Snippets
Here you can download brief dialogue samples (as PDFs) from a few of my popular plays. Happy reading!
- Arrhythmia (10-minute)
(1 W, 1 M) Late at night, a troubled affair comes to a head over the meaning of "heart." For her, it's the source of all feeling; for him, it's a muscle pumping blood. Neither her passion nor his clinical diagnosis seems likely to bridge the gulf between them. Will either hear what the other's heart is saying? - Benny and Serena's High School Graduation (one-act)
(2 W, 2 M) It's graduation day for Benny, Serena's brilliant son. Math prodigy, star athlete, valedictorian—his mother's proud and happy, what else? But Serena's not as serene as she seems, and when she snaps and smacks the math teacher with her camera, her life with Benny flashes before her eyes. Memories flood back: raising Benny on her own, discovering his gifts, struggling to do what's best, and always hearing a chorus of voices that say she's not up to the task. Benny's future awaits him, but is Serena ready to let him go? A bittersweet comedy about one mother's rite of passage. - Lemonade (monologue)
Peg, a folk singer/songwriter in a major slump, is feeling the effects of a really bad night as she faces her day job (elementary school music teacher). With a bitter song to sing and no audience but a class of second graders, she finds herself spilling her story of love, betrayal, and a few too many refreshments at an "all-girls' lemonade stand." - Matter Familias (full-length)
MF Snippet 1(top of show) MF Snippet 2 (Lisa and Lisa)
(4 W, 3 M) When single, thirty-something Katherine announces to her parents that she's going to adopt, their reactions are mixed. When she tells them her future son is William, a forty-year-old accountant, their reaction is abject horror. Katherine and William try to settle down to a nice, normal family life, in spite of Mother and Dad's violent protests and the curiosity of William's coworker Claude, who just happens to be Katherine's ex-boyfriend. Meanwhile, Katherine's sister Lisa and her partner Lisa are thrilled to find out they are pregnant…but when Lisa P. insists that the baby is the product of her partner's own "potent eggs," Lisa M. is seriously confused. As Mother schemes to get Katherine married and pregnant and Lisa M. grows increasingly suspicious about her partner's truthfulness, secrets are revealed, relationships explode, and the ties that bind get tied in tighter and tighter knots. But everything is relative in this hysterical comedy, and in the end, only family matters.