Other Plays
DIONNE’S HOUSE: Ecstacy and Primal Agony (Mostly) on the Michigan Riviera
O’Neill NPC 2022 finalist. From letter of recommendation from the O’Neill:
“The readers who encountered DIONNE’S HOUSE uplifted the clever premise and intricacies of the relationship it depicts between two women from different generations. They were impressed with the expertly crafted dialogue—and specifically uplifted Dionne's complexity of character, delighting in her eccentricities.”
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Two-act play, running about two hours. 3-4 women and 3-4 men, depending on how much you want to double.
Provides unusually strong and complex role for older woman.
SYNOPSIS:
A comedy/drama about a complex friendship between two generations of ambitious feminist writers -- and how their very bad taste in men threatens their bond. The play has a modern take on a still-under-dramatized core struggle of the ambitious woman: to sacrifice career or family (and with added limiting challenge of an invisible disability). PIcks up where the Heidi Chronicles and Rapture, Blister, Burn leave off. Takes place in an almost-magical cottage in Southwest Michigan, except for one scene in Kankakee, IL, where Dionne decamps to be with her boyfriend on parole.
PAIN MANAGEMENT
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Ten-minute comedy; Running Time: 10-15 minutes. 3-4 actors of any gender identity
SYNOPSIS:
An absurd short play with all stage directions and no dialogue -- but with lots of action -- about the absurdity and isolation of living with chronic pain. Inspired by the format and form of Krapp's Last Tape by Beckett.
A woman with chronic back pain tries to retrieve a computer mouse she has dropped into a gaping void by enlisting the help of others via her cell phone. She orders a grabber from Amazon, and then drops that grabber in the void and orders another grabber to pick up that lost grabber. Another tactic is to book a Tinder date to get help. When he hurts his back, she enlists the responding paramedic. At the end, she starts all over again when she drops the cell phone into the same void.
Trust me, it works well on Zoom with two actors alternating reading stage directions.
NICE TO SEE YOU AGAIN
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Ten-minute comedy; Running Time: 10-15 minutes. 3 actors of any gender identity
SYNOPSIS:
A neurotic thriller & comedy of manners with introverts. In this ten-minute comedy, a harried woman turns her life upside down by accidentally crossing the unspoken social boundary between acquaintances. As a result, she accidentally torments a parent from her kids' school by constantly running into him everywhere she goes. This escalates until one day in the gym when they have a violent, not to mention awkward, reckoning.
LIFE OF RILEY
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Ten-minute comedy; Running Time: 10-15 minutes. Two speaking roles of a parent and child, any race/gender. Plus non speaking roles for a white guy and one to five concierges/servants.
SYNOPSIS:
A portrait of the only human (or any sentient being) ever to live to have ZERO problems, a white guy from Burr Ridge, IL, with 5 nannies. A mother tells his story to her son, whose anxiety she is trying to relieve so he will go away and let her watch the season finale tell-all special of "90-Day Fiance," in order to forget her own problems. The play is not directly about the pandemic, but inspired by it, examining the absurdities of trying to control anxiety, and how trying too hard to prevent problems often creates new ones.
A CURE FOR AIDS
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SYNOPSIS:
The theme of this fantasy play is facing loss — and regret —in an epidemic, while hoping for the salvation of a vaccine to be invented.
“Ten-minute” play; two older men; one simple set possible. LGBTQ issues. Offers major roles for seniors. Running Time: 15-20 minutes.
More specifically, it meditates on the incalculable loss to society when artists die before their prime, whether because of AIDS -- or even human-made tragedies. The drama takes place in the imagination of a former Nazi, Heinz, in a Milwaukee hospital room in 1995. He imagines a confrontation with a Jewish boyhood friend, Abraham, whom he had murdered in a concentration camp during WWII. As Heinz watches his son die of AIDS, he remembers Abraham’s childhood dreams of being a great doctor and inventing the cure to a terrible illness. His fever dream is prompted by news of the death of Jonas Salk, a Jewish inventor of his era. Like with other dark topics covered by this writer, this play lightens the load with humor, such as in a meditation on Holocaust survivor Anne Frank’s obsession with the sales of her twentieth novel and ego problems.
AWARDS and PRODUCTIONS:
First-place winner of play competition of the Unfinished Works program of AIDS Services Foundation Orange County, Irvine, California, December 2005.
Winner of Diversity Festival, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales, New Mexico, March 2001.
Finalist in Chicago Dramatists’ “Ten-Minute Play” Competition, receiving staged reading. Judged by David Zak of the Bailiwick Theater, Spring 1999.
Festival finalist by SNAP! Productions, Omaha, Nebraska, at the Millennium Theater, Summer 2000.
SEVEN DATES WITH SEVEN WRITERS:
An ‘Unromantic Comedy’
CRITICAL RESPONSE TO PREMIERE PRODUCTION:
“Whimsical and hip! “The irrepressibly witty Kamen…demonstrating a deft authorial hand at innovative theatrical convention…”
—Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune
“Wickedly funny! hilarious!”
“Kamen is a smart, sassy humorist with an appealing streak of self-deprecation.”
—Albert Williams, Chicago Reader
“One of the funniest new plays in Chicago.”
—Jeff Zaslow, Chicago Sun-Times
SYNOPSIS:
Comedy, one act; seven men (doubling possible) and one woman, one simple set, mostly monologue-based with some dialogue at the end.
Running Time: about 90 minutes without an intermission.
This satirical play chronicles a woman’s modern journey for romantic and self-understanding in an opinionated, self-absorbed, highly individualized urban world. In its study of heterosexuals, the play goes beyond cliched “battle of the sexes” material — such as Defending the Caveman — to make some original observations about the adversarial and competitive undercurrents ruling many relationships, especially among fellow artists.
But above all, the comedy is central. While about intellectual types, the play never hesitates to go for the cheap shot. Among other subjects, it contains extended riffs on Jewish/Catholic relationships, one-night stands, urban hipsters, and the bourgeois pleasures of Crate & Barrel. It also includes a very original one-person sex scene on a trapeze.
Belinda Berdes and Bob Dassie in 1998 ImprovOlympic production. In the beginning, main character Rhoda tells about her lifelong dream to date a writer because of their supposed empathy and depth — but that this vision had fizzled when she actually went out with seven writers. To explain what happened, she informs the audience that the dates will now be reenacted; however, she declines taking part because her presence is not necessary. So, she asks the audience to take her place on the dates.
The following drama is a series of monologues by seven writers (and then some face-to-face conversations when the characters learn to understand each other). These men’s monologues — which gradually reveal Rhoda’s personality and ambitions — are not a gimmick; they demonstrate the failure of men and women to actually talk to each other, and their tendency to talk AT each other, even to perform for each other. In the process, Rhoda and the main male character,
Peter, (date 6) a poet who is struggling about whether to take over the family business of concrete, confront their deepest fears about taking risks. Peter, the most realistic male character, represents the genuine heart of the play.
Adding urban flavor, these writers represent a wide array of Chicago neighborhoods and influential writing schools, including: the tortured poetry slammer, the Marxist Nelson Algren-enthuasiast living happily in poverty in Uptown, the arrogant playwright dating gorgeous actresses, the really bad improviser, the Gold Coast corporate-statement writer, the slimy and unscrupulous lesbian-obsessed freelancer, and the trendy Wired Magazine writer living in the most “cutting-edge” neighborhood of all, the site of the former Chicago Stock Yards. Non-local audiences are able to understand the play’s Chicago references through the monologues’ context.
PRODUCTION HISTORY:
Bathsheba Productions at IO/ ImprovOlympic (extension), Chicago, Winter 1998.
Bathsheba Productions at Chicago Dramatists, Chicago, Fall 1998.
Workshop Production, Factory Theater Comedy Festival, January 1998.
AWARDS:
Two monologues published in Best Men’s Stage Monologues of 1998, Smith & Kraus, edited by Jocelyn Beard.
REVIEWS:
Chicago Sun-Times, November 27, 1998
© Paula Kamen 1999
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