Plays

Maria Tucci, a Broadway and film actress with Tony nominations and pages of critical raves in her scrapbook (if she had one, which she doesn't) and I have been working on two plays. We call them works in process because we will never judge them finished. Occasionally we give a reading, which are fun because Maria and her friends are terrific actors.

Here is a summary of the two plays to date. Readings -- as they come up -- will appear in the What's New box.

It's Only a Reading

This comedy is set amongst the celebrity-studded hills of Taos, New Mexico. A successful television writer, the hot-shot young actor who starred in his series, and an older actress with whom the writer shares a sordid past, get together to read his new play. When the actors discover the play may be more true to life than they first realized, rehearsal quickly evolves into an outrageous struggle between writer and actress for control over the past, the play, and even the hapless young actor caught in between.

Understanding Artichokes

This three character comedy revolves around a fourth character, Mischa Kaminsky, a film director, who never appears, except as ashes in a canister, or, possibly, as a seagull (It's almost obligatory to include a reference to Chekov in your play these days.) There is Lu, Mischa's Italian mistress and uncredited collaborator. Francesca, Mischa's only daughter, who teaches film at Weslyan, and Eugene Gennaro, (Genno) the famous American director who never met Mischa, but has memorized every frame of the three films he made. But there are rumors of a fourth film, an unfinished masterpiece. Francesca and Genno converge on Lu's Roman apartment to try to find the film and discover much more -- about Mischa, each other, and themselves. Not to mention the habits of seagulls.