Creative stuff. To enjoy.
Bartender Maureen Bacon finds out her ex-boyfriend—mob boss Bob McMahan—wants to seize custody of their daughter Barbara. In a hail of bullets, Maureen stages a final, desperate fight to free Barbara from McMahan’s clutches forever.
cast: 5, 2F 3M
set: Bar (can be done site-specifically in a real bar)
length: 25 minutes
Tabitha only wanted to be someone—anyone. Then one late night chance meeting changed her forever. Now she’s locked a priest into a confessional until he’ll help prevent her becoming what she can’t avoid.
cast: 5, 1F 4M
set: Unit set (church confessional, parking lot, motel room)
length: 40 minutes
She awakens in a strange world surrounded by dictionary pages blowing in the wind. She has but one word to say it to express all meaning. What word does she pick?
Read it in: Light Matter (kindle | paperback)
cast: 3 (2F, 1M)
set: Single set
length: 10 minutes
Published: Light Matter, Jan 01 2020
Off-Broadway: Shooting Star Theatre, NYC
Regional: NEYT Theater (Brattleboro VT)
International: KIMEP English Language Theatre, Kazakhstan
A hilarious short piece shows a married couple’s argument about a possible infidelity, as it zooms between a 10,000 foot view and right in your face. This is my very most popular short.
Read it in: Twinges from the Fringe (kindle | paperback) 
cast: 2, 1F 1M
set: Single (Dining room of suburban home)
length: 10 minutes
Awards: Finalist, 2003 Heideman Award, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville
Off-Broadway production:
April 2003 Twinges from the Fringe, Shooting Star Theatre (NYC)
Regional production:
Jan 2002 Heartlande Theatre Co (Ann Arbor MI);
May 2002 Sauk Theatre (Jonesville MI)
March 2008 NEYT (Brattleboro, VT)
Published:
Twinges from the Fringe (kindle | paperback)
Also published in: The Best Stage Scenes 2000
“I don’t know! This lady just started banging on the door to the men’s room… don’t ask me why!” Two strangers—one spurned, the other widowed— fight, flirt, and finally find each kindness in each other while standing at the door of a restaurant Men’s room. This is my next-most-popular short.
Read it in: Twinges from the Fringe (kindle | paperback)
cast 2, 1F 1M
set Single (Men’s room door)
length 10 minutes
Off-Broadway: August 2001 Luminous Group (NYC)
October 2002 Shock Troupe (NYC)
July 2003 NYPD: Twinges from the Fringe, Shooting Star Theatre (NYC)
Regional: July 2000 Main Street Arts (Nyack NY)
College: May 2001 St. Andrew’s College (Aurora ON)
Also published in: The Best Stage Scenes 1999
A collection agent (credit professional), trying to do her job collecting on a bad debt, goes through increasingly mad cycles that affect, through time displacement, all parts of her life, crashing headlong to a final point of meeting.
Read it in: Light Matter (kindle | paperback)
cast: 3; 3F
set: Unit set or bare stage.
length: 10 minutes
Published: Light Matter, Jan 01 2020
Regional: NEYT Theater mainstage, Vermont 2008
Lee Krebs, professor of philosophy, specializes in the works of George Berkeley, who proposed that because reality could simply be sensations in the mind, that it wasn’t real. When a bright but socially-awkward young student proposes a simulation project that brings the philosopher back to life, Lee’s ghosts are brought to life with it. A New Theory of Vision asks the question – if life is a dream, are we responsible for its impact? And how are we to do good?
cast: 6 (2 F, 4M)
set: Unit set
length: 90 min.
Off-Broadway: Produced by Sanctuary: Playwrights Theatre (New York, NY)
Reviews:
Village Voice
BackStage
The Brooklyn Rail
The compromises of art, compromising the artists.
Italy, 1937. For 500 years, kings and tyrants came and went but life’s unchanged in tiny Volpe Nero. Alessandro and his father, of Italy’s last Commedia Dell’Arte troupe, scrape a meager existence from tradition’s crumbs, That’s all about to change. As Mussolini and Hitler forge their tragic alliance, two fugitives from a Fascist prison camp arrive seeking refuge — with Blackshirts and a vengeful clown in hot pursuit. Father and son clash: do what’s safe, or do what’s right?
cast: 10 (3 F, 7 M)
set: Commedia Dell’Arte stage
length: 130 min.
Staged Reading: April 1999 at 78th St. Theatre Lab (NYC)
Published:
A time-jumping comedy about architecture, sexuality, the priesthood and right livelihood. In a collapsed subway tunnel we find Alex—a busted-down architect, and Wall—a gay tunnel-worker who prefers the dark. Which will get them first… falling concrete blocks… oxygen gone… gas… or their shared past?
Details
cast: 3 (1 F, 2 M)
set: Unit set (Subway tunnel).
length: 105 min.
Off-Broadway: Sept 2000 by NY Play Development
Staged Readings:
Apr. 1998 78th Street Theatre Lab (NYC)
Sept 1999 Dramatists Guild (NYC), Dec 1999 FatChance productions (NYC)
July 2000 Abingdon Theatre Co (NYC)
Published:
As humanity rockets toward Millennium, strange red-garbed men known only as Cardinals complete plans for universal domination by capturing Socrates, Greek philosopher and David Chagall, Bronx diner owner. Can our intrepid men free themselves from the clutches of the mother of all conspiracies…and save the cosmos? HEMLOCK is a black, black, black comic fantasythat skewers end of millennium paranoia, western philosophy, conspiracy theories, time travel, and Catholicism.
cast: 7; (1 F, 4 M, 2 M/F)
set: Realistic diner
length: 120 min.
Regional: Summer 1997 by Extra Virgin PC (Dallas TX)
Staged reading: Oct 1998 at 78th Street Theatre Lab (NYC)
Published:
Reviews:
Dallas Observer
Award: Dallas Observer