Selected Ten Minute Plays
A Whole Other Shade of Blue
Cast: 1M, 1W
A couple on their honeymoon come across the body of a little boy, washed up on the beach in Greece. Photographers, they create a picture that the world needs to see.
Production History
2017. Winner, Susan Glaspell Playwriting Contest, Staged Reading, Quad Cities Theater Workshop, (Davenport, IA)
2017. Student production, Acadia University Minifest 2017 (Wolfville, Nova Scotia)
Michael Herold in Theatre LILA's Suitcase Dreams.
Lost and Found
Cast: 3M, 2F
A golf bag, a cell phone, a diamond ring, an old Sam Spade novel. These are just a few of the things that end up in the lost and found at a major airport. In this tongue-in-cheek play on film noir, the gumshoe in the detective novel finally tracks down his reader and escapes the limbo of lost luggage.
Production History
2015. American High School Theatre Festival production, (Edinburgh, Scotland)
2014. A vignette from Suitcase Dreams, professional production, Theatre LILA (Madison, WI)
Selected Monologues
A Taste of Home
Cast: 1W
1960s. A teenage girl, who is also a military brat, confronts racism in her own family as her mother helps teach a Thai war bride how to cook American food for her GI husband.
Production History
2014. Short fiction winner, published in the Midwest Prairie Review
2009. Professional production, Riverside Theatre “Walking the Wire” Festival (Iowa City, IA)
I Hear Everything
Cast: 1M
A man with a rare hearing condition is tormented by the sounds of daily life. His refuge is working in a special — very quiet — section of the Newberry Library. Much to his surprise, one day he meets his match, a woman who struggles to be heard.
Production History
2017. Professional production, Br!nk Briefs Ten Minute Play Festival, Reniassance Theaterworks, (Milwaukee, WI)
2011. Professional production, Riverside Theatre “Walking the Wire” Festival (Iowa City, IA)
The cast of Theatre LILA's Suitcase Dreams
The Devil Fish
Cast: 1M
While running on the beach one morning in his hometown in Newfoundland, a man discovers a group of suitcases washed up on shore. Soon the whole town is working to figure out where these suitcases came from, what to do with the contents, and how to return them to the proper owners.
Production History
2015. American High School Theatre Festival production, (Edinburgh, Scotland)
2014. A vignette from Suitcase Dreams, professional production, Theatre LILA (Madison, WI)
2014. Finalist, Barrington Stage Company 10x10 Play Festival (Pittsfield, MA)
Like Father, Like Daughter
Cast: 1W
A middle-aged woman can’t find her keys, so ironically she has to cancel her appointment with a clinic doing research on the children of Alzheimer’s patients. She recalls her father, a lawyer who was in the habit of losing things. He has always delighted and inspired her. Now he doesn’t remember her at all.
Production History
2016. Staged Reading, Festival 56 (Princeton, IL)
2016. Finalist, 10x10 in the Triangle, The ArtsCenter (Carrborough, NC)
2014. Professional production, Barrington Stage Company 10x10 Play Festival (Pittsfield, MA)
Laura Gordon in Theatre LILA's Trash.
Sorting The Trash
Cast: 1W
An epidemiologist working for the World Health Organization is profoundly affected by the people she meets in Sierra Leone, as she works to treat those affected by Ebola. She is particularly moved by the children who survive by sorting through mountains of trash.
Production History
2016. Full production, Bellarmine International 10 Minute Play Festival (Louisville, KY)
2015. A vignette from Trash, professional production, Theatre LILA (Madison, WI)