Playwriting Commons^™

Caged Gorillas, Sandra Dee Holcombe

Institute for the Humanities Theses

I wrote a full-length comedy/drama for the stage. My purpose in writing this play was to show how people deal with life in their quest for freedom. The play is set in the present, the morning of Christmas Eve, in Norfolk, Virginia. The characters are mildly to extremely eccentric, and the major story line deals with a woman who traps her husband in his mall candy shop. Subplots include the mother waiting for her kidnapped Baby Jesus to return, finding a dead mouse, and freeing a caged mall zoo gorilla.

Eldorado: The Poes In Norfolk, Myreen Moore Nicholson

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the best known Americans in the world, as a great poet, literary critic and essayist, and innovator of the analytic detective story. Yet he basically remains his own best mystery. Major cities have monuments to him. This creative work's object is to show that Norfolk, Virginia, was central in his life and art. In fact, the theatre company with which his actress mother, Eliza Arnold Poe (and her friends, the Sullys), was longest affiliated, was headquartered there. Edgar's sister Rosalie was born in a house on Brewer Street. Times and the circumstances of Poe …

The Falcon: A Play, Harold W. Mckinney Ii

Institute for the Humanities Theses

The Falcon is a historical drama set in medieval France during the reign of Philip the Fair, a tumultuous period of history marked by the fall of the Holy Land to Islam after more than 200 years of struggle by Christian forces to reclaim it, and followed by the gradual exile of the Popes from Rome to Avignon on the outskirts of France.

The play itself focuses on King Philip's repeated clashes with the Papacy, as well as his ruthless attack on the Order of the Knights Templar, whose own fate was interwoven with the fortunes of both Crown and …

Playdance, Gary Ryan Brown

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Playdance is a play in three acts which studies the relationships between parents and their children. The development of the script and the intended production was spurred by the pain that so many families experience as children grow away from their parents control. This look at the Denton household was an attempt to help understand the suffering and the feeling of solitude that so often accompanies this familial trauma. It was my intention to write a script that would be an exciting and insightful evening of theatre, but one that would remain accessible to a single and perhaps novice reader. …