answer to why she remains unrecognized is that of the three pictured in the photographs, she alone is a Jew. |
|
Book: Jennie Staniloff Redling My Heart is the Drum is a dramatic musical about Ghana told through the fictional coming of age story of Efua Kuti, a 16-year old girl who defies the Akan culture of her village to become a woman who owns herself. Encouraged by her grandmother’s spirit who tells her that her heart is the drum that her spirit will follow, Efua sets out to clear a path for herself. With determination she faces an ever changing enemy - cultural beliefs about women, opportunities lost in a failing economy, and finally the risk of HIV infection haunting her homeland and soon to overcome her village and herself. |
|
One-Acts |
|
Meg Riley won the part of Masha in an Off-Broadway production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters,” but believes in her heart she should have been cast as Irina. Meg ardently identifies with Irina who insists that work is the only thing that matters. Meg’s own work, however, is hardly to Irina’s taste. To tide her over between acting jobs, Meg receives calls from phone sex customers whom she does her best to satisfy. At present they are annoying interruptions to her preparation of an argument that will prove to the play’s director that he made a grave casting error. Everything changes when a caller whose voice sounds familiar to Meg describes her Brooklyn apartment from his window where he apparently has a perfect view. Meg thinks she recognizes the young man’s voice - connecting it with something unspeakable that happened the year before which brought on a mental breakdown, causing her to drop out of college. The proximity of the caller can mean only one thing - whatever the ordeal - it isn’t over. |
|
Lavinia Lewis, an African American actress, supports her dream with two jobs, each of which strains the amiable facade she has struggled to maintain. She is alternately at the mercy of an attorney who hasn’t a clue that she, his part-time secretary, is human, and a brood of precocious children learning from Lavinia how to act” for TV commercials. In the midst of this her father is hospitalized and doesn’t seem to want to live. As his anger is directed at Lavinia, she discovers her own wrath which appears to have a life of it’s own, placing her jobs, relationships and dreams at stake. |
|
On the evening of July 4th, a middle-aged beauty salon operator, Clemmentine Jenkins, stops at a seedy bar she has never before stepped foot in on her way out of Bartow Florida, her home town. Clemmie has summoned all her savings and courage to leave home for a more elegant lifestyle in Palm Beach but can’t help herself from making a last stop at Madge’s Bar, a place she has seen frequented by a migrant worker who calls himself Tom. Clemmie observed Tom that afternoon in town taken into custody by police when he harassed a young woman marching in the Independence Day parade. Nevertheless, Tom does show up at Madge’s and Clemmie finds herself half attracted and half repelled as he questions her reasons for leaving and suggests that perhaps her fate lies elsewhere. As her responses to Tom’s advances change with each revelation he unfolds, Clemmie faces her own guilt over surviving the fire that killed her parents and struggles over what to do with the freedom to escape she now holds in her hands. |
|
Shorties - 15 Minutes and Under |
|
In Ennis, County Clare, Ireland, in the 1930's, Katherine, a young Roman Catholic novice, discovers her younger sister, Annie, is pregnant. The discovery forces her to confront an unspoken shame the two share. It is an acknowledgment that will force a choice between the depth of Katherine’s love for Annie, or the need to transform herself into a pristine example of womanhood. |
|
Lila, a diffident, middle aged woman, finds herself in a waiting room. Pauline, young, with a defensive arrogance, enters. As the two women reluctantly connect, the purpose of their visit is revealed: to end their pregnancies. Pauline is at first impatient with Lila’s bewildered and emotional state and rapidly becomes outright annoyed. She is therefore startled when Lila erupts in sudden rage at one of Pauline’s flippant comments. Soon Lila is disclosing that the child she carries is not her husbands but belongs to a stranger. Her confession and the plea for forgiveness which follows breaks through Pauline's armor and the truth for both of them is revealed.
|
THE CAPTURE OF KIP WINSTON
DESPERATE
TERRITORY 
GONE
ASTRAY (Winner, 1998 Stanley Drama Award) 
A
RAPE IN GLORIOUS (Winner - 2000 Arlene R. and William P. Lewis
Playwrighting Award for Women) 
A
FAIR WIND FOR YARROW 
HOUSE
OF ANGELS 
RIDE
THE DARK CARS 
THE
HARVEST
MY
HEART IS THE DRUM 
MISCAST
LAVINIA
SPEAKS 
NINEVEH
A
STREAM IN THE WASTELAND
BROKEN
MOON