THEATER: When there's life onstage, there's nothing else better!

Galinda K. Goss-Kuehn & Pamela Wright Meinhardt in I Never Slept with Helen Keller (2010).

PLAYS

My plays are listed in the order they were performed. [If you'd like to see a clip where I talk about being a playwright and some of my works, check it out here!]

THE RAKE (one-act monologue)
Originally presented at The Lower Levels of Society in 1992.
A well-respected schoolteacher commits an unspeakable crime at the local shopping mall.

SIX WOMEN IN SEARCH OF A PERFECT PLAY (six monologues for the same actress).
Originally presented at the Dixon Place Theater in 1994.
When a wealthy Pakistani woman decides she wants to stage Medea in her home country, six women from all walks of life in Pakistan and England come forward. (This play is available in my book Silence Is A Four-Letter Word: On Art & Deafness.)

DAFFODILS (full-length)
Originally presented at the American Sign Language Institute in 1995.
A deaf social worker and her client form a very unlikely friendship.

SNOOTY (full-length)
Originally presented at the Worldwide and National Deaf Theater Conference in 1996.
A hard-of-hearing seventh-grader must decide between his own comic-book fantasy of being Snooty, the #1 hit man in Chicago's South Side during the 1920s and the reality of being labeled "snooty" by his deaf classmates. Formerly published as a book by The Tactile Mind Press in the spring of 2004, it is now included in Whispers of a Savage Sort and Other Plays about the Deaf American Experience.

WHISPERS OF A SAVAGE SORT (full-length)
Originally presented at the Robert F. Panara Theater in 1996.
When a bag of money disappears at a bowling tournament, a small-town deaf community falls apart due to unproven accusations and rumors. This play is included in Whispers of a Savage Sort and Other Plays about the Deaf American Experience.

AMONG FATHERS (full-length)
Originally workshopped at the Mark Taper Forum in 1997.
When Harry Bowman, Jr., the hard-of-hearing son of the renowned Senator, decides to run for Congress, he must deal with familial obligations, especially when his wife announces her pregnancy.

INTERPRETATIONS (one-act)
Originally presented by the Illuminations Theater with the Deaf in 2001.
An ASL interpreter feels increasingly detached while watching the impact of AIDS affecting his deaf gay friends in the year of 1983. This play was rewritten as a chapter in my novel Men with Their Hands.

HIPPOS & GIRAFFES (one-act)
Originally presented (along with INTERPRETATIONS) at the HERE Theater in 2002.
A straight deaf woman shares her infatuation with a deaf gay woodcarver in the year of 1979. This play was rewritten as a chapter in my novel Men with Their Hands.

THIS (full-length)
Originally presented by Invisible Hands, Inc. at the Gallaudet University Ely Auditorium in 2003.
THIS is an elegy to the one person who made a star out of a nobody: Curtis Higgs, a talented dancer cursed with low self-esteem, meets Dwight, a charismatic and funny hard-of-hearing dancer who is incredible onstage and yet exploitative of his friends offstage. It is through the hunger of wanting to be somebody like Dwight, who is unmistakably a star, that Curtis learns the true value of friendship and gains faith in himself, moreso after Dwight dies of AIDS.

LOVE IN MY VEINS (full-length)
Originally presented by the Illuminations Theater with the Deaf, Houston, TX, in 2003
An episodal look at the tumultuous 25-year relationship between Hugh and Mindy, as they experience the challenges of culture, marriage, family and AIDS. This play is included in Whispers of a Savage Sort and Other Plays about the Deaf American Experience.

BEAUTY & THE BEAST (full-length)
Originally presented by the California School for the Deaf in Fremont in 2004.
A stage adaptation of the classic tale with some inspiration from Jean Cocteau's 1946 film.

DOOGLE (full-length)
Originally presented by the Minnesota State Academy of the Deaf, Faribault, MN in 2005.
Doogle confronts its characters with the intrusion of technological communication devices parallel to the virtually forced intimacy of a Deaf residential high school. This play is included in Whispers of a Savage Sort and Other Plays about the Deaf American Experience.

IN LOVE AND LUST WE TRUST (one-act)
Originally presented by SHAPE Arts UK, London, UK in 2005.
Four very different men have complicated relationships with the same woman.

UNCONDITIONAL MURDER (one-act)
Originally presented (along with UNHAPPILY EVER AFTER) by Deaf Blender Theatre in St. Paul, MN in 2009.
A Deaf man, accused of murder, explains to a frustrated attorney why it wasn't possible for him to kill the one love of his life.

UNHAPPILY EVER AFTER (one-act)
Originally presented by Deaf Blender Theatre in St. Paul, MN in 2009.
Cinderella shares her feelings about her marriage nine years after the wedding.

THAT CHAIR WAS MY WIFE (one-act)
Originally presented by Deaf Blender Theatre at Minnesota Fringe Festival in Minneapolis, MN in 2009.
A furniture salesman reveals his unhealthy obsession with chairs to a therapist.

I NEVER SLEPT WITH HELEN KELLER (full-length)
To be presented by Deaf Blender Theatre in St. Paul, MN in 2010.
A statue of Helen Keller suddenly wakes up and confronts her Deaf sighted sculptor what it means to be DeafBlind today.

THE DARKEST ROOM IN THE HOUSE (full-length)
To be presented by Bridge Productions, Inc. in St. Paul in 2010.
A man, possibly framed with a priest's murder, returns home to his family from prison unannounced after ten years.

What follows is a list of unproduced stageplays that are now under review for possible production around the country. As they are picked up, I will add a play description.

DEAL (one-act)
Deaf female (30s)
Hearing sign-fluent female (30s)
Hearing non-signing male (40s)

HONEYMOON (one-act)
Deaf female (30s)
Hearing sign-fluent female (30s)
Hearing non-signing male (40s)

GAMBIT (full-length)
Deaf female (40s/50s)
Deaf female (20s/30s)

PENNY LOVER (one-act)
Deaf female (30s)
Hearing male (40s)

My unproduced hearing plays, which have nothing to do with deafness, include: THE HAPPY DE VON CAMPERS, LIFEGUARD, JACKHAMMER, WHITE CHOCOLATE, and THRESHOLD. If you're an artistic director or producer, please feel free to contact me about my work. (Thanks!)