Commissioned by An Appalachian Summer Festival, produced 2016.
On a misty October night, an itinerant mountain preacher finds a cabin inhabited by two young sisters, who insist he stay with them until the rain passes. The three spend the evening swapping tales and singing songs, but it grows clear that certain things—music, for instance, or true love, or the evil actions of men—leave remnants after the things themselves have long faded away. Even if we don’t want them to remain…
Mauzy is a tale about tale-telling, about songs, about how storytellers can mix so deep into the stories themselves that they never find their way out—out of the story, or out of the mountains, or back to the world of the living.
Like a song that won’t leave your head, like a wind sneaking through the cracks into your house, or like that part of your past you’ve tried to forget, Mauzy will haunt you…
"What haunts me? Mauzy haunts me! Bravo."
--Kim Reese
"Mauzy is storytelling at its best, reminding us that we all have a tale to tell, even the dead." --Jake McGuire
“Grow a garden.” The idea hits Paul like a meteor hitting the planet and he’s off. He reads the books, sows the seeds, and before his first tomatoes ripen, departs on a crusade to save the planet one precious seedling at a time. Saving himself, however, will prove a much harder battle.
Groundwork
co-written with Mike Ostroski
"Directed by Davidson with punch and potency, this story...is furiously engaging. [Ostroski’s] delivery, a combination of slam poetry and conversation, opens up worlds to an unsuspecting audience. Groundwork plants the seed of ideas worth harvesting.”
- Vanessa Cate, Stage Raw
Numerous productions. Visit www.groundworktheplay.com for booking info.
On Her Chemise
Robbie Walker sells seeds. A rising star at his corporation—which sells GMOs internationally— Robbie’s desire to control the Central American seed market prompts him to send his new hire, Sam, to Equador. But Sam (with the help of Robbie’s actor/seedsaver wife, Rose), plans to cut short Robbie’s ambitions, and--very possibly--his life.
Scenes of humor and heartbreaking revelation flow into one another like an Escher painting, offering a trenchant and up-to-the-minute take on identity politics, GMOs, and corporate imperialism.
The Road Where it Curves Away
Where do you find God? And where does religion overlap with scientific principles? This non-judgmental play with music explores the culture of the religious snake-handling tradition, attempting to answer the question of why this custom continues, and why some risk their lives through worship.
Produced by Barter Theatre, VA (LORT), and Ashland University, Ohio.
Kill Will
What is it about Shakespeare that brings us back, again and again? Why does each subsequent generation still turn to Shakespeare to bring us timeless stories of love and anger, of wars and revenge, of grudges and reconciliation? No matter how many times we kill his characters, we resurrect them to explore the timeless themes in new ages and in new ways.
Kill Will is not only a collection of famous fights and well-known death scenes, but also an exploration of why each subsequent generation resurrects Shakespeare's plays, to witness deaths over and over of beloved characters, all while reinforcing that we cannot kill will.
Produced by In/Visible Theatre, Boone, NC and
the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre
Holmes:
The Art of Deduction
Sherlock Holmes, that super-computer-in-human-form, is back in this exciting mash-up of two of the sleuth’s most popular mysteries, “The Red-Headed League” and “Scandal in Bohemia.” A romp for all ages, Holmes: The Art of Deduction features excitement, laughs and an evening’s worth of first-class deduction!
This script is for young audiences
Commissioned by the Weathervane Playhouse, Akron, OH, produced also by Appalachian State University.
Workshop productions by The Women and Inclusive Theatre Troupe, Boone, NC, and the Master's Program at Mary Baldwin College, VA.
A Part Equal
Women and Shakespeare
The works of William Shakespeare have exerted a monumental influence on theatre and literature all over the world. But it is equally true—if rarely observed—that many women have had as profound an effect on Shakespeare, during his life and after. In A Part Equal we spend time with some of these women, from Mary Arden, Shakespeare’s mother, to Margaret Hughes, who was one of the first women to actually play some of Shakespeare’s most famous female roles, to contemporary Fiona Shaw, one of today’s most exciting interpreters of the Bard.
The Pines, The Pines
Charlie and Lou are construction workers; Red’s a manager at a fast-food restaurant in Ohio; Alice is a waifish transplant from Seattle; Dodge is a drifter from Tennessee. All of them have found themselves living in the Big Apple, a place of upside-down lifestyles and crazy Wonderland encounters resembling more a fantasy by Lewis Carroll than real life. In this evocation of 90s optimism, excitement, and perhaps a teensy bit of worry about the coming millennium, these five lost souls search for love, identity and purpose as they bounce around the looking-glass world of Manhattan.
Bumbershoot
A noir and neo-noir amalgam of dark humor and sudden violence that offers up a meditation on just how banal the banality of evil can be, on how good people--or ordinary, not-so-good people--can do very, very bad things.
AEA workshop at FringeNYC 2012. E-published in Indietheatrenow.com
Pictured: Molly Winstead