Category: Plays

THE WIND PHONE__Sergel_November 2021

One fact about the past can change everything about the present.
Preparing to sell their family home, adult sisters Jenny and Ellen, with their mother Patty, are unpacking and sorting out five decades of living. With a single sentence from her mother, Jenny’s understanding of who her father was is reinvented. War, PTSD, homophobia, and sexual assault take their toll not just on one person but also on the generations which follow. As Jennifer opens the Pandora’s Box of her father’s past, she finds that act of keeping memories in a box is just as damaging as the contents.

2 acts, single set, 3/W

World Premiere, Skokie Theater, November, 2021

Taking Turns Final_M. Sergel

“Your turn, Dad.”

Taking Turns starts with a simple action, an adult son telling his elderly father that it’s his turn to speak at the city council meeting.  This leads to the unveiling of the story about three generations of the Parson family.  Moving back and forth between the present and the past, we see the moments that have defined each of these people as they attempt to find out who’s turn is it to be the caregiver or cared-for. Taking Turns is for any adult suddenly finding themselves parenting a parent…or suddenly finding themselves being parented by their child. 3M/3W, simple set.

“There are only four kinds of people in the world.
Those who have been caregivers.
Those who are currently caregivers.
Those who will be caregivers, and those who will need a caregiver.”

― Rosalyn Carter

Produced at Three Brothers Theatre, April 2018

Conversations Empty Suit 2020 PDF

When Abby, a fifty-year-old artistic director of a small professional theatre company in Chicago, discovers the Tony Award-winning department head of her alma mater has died, she is thrown into a tailspin. She seeks out Seth Kennedy, once just another student and now a highly successful Hollywood show runner. Conversations about an Empty Suit explores questions of what defines success, why paths aren’t taken, and how factors of advantage, race, age, and class influence choices made and opportunity available. 2W/2M 

“Conversations About an Empty Suit” received its mainstage world premiere production March 2020 at Three Brothers Theatre

Special Needs, Sergel 2018

An Atypical Play about an Atypical Kid

A brilliant, creative teenager with autism and his family are all in the special needs trenches as Pierce fights to balance his fascinating inner reality with getting over the hurdles of daily life. 4W/4M Set is a family living room and dining room

Produced at Clockwise Theatre and Magnetic Theatre

• Finalist Christopher Brian Wolk Award
• Semi-finalist in the Dorothy Silver Playwriting Competition

Set in an upscale country club, Throwing Rice takes place during the 12 hour period of the wedding day of the “1%.” Issues of class, wealth, entitlement, and race are explored amidst the donning of finery, toasts, dancing, and celebration. 6W/3M, single set with two additional flexible playing areas.

Reading, Chicago Dramatists, 2017

Artemisia 2018 Fall Festival finalist

Talk, 2018, SERGEL

As the three couples eat, socialize, play cards, sunbathe and talk, their inner selves reveal the vast difference between what people say and how they act, as opposed to what they really think and truly desire. The costs of ignoring your inner voice or listening too closely to your inner demons are played out against the backdrop of friends enjoying the last weekend of a Midwestern summer. 6W/6M, set is a living room of a summer cabin with four different playing areas. Readings at American Theatre Company, Chicago Dramatists, Gurnee Theatre Company

Another Piece of Cake_Sergel_Final 2018

A comedy about life in the “last” lane When Diane visits her great-aunt Clara, Clara realizes Diane is reaching an age at which she can actually begin to see the bigger picture of life. So she starts telling Diane what she really thinks. About humanity. Youth. Life. Aging. Rage. Family. This is not what Diane expected from the afternoon. With the arrival of Edward, the UPS delivery guy, the dialogue and memories shift to marriage, sensuality, passion, sexual violence and desire. The final frontier of life, the distant galaxy of aging, is not for the faint of heart 

6W/1M One location, retirement facility community room. Produced, Citadel Theatre, 2009

• Featured Selection Her Rah New Plays Festival
• Finalist in the Moondance International Film Festival, play division

The Party in the Kitchen_2018

“Some people say that the kitchen is the heart of the home. I say it’s the mouth of the home!” – Lil in The Party in the Kitchen

Beginning on an idyllic early fall day in September 2001, a group of friends gather, unsuspecting of the upheaval to follow. From business tycoon Guy and Ava’s tumultuous marriage, just-getting-started Danny and his pregnant wife Mary, and middle management Phil and Lily’s happy home, all will be changed by events already launched in faraway lands and the deals made in distant corporate headquarters.  4W/4/M, set is a kitchen in an upscale suburban home. Produced, Clockwise Theatre, 2015

Six Fights on a Summer’s Night Final 2018

An exploration of aging, beauty, death, mental illness, and the power of sisterhood. Six women gather one evening on the back porch of their family summer home. As the sun slowly sets, relationships and conflicts are revealed both through dialogue and different forms of stage combat. One Act. 6W. Reading, Clockwise Theatre, 2013

Published by YouthPLAYS

“Between everyone demanding that I know what I am going to do with my entire life right now, parents full of way-too-much loving, supportive and very irritating advice, friends with their own set of problems that somehow keep ending up in my in-box, I have to tell you, it’s not exactly easy being a teenager these days!”- Lizzie in Totally Okay, Right Now 6W, 2M Simple unit set

Reading, Clockwise Theatre

• Featured play in New Jersey’s Equity children’s theatre Growing Stage Theatre New Play-Reading Series,
• Honorable mention in the Julie Harris Play Competition for youth theatre, the Marilyn Hall Award