SHORT PLAYS
ABSENCE OF BIRDS: A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR THE CURRENT EMERGENCY
Selection: Ubu Roi Bakeoff Readings at The Playwrights' Center, facilitated by Paula Vogel
Cast: 2 women, 2 men.
Runtime: 5 minutes
A playwright provides a field guide for surviving a certain disastrous presidential administration. Meanwhile, all around her, seagulls seem to keep dying. The playwright tries to stop the entire world from going in reverse, while at the same time attempting to remember birdsongs.
CANDYHOUSE
Cast: 1 teenage male, 1 teenage female, 2 women
Runtime: 15 minutes
Hansel and Gretel are lost in the woods, neither or them able to recall how they got there or for how long they’ve been walking. As they go deeper, memories become confused or lost altogether. How did they get into the middle of the woods? How long have they been here? Gretel remembers a death that Hansel doesn't. As days go by, their sense of reality slips from them. Gretel hears voices late at night but withholds them from Hansel, until she has no choice but to confront the noises. Because the two children are not alone. Someone, something is watching them.
Elora Bishop Discovers the Middle of the Universe
Allow me to start at the beginning.
Or at least as much the beginning as I can remember.
Every night, the same-old-same-old. Elora Bishop finds herself in an abandoned jazz club that reeks of old memories. She waits for another person or a way out, whichever she comes across first. In walks Vivian Marsh: she could be Elora's way out. But there's something suspicious about Vivian that Elora can't trust. There are hidden secrets in this rabbit-hole of a noir landscape.
FLUX
Cast size: 1 teenage male, 1 man, 1 woman
Runtime: 10 minutes
Every night, Shift’s parents break into factories to steal parts in order to build five time machines. They sell four and use the fifth to go back 24 hours and repeat the process. What they’re doing is highly illegal, but everyone else is doing it as well. Shift wants out. But at what cost?
Development History:
Reading: Augsburg University
Cast: Shift: Jayce Hanson; Tenebrae/Theresa/Linger: Brid Henry; A1/Al/Revert: Jamil Toney
Ghosts Among the Ruins
Part of I Don't Know (2015)
Something bad happened. Nobody knows the specifics. Four people find themselves in an abandoned warehouse. There's no electricity, only the glow from their flashlights. They try to find out where they are, how they got there, and what's outside. One of them insists that they've seen the other side; do the others believe him? They all try to remember what happened, calling upon memories—but in the darkness, everything becomes blurred, down to their personalities.
4 people (not gender-specific). Runtime: 8 minutes.
Ghosts Among the Ruins was performed at Augsburg University in November 2015 as part of the larger devised piece I Don't Know, directed by Sarah Myers with support from Rachel Jendrzejewski. The cast was as follows:
Riley Parham as the Stranger
Malick Ceesay as the Figure
Brighid Burkhalter as the Wanderer
Mitch Ross as the Tall Man
WE LEFT THE AFTERPARTY
Cast: 2 teenage females, 1 teenage male
Runtime: 10 minutes
This is an alternate version of the 2016 election, placing everything back to 2006, when flip phones were still cool. 17-year-old Lost finds herself outside of a house party as she learns of the election's disastrous results. She's in a quiet, meditative mood when Surround enters to take advantage of the emotional state of the night. All that Lost wants is to go back: the house party is what she once had, the autumn cicadas and the quiet wind are all she has left; she can't gather the energy to return to the house party, which says a lot about the road ahead.