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In the play, the fictional equivalents of Betty Crocker, Rosie the Riveter, Aunt Jemima, Betty Boop and Barbie make up a five-piece plate collection being hawked on the daytime shopping channel, Impulse Buying at Home. As each plate is introduced, the adorning icon comes to life, and speaks volumes about America, the universal condition, and the efforts women have made to effectively change society for the better.
The play had a reading at The Barrow Group in NYC, and had its premiere workshop production at the Little Theatre in Richmond, VA, thanks to Barksdale Theatre and two wonderful producers, Erin Thomas Foley and Jenny Jones Hundley. I am also indebted to Bruce Miller for administrative assistance and gracious hospitality in lending us his theatre and box office personnel.
It If you'd like to see the full script, or produce Full Plate Collection at a theater near you, give me a holler!
John Porter of WCVE Public Radio said: "It's times like these when you realize just how much talent lives in this city. Richmond is truly blessed to have all these wonderful artists practicing their craft and sharing with us."
Miss Palmer's School of Penmanship and Civil Behavior, a play.
This is a full-length comedy in one act. It requires a
cast of 3 women and 2 men. It has never been produced.
In Miss Palmer’s School For Penmanship And
Civil Behavior, Vidalia Palmer believes that the decline of civility in
America is linked to the decline of our national handwriting. She addresses a
class of “civility offenders” who have been ordered by the Civility Justice
System to learn proper penmanship as part of their social rehabilitation.
Worlds collide when a left-handed Congressman advocates the elimination of
penmanship instruction in public schools, and Miss Palmer is forced to see the
handwriting on the wall.
Rules of the Lake, a play
Rules of the Lake is my first play. It won the Mary Roberts Rinehart award in Drama. Rules of the Lake is also the title of my first book. The play came first.
Rules of the Lake is a semi-autobiographical one-person play about growing up on a lake in “pre-Disney” Florida in the 1960’s. This was before orange groves were bulldozed to make way for shopping plazas, and bushes were reshaped to resemble Mickey Mouse ears. With the help of my best friend from graduate school, John Capecci, I cobbled together four short stories tracing the maturation of my alter ego, Annie Bartlett. The play explored the fine line between fact and fiction, as I introduced autobiographical material to show where "real life" left off, and fiction began.
Annie recounts a Florida childhood as a mermaid wanna-be. Guided by her father’s lake rules (No Swimming Alone, No Diving in Unknown Waters, etc.), Annie is driven by an obsessive desire to breathe underwater, believing it to be the key to becoming a mermaid.
From The Richmond Times Dispatch: "Rules of the Lake explores the nature of rules: the importance of following them, the excitement of breaking them, and the consequences of disobedience. Throughout the play, Widow Lake shimmers with changeable symbolism--sometimes as Annie’s haven from worldly problems, sometimes as an unfathomably dangerous place--but always offering a psychological reflection of Annie’s coming of age."The play was originally produced by Theatre IV in Richmond, and later by The DeLand Cultural Arts Center in my hometown. I am indebted to Bruce Miller and Renee Sands, respectively.
Monologues for Actors
Friend and co-editor, John Capecci, and I have culled and assembled in six volumes, hundreds of monologues for actors for auditions or classroom use. Here are comic, semi-comic, dramatic, and classical monologues from plays and literature, chosen for strong emotional content, fascinating characters and powerful statements. These books are available in the big bookstore chains and well as from your favorite online vendor. Or contact me. I have a few I can sell you at a discount.
