Yazoo, miss'ssippi
“I have a masters degree from the Harvard School of Business and somehow I'm in podunk refereeing mud wrestling between some dwarf-size Godzilla and a corporate climber in a Brooks Brothers sale rack suit" -- Samantha Norman
Yazoo, Mississippi is an actual town located on the Yazoo River. Its name comes from a Choctaw Indian word meaning "River of Death." This is a fact. No one can make that up. It's begging to be a comedy.
Alex Halldorson arrives in the middle of Newt-a-Yazoo-la, the annual festival celebrating the local winged newts. His goal is building relationships between his company and the local community, but the relationships he discovers are not the ones he expects. Family lies, broken ties and why won't those Yazoo -- who zoo -- Yazoo winged newts fly?
PRODUCTIONS HISTORY and AWARDS
2024 Branch County Community Theatre (Coldwater, MI)
2023 Brazosport College Theatre (Houston, TX)
2024 Winner, Robert J Pickering/JR Colbeck Award for Playwriting Excellence
2023 Finalist, Southeast Texas New Works Festival (Beaumont, TX)
2023 Winner Best Full-length Play, ARTSpeaks Festival (Midland, MI)
CAST: 3 women, 2 men -- 2 actors are double cast
(strong roles for women and older actors)
The bold and bob
“A colonoscopy isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a man.” -- Arne Jordan
“Bob-O”, a high school teacher with the spine of a jellyfish, returns to Normal, Illinois to find that nothing is normal anymore after the sudden passing of his mother, Mariam O’Kineski. Forced to face up to the responsibilities of planning her funeral, he must navigate the Vietnam Veteran angling for Mariam’s corner apartment and the building manager angling for a wedding ring. And the aging flower child across the hall is hell-bent to steamroll the funeral plans which may or may not include the funeral director’s taco truck, the Rolly Guacamole. When Mariam’s boss arrives, everything Bob-O thought he knew about his mother quickly unravels.
He’ll be making a grave mistake if he thinks his mother’s legacy is what she’s left in her will as Mariam’s final gift to Bob will be much more “bold and brave.”
PRODUCTIONS HISTORY and AWARDS
2023 Script2Stage2Screen (Palm Springs, CA)
2022 Pasadena Little Theatre (Houston, TX)
2021 Creative 360 (Midland, MI)
2021 Bay City Players (Bay City, MI)
2022 Finalist, New Comedies Festival, B-Street Theatre (Sacrament, CA)
2021 Winner Best Full-Length Play, ARTSpeaks (Midland, MI)
CAST: 2 women, 4 men
(strong roles for women and older actors)
A very holly moosemas
“Christmas isn’t glitter. Glitter is a special kind of sparkly herpes. Once you’ve got glitter, you can’t ever get rid of it.” -- Bert Matthews
It’s August in Atlanta but Holly Anderson, with a deep passion for the holidays that could put Hallmark to shame, is convinced she can transform a movie set into a wooded, mountain Christmas masterpiece. With the blessed assistance of a scotch-drinking retired nun and a resourceful Bear, she has to navigate the crotchety host of her AirBnB, an unexpected case of salmonella, and a Scrooge of a boss. If she could only convince her new husband and find her phone! Joy is not where you find it, but where you create it – even unconventionally.
PRODUCTIONS HISTORY and AWARDS
2023 Script2State2Screen (Palm Springs CA)
2022 Pasadena Little Theatre (Houston, TX)
2021 Boerne Community Theatre (Boerne, TX)
2021 Branch Co. Community Theatre (Coldwater, MI)
2020 Bay City Players (Bay City, MI)
2021 Finalist, Robert J Pickering/JR Colbeck Award for Playwriting Excellence
CAST: 2 women, 3 men, 1 flexible
(strong roles for women and older actors)
Potato Gumbo
"You don't quit having dreams just because you get old." -- Thomas Trahan
A touchingly honest and, at times, zany look at the challenges of aging, Potato Gumbo tells the poignant story of Gretchen and Thomas, her dream, an ill-gotten pair of handcuffs, a diagnosis, and the adult children who must walk the delicate line of parenting their parents.
Gretchen Nelson could create the ideal gumbo recipe utilizing the unlikely ingredient of potato if she could only get from her Central Texas retirement community to the famed School of Cooking in New Orleans. Thomas Trahan, already caught by her whimsical charms and light-fingered ways, is drawn into Gretchen’s off-beat schemes. Their initial plan, a late night, impromptu road trip to the Big Easy, has been aborted with their unfortunate return under police escort. As a result, more darkly serious issues begin to bubble up. Is Gretchen’s “whimsy,” in fact, a looming cloud of declining mental faculties or worse? How much can one old heart endure? And when must elderly care end and control begin?
PRODUCTIONS HISTORY and AWARDS
2024 ARTFactory (Manassas, VA)
2024 EXIT Theatre (Arcata, CA)
2023 The Pearl Theatre (Houston, TX)
2022 Northern Lights Theatre (Cadillac, MI)
2020 Bay City Players Theatre (Bay City, MI)
2018 Pasadena Little Theatre (Houston, TX)
2017 Boerne Community Theatre (Boerne, TX)
2016 Echo Theatre (Dallas, TX)
2015 Brazosport Center Stages (Lake Jackson, TX)
2017 Finalist Robert J. Pickering Award for
Playwriting Excellence
CAST: 4 women, 3 men
(strong roles for women and older actors)
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All rights are exclusively held by the playwright. In productions and readings, words in the script and the gender of the characters must remain as written unless permission is given by the playwright for changes. (This does not apply to stage directions.) Thank you for respecting the playwright and the copyright laws of the United States.
