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THE CAPTURE OF KIP WINSTON
Its 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, Shaws "The
Millionairess." Then, inexplicably, Kip married a cheerleader.
Celeste is now convinced that she and Kip are, like the characters
in Shaws 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 Kips 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 Kips 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 Kips
divorce and he now hates the damn things. Can the course of true
love be altered by changing the channel?
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DESPERATE
TERRITORY
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 Bens property arrives at her and Michaels 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 Bens 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.
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GONE
ASTRAY (Winner, 1998 Stanley Drama Award)
For nine years, a Caucasian mother steeped in Roman
Catholic rituals has insisted that her abducted child is still alive.
Since her daughters 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 familys 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.
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A
RAPE IN GLORIOUS (Winner - 2000 Arlene R. and William P. Lewis
Playwrighting Award for Women)
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 Arcs 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.
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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. Russell was only three when his glamorous mother Irene
divorced his father and moved in with her own mother, Millie. When
Irene died, Russells father allowed Millie to raise his son.
When Russell uncovers a journal his grandmother has hidden of Irenes
writing, he becomes fascinated with the mother he scarcely remembers.
Enthralled by Irenes 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 Russells fierce adoration
of Irene. Their conflict forces all concerned to confront their
unsettled grief and love.
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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 Amelias 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 fathers 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.
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RIDE
THE DARK CARS See Review
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 Suzannes 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
Joes racist and antisemitic views. Silently steaming, Suzanne,
who is Jewish, makes it clear that the plan has changed. Not long
after Suzannes 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.
Joes behavior has fanned Suzanne's violent mission into a
deadly personal flame.
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MUSICAL
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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 States 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.
About
Masha Bruskina
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MY
HEART IS THE DRUM
Book: Jennie Staniloff Redling
Music: Phillip Palmer
Lyrics: Stacey Luftig
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 grandmothers 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.
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One-Acts
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MISCAST
See Review
Meg Riley won the part of Masha in an Off-Broadway
production of Chekhovs 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.
Megs own work, however, is hardly to Irinas 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 plays 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
mans 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 isnt over.
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LAVINIA
SPEAKS See Review
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 hasnt 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 doesnt seem to want to live. As his anger
is directed at Lavinia, she discovers her own wrath which appears
to have a life of its own, placing her jobs, relationships
and dreams at stake.
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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 cant help
herself from making a last stop at Madges 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 Madges 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 Toms 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.
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Shorties - 15 Minutes and Under
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A
STREAM IN THE WASTELAND
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 Katherines love for Annie, or the need
to transform herself into a pristine example of womanhood.
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BROKEN
MOON
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 Lilas bewildered and emotional state and rapidly becomes
outright annoyed. She is therefore startled when Lila erupts in
sudden rage at one of Paulines 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.
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