News
“Sugar” selected for Best Ten-Minute Plays
Sugar has been selected for publication in The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2023, edited by Debbie Lamedman and forthcoming from Smith and Kraus.
“Sugar” selected for 10×10 Fest
Sugar will be produced by The New Deal Creative Arts Center in its 10 x 10 Fest April 20-21, 2023 in Poughkeepsie, NY. Previous productions of “Sugar” include Little Fish Theatre’s 2023 “Pick of the Vine,” Lakeshore Players 2022 10-Minute Play Festival and Rockford New Words. The play was also a Finalist for the 2023 Gary Garrison Playwriting Award for 10-Minute Plays.
Publication of “Chem Class”
Jennifer’s Chem Class will be published in The Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival 2022: The Short Plays, edited by Kitt Lavoie and Kenneth L. Stilson (Southeast Missouri State U. Press). The play was selected for the 2022 Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival honoring plays that provide dynamic roles for college-aged actors.
Jennifer O’Grady
I read there are things out in space called quasars. Nobody really knows what they are. I hadn’t heard of them, so I looked it up, and it said: “An extremely remote celestial object, emitting exceptionally large amounts of energy.” They look like stars. Scientists think they have black holes inside them, but that maybe they’re the beginnings of new galaxies.
Imagine, a whole new galaxy in the process of being born. There’s hope in that, isn’t there? I think that’s hope.
(Excerpt from monologue published in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2014)
In twin chairs by the lakeside tonight
we’ve watched day’s last lightspread like a bright blush over treetops
past the point where cabins standabandoned, sealed against winter.
In the middle distance the island floats,fading. There alone the wild blueberries
hang like unmarked globes over waterseparating shore from shore.
Why they grow there but not herepuzzles, like love or the coming bereavements
of autumn, or rumors of empty, drifting skiffs.For now at least the island remains
part and not part of the unknowing nightas we are to each other
island and mainland, ship and shore,a familiar place; a mystery.
Educate girls and there will be no more guillotines. That is what my father told me.
My father knew nothing about girls.
(Excerpt from monologue forthcoming in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2022)
She is making herself and not herself—
anguish dressed in baroque repose,a motionlessness that is never still,
arranged, betraying nothing—the restrained line of an eyebrow or lip,
the arc of a neck, the skillful reflectionof a sleeve of the moon-white gown
in the olive-green watergradually assembled, balanced there
in this unexpected moment,this small world holding its breath.
Okay. So sue me. Do you have any idea what it’s like being me?
(To an Audience member:)
Maybe you do, but the rest of you don’t. People always thinking you’re fucked up or off your meds, eve when you try to hide it. But we can’t hide anything from them. They know. Ever try to ignore someone who’s yakking at you ceaselessly? And believe me, the dead can talk. They don’t have anything else to do.
(Excerpt from monologue published in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2017)