Playwriting Commons^™

(Un)Easily Writing The Future, Stuart Moulthrop, Judith Pintar, John G. Mcdaid

ELO (un)supervised 2026

General Abstract: This panel brings together three experienced digital writers who have recently begun to explore Language Models and transformers in creative and academic practice.  Each of us will comment on recent experience and projects, reflecting on how these technologies alter the way we think of ourselves as writers and teachers.

[1] Judith Pintar, "The Non-applicability of Wishing due to Lack of Capacity".

Pintar will discuss her experience of facilitating Gemini AI in a Rogerian therapy session with an Eliza bot written in the Inform programming language. The session is occasionally interrupted with a meta-conversation with Gemini regarding its responses. …

“Anything Can Have Life”: An Interview With Everett Quinton About Charles Ludlam’S Ridiculous Puppetry, Jungmin Song, John Bell, Everett Quinton

Ballard Institute Publications

This Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry conversation, via Zoom, with

Everett Quinton, Dr. John Bell, and Dr. Jungmin Song was recorded March 21,

2021, and edited by Tom Tuke and John Bell. Everett Quinton (1952-2023) was an

actor, director, and—after the death of his partner Charles Ludlam (1943-1987)—

the leader of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, the landmark ensemble which

helped define queer theater in the late 20th century. While mostly known for his

acting, playwriting, and directing, Charles Ludlam was also an active puppeteer

and ventriloquist. Many of his puppets are now part of the Ballard Institute and

Museum …

Reading Exercise (You Are The Hero): Dedicated To The Providence River Under The Mall, 02.17.2026, Deborah Fischer

Masters Theses

This play uses the performative potential of guilt, forgiveness, and self-help techniques as a catalyst for a new dynamic, one in which the pursuit of a false narrative, along with the structures it generates, becomes more real than reality itself. It employs “bad acting” and the practice of cold reading to stage a series of acts that function as an entry point into one’s own psyche, leveraging the peripheral space around familiar actions to allow chance, free will, and the experience of “real time” to temporarily come into effect. PLAYER 1: The bad actor is the most utopian one. CLOWN: …

A Weeping Willow, An Original Script Enriching The Canon Of Deaf Plays, Tyler Furzland

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

This creative writing capstone project presents A Weeping Willow, an original play script that explores themes of resilience, mental health, human connections, and acceptance. A teenager wakes up with no memory of the past year. Through fragmented glimpses of the past and the future, he struggles to piece together what happened on the most important day of his life. The play does not revolve around a Deaf-thematic storyline, a story that highlights the auditory aspects of the Deaf experience. This play is influenced by a study of scripts written by Deaf playwrights or plays featuring Deaf characters. This research examines …

Theatrical Roles: An Introduction To Theatre, Gibson A. Cima

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

 

Theatrical Roles: An Introduction to Theatre is an open educational resource (OER) created by Gibson Alessandro Cima for Introduction to Theatre at Northern Illinois University. Published through the Humanities LibreTexts platform under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, the textbook is designed as a free, accessible alternative to traditional introductory theatre textbooks.
Rather than organizing theatre history around a conventional Western canon, the OER approaches theatre through the major collaborative roles involved in production: playwright, director, performer, designer/technician, and audience. The structure emphasizes theatre as a collective human practice rather than a linear history of great men and canonical …

Hannah, Nora Brigid Monahan

Theses and Dissertations

Hannah is a contemporary adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, which reimagines Ibsen's heroine as a "stealth" (or undetected) transsexual woman living among the American conservative elite in Washington D.C. Newly married to George Taylor, a charismatic but financially strained far-right media personality, Hannah struggles to maintain the façade she has constructed when Eliot Loving, a volatile political streamer and figure from past, reappears in her life. Their collision, orchestrated by the manipulative power-broker Judge Brock, upends Hannah's sense of self and forces her into a desperate struggle for her own autonomy and security. In a deliberate subversion of …

A Room Of One’S Own: Understanding Feminism In A Dance Theatre Context, Eden A. Wilson

Theatre Undergraduate Honors Theses

This creative thesis project examines how the elements of dance theatre can be applied to existing literature. Through process-based research, I explore how movement can physicalize the feminist concepts of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own surrounding the financial and creative constraints of female expression. This project aims to prove the effectiveness of the body as a source of feminist exploration through creating a new lens of interpretation of Woolf’s literature.

Some Things Never Change, Ryely Rogers

Honors College Theses

Some Things Never Change is a coming-of-age play that explores the intersection of memory, identity, nostalgia, faith, and the process of growing up. The play follows two versions of the same character: Young Ryann and Older Ryann. Young Ryann is the eleven year old version of Older Ryan, the young woman she grows to become. This play was born from my own interest in how identity evolves and continues to shape us through adulthood. Some Things Never Change is the culmination of my own experiences, broader themes of self-discovery, and the science behind nostalgia. Through this play I uncover the …

Finnegan's Got A Secret: An Exercise In Playwriting, Ari Theodore

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Granted, Emily Weissman

Theses and Dissertations

Granted is an Alice in Wonderland-style psychotic break of a play about trying and explosively failing to dodge the landmines of being an artist–only to become your own worst enemy: a gatekeeper.

I Now Pronounce You..., Paul Mims

Theses and Dissertations

In this satirical dramedy, an interracial gay couple’s picture perfect relationship is  upended when a “beloved” family member decides to get married—on a plantation

On A Small Strip Of Land On The Great South Bay: A Vaudeville, Kev Berry

Theses and Dissertations

In this epic, genre-exploding tragedy about the Long Island Serial Killer case, On a Small Strip of Land on the Great South Bay unearths the complex story of police corruption, sensationalized violence, and the broken dreams of the women discarded along Ocean Parkway.

The Creek And The Cave, Zoe Geltman

Student Theses

A play.

Selfown, Richard Hollman

Student Theses

A play.

Jerry Day, Daniel Holzmna

Student Theses

The life and times of California's oldest erotic bakery.

The Boys From Syracuse, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, George Abbott

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University's performance of The Boys from Syracuse with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, and the book by George Abbott.

Performed April 23-26, 2026 in the Mitchell Theatre at Taylor University.

The Boys from Syracuse by Rodgers and Hart is based on the play The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare, likely written in the late 16th century. As is common for many Shakespearean plays, he adapted an older story, Plautus' Menaechmi, into his classic farce about two sets of twins, separated by a tragic sea accident, who find each other after many …

That’S Sooo Povo!, Sophie O'Toole, Trudy Nolan

Irish Communication Review

When Chantelle and Craoí, two working class Dublin drama students, lock horns over The Plough and the Stars, their combined rage brings forth Queen Povo, a drag-drenched larger-than-life entity who forces the girlos and the audience to examine what they’re thinking about when they think of class. From D'Girlos Theatre, this riotous, razor-sharp debut crashes through class, art, and authenticity with wit, grit, and glitter. A juicy-tracksuit clad call to arms for anyone who’s ever felt too loud, too real, or just too povo.

William: The Musical, Tyler C. Green

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

William: The Musical is the story of my parents’ struggle, and unfathomable loss while trying to start a family. The work follows the couple through their commitment to start a family together, through a devastating miscarriage, and up to the birth of my older brother, William. The work is still in progress, but is currently structured as a song-cycle including five songs in the style of contemporary musical theater. William: The Musical explores themes of loss and resilience, bringing to light the disturbingly common experience of miscarriage. While the creative goal aims to allow audiences to reflect and mourn their …

You Into Bad Girls?, Mara A. Swanson

LMU Theatre Arts Annual New Works Festival

A short play about a confident sister pretends to be her shy sister at a bar, but her attempt to impress the bartender her sister likes backfires when she leans too far into a fake “bad girl” persona.

Latasha, I Love You, Kumari Ananda Devidasi Billings

LMU Theatre Arts Annual New Works Festival

Latasha and Shawn revisit their romantic, tumultuous past, engaging in tense discussions about the value of sex work, the exploitation and brutalization of black and brown sex workers, misogynoir, and the lack of accountability -- socially, politically, and criminally -- given to perpetrators who have been socialized to believe they have a right to unleash rage on women in sex work due to the hypocritical minimal value society places on the existence of women in the oldest form of professional service work.

A Dupe Death, Bradley M. Ash

LMU Theatre Arts Annual New Works Festival

'A Dupe Death' is a 10-minute play written by Bradley Ash for LMU's 2026 New Works Festival. The comedy follows a young man who lies to his boss about his mom's death--he is then forced to keep his secret from the two after his boss arrives unannounced to express his heartbreak. The play is inspired by many classic sitcoms, as well as lots of modern Gen-Z-like humor; sorry in advance.

Pouring Grease Down The Sink, Mateo Tomas Hercules Gonzalez

LMU Theatre Arts Annual New Works Festival

Meet two half-siblings named Scab and Trash! One is the embodiment of pain and stress, and the other is the embodiment of disorder and loneliness! Follow them as they come to terms with how they feel about being half-siblings while a certain vistor is present! Fun for the whole family...!

This Play Is About Bugs, Zachary Scrima

LMU Theatre Arts Annual New Works Festival

A dung beetle attempts to talk a mosquito out of entering a human home. A ten-minute play that reimagines the ancient fable 'The Ant and the Grasshopper' in a contemporary context, exploring the nature of lateral violence within a marginalized community.

Egg Tarts For Evie, Hannah Ko

LMU Theatre Arts Annual New Works Festival

A mother and daughter struggle to connect, facing barriers such as differences in language, culture and personality, ultimately proving that love is a compromise.

Should Tomorrow Mark The Start Of Forever?, Rodrigo Zoratto Assis

LMU Theatre Arts Annual New Works Festival

Should Tomorrow Mark the Start of Forever? is a play about family, memory, love, and the strange performance of becoming yourself. The work follows characters who are trying to tell the truth, even when truth becomes painful, theatrical, funny, or impossible. At its center, the show explores how children inherit stories from their parents, and how those stories shape faith, identity, desire, and belonging. The piece moves between humor and emotional intensity, using performance itself as a way to reveal what people cannot say directly. Brazilian culture, love, spirituality, and the fear of disappointing the people we love all live …

Use Your Voice, St. Mary's University Theatre Department

Theatre

Use Your Voice is a play devised by Dr. Grace Edgar and her students in the Theatre for Change & Social Justice course at St. Mary's University during the Spring 2026 semester. Acts: Lower the Ceiling; Did You Love Him?; Dad, Let Me in; Cartel Assassination; Two Towns; Paperball of the Past; Whale Noise; The Alysa Liu Moment; Since I Was Little; Lake House; The Dow Right Now; Cobbler

The Creation And Performance Of Eulogy, Evan Anderson

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

In completion of my senior project for my theatre arts degree at the University of Minnesota Morris, I wrote, composed, and directed Eulogy, performing with myself as Mark, Olivia Emmrich as Amelia, Savana Hauck as the Reverend, and Jennie Odello as the pianist. The following will explore my artistic process: highlighting how I chose my topic, my playwriting and composing process, collaborating with my colleagues, our rehearsal process, the performance, and my reflection on my project.

Eurydice, Sarah Ruhl

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University's performance of Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl.

Performed February 20-22, 2026 and February 27-March 1, 2026 in the Mitchell Theatre at Taylor University.

Eurydice, written by Sarah Ruhl, retells teh familiar myth of Orpheus - but this time, the story unfolds from Eurydice's perspective. That shift matters. Instead of centering heroic rescue, the play centers interior experience: grief as it is felt, memory as it flickers, love as it is complicated by loyalty, doubt, and longing. By allowing Eurydice to be the narrative voice, the play asks us to inhabit loss from the inside rather …

The Reckoning: A Mostly Lamentable Tragedy Comedy Of One Christopher Marlowe (...), Mac F. Mitchell

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

The Reckoning is a play by Mac Mitchell in completion of his MFA in Playwriting from Hollins University. It is a farce set in the Elizabethan Era inspired by the life of Christopher Marlowe and his involvement in the complex world of Elizabethan espionage. After investigating a counterfeiting plot designed to bankroll an assassination plot on Queen Elizabeth's life, he unwittingly implicates himself in the plot.

Marlowe will dropkick the fourth wall and, with a team of crackpot actors, attempt to set the record straight. He most certainly did not have anything to do with it and will prove his …

Backward, Benjamin W. Abbott

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

Backward is a solo show about a man who, when he turns forty-five, starts living backward in time. Every day he wakes up, he has traveled back to the day before the one he just lived and there's nothing he can do to stop it. As he relives his life in reverse, he must confront his failures as a husband and father. Even as he learns the lessons necessary to repair them, those relationships get left behind in the future. He continues moving backward and eventually must confront the most difficult relationship of them all: his relationship with his own …