THE CAPTURE OF KIP WINSTON

One April in 1949 Kip Winston receives a notice in the mail offering a free month’s service with a match making agency - "Happy Hearts." Three years earlier, Kip returned from service overseas to find his marriage ending in divorce. His teen aged daughter, Bree is living with him temporarily while her mother cruises the world with her new husband. Only when she threatens to go live with her mother does Kip agree to accept the Happy Hearts offer. The agency is run by a Miss Pandora Jones and once Kip leaves her office, she opens her closet of costumes, wigs and disguises and soon becomes Kip’s next three dates. Pandora is in fact, Celeste Braverman, Kip’s high school classmate who played opposite him in their senior play - Shaw’s "The Millionairess." Celeste coached then football captain Kip into a wonderful performance and he was close to proposing afterward when something went awry. Now Celeste is out to rectify what she considers their destiny.

DESPERATE TERRITORY

A young woman’s guilt drives her to try to destroy her marriage when it causes a rift in her symbiotic relationship with her brother

GONE ASTRAY (Winner, 1998 Stanley Drama Award)

A woman named Kevin hires a Native American young woman to find her daughter who was abducted years before.  Unable to face the possibility that her daughter is dead, Kevin rejects everything the Native girl uncovers.  A battle of wills ensues, one which will force Kevin to break the spell of grief and rage which has gripped her family and her heart.

A RAPE IN GLORIOUS (Winner - 2000 Arlene R. and William P. Lewis Playwrighting Award for Women)

In the 1930s, a young woman art student named Joan is raped by the professor who has offered her a scholarship after the Depression brought a cut in funding to her college.  When the Board of Directors holds an inquiry, Joan faces the prospect of incriminating her professor, the only faculty member who is, like her, Jewish.  Soon she 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.

A FAIR WIND FOR YARROW

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. When Russell was three, his glamorous mother divorced his father, then moved in with her own mother, Millie, and Millie’s sister, Stella. She died shortly after and Russell’s his father allowed Millie and Stella to raise his son while he visited infrequently. When Russell discovers a journal of his mother’s writings he falls in love with her.  At the same time his father wants to draw closer to Russell and have him live in his home. But Russell’s fierce adoration of the mother he barely knew soon prevents this and forces all concerned to confront their unsettled grief and love.

HOUSE OF ANGELS

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 innocence and 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.

RIDE THE DARK CARS   See Review

When Nicky, a frail young woman is convinced that her husband Joey might kill her, she hatches a plot to have him killed by two members of the Manhattan Police Department.  Midway through a ruse of a social evening, Nicky changes her mind.  But by then Joey’s anti-Semitic comments have enraged one of the officers, Suzanne.  When Nicky tries to communicate secretly to both Suzanne and her partner that she wants to cancel their scheme it is too late. Joey’s behavior has fanned Suzanne's violent mission into a deadly personal flame.

MUSICAL

THE HARVEST

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 Anton’s 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. When she is captured, she is given the precious chance to survive she’s longed for but chooses to embrace her Jewish identity, realizing it is what makes her unique. Her decision inspires those who risk their lives to follow her.

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.

About Masha Bruskina

One-Acts

MISCAST See Review

Meg Riley won the part of Masha in an Off-Broadway production of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” but knows in her heart she should have been cast as Irina. Meg ardently identifies with Irina, believing that work is the only thing that matters. Meg’s own work, the job that tides her over between acting jobs, is hardly to Irina’s taste. She 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 SPEAKS  See Review

Lavinia Lewis is an African American actress who must support her dream with two jobs, each of which strains the amiable facade she has struggled to create. 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.

NINEVEH

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

EVERY ONE DOTH SHINE

Flight attendant Rose surprises Chris, her actor husband by switching her shift so they can have a romantic night alone. But Chris’s anxiety about his upcoming New York audition is ruining the mood. He criticizes himself for not having an emotional reserve to draw upon and repeats his acting teacher’s admonition that Chris hasn’t experienced fury or terror but instead plays it safe. Rose believes the teacher is a no-talent phony and the two argue. But when Rose reveals that she had another of her recurring earthquake dreams, the real unspoken conflict between them emerges - Rose’s desire to have a baby and Chris’s reluctance. Resolving their feelings and expressing their love buoys up both of their spirits. With the mutual exchange of confidence to unite them Chris and Rose set off, Chris for his train to New York and Rose for her flight to Los Angeles on the following morning, September 11, 2001.
 
A STREAM IN THE WASTELAND

A Stream in the Wasteland is set in Ennis, County Clare, Ireland, in the 1930's. Katherine, a young Roman Catholic novice discovers her younger sister, Annie, is pregnant and is forced 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.

BROKEN MOON

LILA, a diffident, middle aged woman seemingly finds herself in a waiting room, without knowing why. PAULINE, young, with a defensive arrogance, enters and waits impatiently. As the women reluctantly connect, the purpose of their visit is revealed: to have abortions performed. LILA soon discloses that the child she carries is not her husband’s but belongs to a stranger. Her confession and the plea for forgiveness which follows breaks through PAULINE's armor. When PAULINE offers and consequently receives comfort, both women find the strength to trust their own minds and hearts.