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My plays are organized into full-lengths, one-acts, and ten-minutes. I've included a plot summary, cast and production requirements, and script history. Everything has been produced or published, or both

I pulled a monologue from each play to give you a sense of my writing. You're welcome to use them to audition. If you like what you see, contact me and I'll e-mail the script to you.

I started writing essays to amuse my friends and make it through yet another workday in a basement cubicle. Some have since been published.

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In this excerpt from Couldn't Say, after being trapped in a car with his wife for hours, Ethan, 40-50, has just unsuccessfully tried to seduce her.

LIZ: Couples find, as they get older, they share different things. A past.

ETHAN: What past would that be? Whose disappointments or desires, yours or mine?

(No answer. He shrugs.)

Why talk about it? What good are words? Have they won a war, boiled water, paid taxes, graded papers, fathered a child, or fed him, or saved him, or called him back?

(He shakes his head.)

Less than that. Half that. Half the smallest thing you can imagine. Speeches at a lectern. Discussions in a car. Guesses after the fact. All this palm reading sacrifice-the-animal up-to-your-elbows-in- viscera desperate for a sign to grant some modicum of intelligence to our cries. What for!? Talking might be worth it if we could use something besides words! Ha ha! What nonsense. That we can sit here. Share our views on the afterlife or what our son was doing or our marriage or the view or the temperature or whether we really did see a sign for an inn and at the end of it all we’re still stuck in this god damned car! You there. Me here. Our son — Our son, Liz.

(He puts his head in his hands. Silence.)

LIZ: Maybe we talk so people — so they know we’re alive.

ETHAN: I see my hand. Watch my breath on the windshield. But ask a question. Something you ask when you’re five and should know when you’re forty. Why am I here one day to the next? Why him and not me? Why can we go forward but not back? For the first time in my life, I don’t know. What good are my books, the insights I give my students, when I can’t answer those simple questions? I know I’m alive, Liz. And that’s about it. And sometimes it — it isn’t enough.

(Silence. He wipes his brow with a bandana.)

Nothing like an outburst to fog up the windows. See any lights?

LIZ: No.

ETHAN: No sound? No car? I thought for sure by now. I’d – I’d like to see where we are. That’s not too much to ask.

LIZ: You’re not doing well.

ETHAN: I’m fine.

LIZ: You sure?

ETHAN: Why do you ask?

LIZ: You finished balling up your winter hat and moved on to your handkerchief.

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In this excerpt from Dreams of the Washer King, Wade, 40s, stands in Claire's kitchen with a bouquet of tiger lilies. He's there ostensibly to thank her for helping him the night he moved in, though he's let himelf into her house without announcing himself. Claire's son, Ryan, a teenager, enters.

RYAN: Whatcha doing here? (Pause.) Who are you?

WADE: Your ma around? (Pause.) She helped me out last week.

RYAN: I bet.

(RYAN smirks at the bouquet of tiger lilies WADE brought and gets a drink of milk.)

WADE: What’s she up to?

RYAN: Bible reading. The whole thing.

WADE: You don’t say.

RYAN: She’s a slower reader.

(WADE checks his boots, licks his finger and wipes a spot on them. RYAN drinks milk from the carton.)

WADE: Gonna call her?

(RYAN keeps drinking. A flash of anger crosses WADE’s face.)

Come on, now. We’re neighbors. You’re Ryan. I know a mess about you already, and you act like you never seen me.

RYAN: Have I?

WADE: You walk my daughter to school. Think I didn’t notice?

(RYAN shrugs and puts the milk away.)

Not much of a noticer, are you? Tell you what I saw coming up to your house just now. Trees, hedges, grown up by the window. So little light in the living room you got to keep a lamp on at noon. Bees nest in the gutter. Grass halfway past your shin. Rake against the side of the garage. Know what I think? I think a man used to live here. And doesn’t anymore. Right? Am I right?

(WADE grabs the milk from the fridge and yanks RYAN toward the cabinet.)

Get a glass.

RYAN: Huh?

WADE: You heard me Now pour the milk in the glass. More. That’s it. Now drink the milk like a civilized person. Go on!

(He tips the bottom of the glass up and pushes it against RYAN’S face, forcing him to drink.)

That’s it. That’s it. Oh no, you’re not done. Did I say you’re done?

(RYAN pulls away and coughs milk into the sink, strugglng to breathe.)

Who do you think you are, treating strangers like that!?

RYAN: Maa!?

WADE: You treat your mother that way?

RYAN: Maa!

(A door slams offstage. Angry muttering. RYAN stares at WADE.)

WADE: Stay away from my daughter till you learn some manners. Got that?

(As CLAIRE enters, WADE turns and smiles.)

There you are! I sure appreciate your help the other night . .

(He gives her the flowers. She smiles.)

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