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Tiffany Armor, a prominent scientist in the field of Invisibility, is on the verge of an eye-opening breakthrough when her efforts are eclipsed by a competing lab. Not only must she deal with this setback, but she also has to contend with Amber, her artist sister, who's in the midst of an emotional meltdown; Sam, her troubled teenaged son, who wants to know more about his absent father; and, Ingrid, her Columbian housekeeper, who's an undocumented immigrant fleeing a troubled past.
Though at odds, Tiffany, Amber and Ingrid come together to discover the superpower of Invisibility. They each have their own agenda on how best to unleash their joint discovery. Their conflicting choices change their lives, and the consequences reverberate globally as we travel with them through time. Science and art are both celebrated as these women explore the limits and possibilities of gender.
Casting: An ensemble of five women.
Staged Readings:
Dramatists Guild Friday Night Footlights, San Francisco, Phoenix Theatre, October 7, 2016. Directed by Katja Rivera. Featuring Terry Bamberger, Michaela Greeley, Fontana Butterfield Guzman, Tessa Koning-Martinez*, Marilet Martinez*, & Eleanor Mason Reinholdt.
Anton's Well Theater, Berkeley, Berkeley City Club, April 21, 2016. Directed by Katja Rivera, Featuring Terry Bamberger, Fontana Butterfield Guzman, Anne Hallinan, Marilet Martinez*, & Eleanor Mason Reinholdt.
*Member, Actors Equity Association.
Awards: Semi-finalist, Bay Area Playwright's Festival, 2016.
March 1976: Entrepreneurs, visionaries, hackers, hobbyists, salespeople and hucksters converge on the First World Altair Computer Conference. When 19-year old Bill Gates demands the attendees start paying for his software, the outraged crowd wants him to take a hike. He wants to take over the world. FIRST is a fictional retelling of the extraordinary people and events that launched the personal computer revolution.
Casting: 2W, 4M
Word Premiere, October 10-November 10, 2013, Altair Productions-Aluminous Collective-PlayGround, StageWerks San Francisco, directed by Michael French.
Commissioned: PlayGround, 2012, (Jim Kleinmann, Artistic Director)
Staged Reading: May 7, 2012, The Thick House, San Francisco, as Part of the 2012 Best of PlayGround Festival, directed by M. Graham Smith.
July 12 & 13, 2013, ACT's Costume Shop Theatre, San Francisco, directed by Michael French.
“The art of navigation incites those who follow it to learn the secrets of the world." -- Christopher Columbus
Four Taino Indians, paraded by Columbus before Queen Isabella, vow to change history. Carey hopes to return to his war-torn home, Guamo escapes into Inquisition Spain, Karaya brushes Isabella’s hair and trades a bell for a book, but her husband, Macana vows to sacrifice himself by killing King Ferdinand to bring down the empire.
Steeled by myth, each explorer explores a new world in which hope, intimacy, and conquest collide, and Queen Isabella discovers that the world is bigger and more complicated than in her wildest dreams.
The play is intimate in expression, but epic in scope, and double-casting makes the large number of characters manageable.
Casting: 6 W, 8 M (or 3 W, 5 M with meaningful double casting.)
Development History: The Secrets of the World was commissioned and originally developed by Playground, James A. Kleinmann, Artistic Director. Playground dramaturg, Sonia Fernandez, and playwright Brian Thorstenson were both instrumental in its development.
City Lights Theatre in San Jose presented a staged reading of the play, directed by Janet Wessner, on February 7, 2012
Tracy Ward directed a staged reading of the play on March 13, 14, 15, 2009 at El Teatro de la Esperanza as part of the SFSU Greenhouse Festival.
Playground presented a staged reading of The Secrets of the World, directed by Jon Tracy, on May 18, 2008 at the Thick House in San Francisco.
Read Me: A draft of The Secrets of the World is available on The New Play Exchange.
Radioactive Daughter
At the end of World War II, a young female Egyptian nuclear scientist is invited by the US Government to learn about the peace-time uses of our atomic program.
Our scientist is torn between her wish to please her stern yet supportive father with scientific achievement and her desire to taste the delicious temptations of post-war America — apple pie at the automat, handsome, hell-bent GI’s, and the nascent feminism of women physicists (Of course, Egypt had a powerful women’s liberation movement in the first half of the twentieth Century.)
The rational young stranger is hurled into a topsy-turvy world as the United States blasts into the triumphant pride and paranoia of the Atomic Age. She has a knack for meeting the right people at the right time — or the wrong time depending on your point of view —gossiping with playwright & senator Clare Booth Luce, waltzing with Einstein, biting into pears with Joan Hinton — the American physicist who left the U.S. to help create Mao’s China, and doing the polka with Rita Hayworth as a crazy tribute to Marie Curie. She even joins the Geiger Counter team who fly over the Marshall Islands and, later stares at the mushroom clouds over the Nevada desert.
The story is a post-Hiroshima travelogue of the U.S. where the scientist is chauffeured across the country by a Neal Cassidy-esque driver. Her path is an all-American road trip careening from the Statue of Liberty to the Tennessee hill country to the secret city of Los Alamos to the Nevada testing grounds. Our scientist is relentless in common sense, intelligence, and good manners. But is she a powerful woman on the brink of promising career, a pawn in a deadly game of realpolitik, or a steely, strategic spy? Amid the hairpin turns and glorious scenery of Big Sur, a fatal collision reverberates into the 21st century.
In 1895, the first motion picture -- a train arriving at the station-- electrifies the audience at Paris’ Grand Café. Marcelle, a kept woman and her daughter, Jeanne; a wealthy investor and his pregnant housemaid; a narcissistic poet; and, of course, their waiter, are reborn through old betrayals and new lies as the astonishing technology carries them into a new century.
Casting: 3W, 3M
Commissioned by PlayGround, 2009, (Jim Kleinmann, Artistic Director)
Staged Reading, New Play Development Factory 2012, (Jeffrey Lo, Artistic Director), Dragon Theatre, Palo Alto, CA. Directed by Cara Phipps
Staged Reading, San Francisco State University Greenhouse Festival 2010, (Roy Conboy, Artistic Director), directed by Adrian Elfenbaum
Staged reading, Best of PlayGround Festival, 2009, The Thick House, San Francisco, Directed by Jessica Hecht
War is over. The Olympians triumphant. The Titans vanquished. Zeus rules. So why can’t his son, Hephaestus — god of craftspeople, volcanoes, & fire — chillax?
Aggravated by his bum leg, his prying mother, Hera, and his unfaithful wife, Aphrodite, he has only the comfort of three golden robots he designed to look exactly like his estranged wife, the goddess of love.
He's promised Prometheus, who created human beings, that he’d protect the goofy little humans forever, but Zeus has commanded Hephaestus to destroy them.
Worst of all, Hephaestus suspects his dazzling robots are a little too fascinated by the human beings. Is he paranoid? Or has he really heard his glittering machines talking revolution and rage against the gods? If the god of volcanoes gets anymore antsy, the eruption will be earth- shattering.
Commisioned: San Francisco Olympians Festival, 2010 (Stuart Bousel, Artistic Director)
Staged Reading, July 31, 2010, Exit Stage Left, San Francisco, as part of the 2010 San Francisco Olympians Festival, directed by Evelyn Jean Pine
Published in Songs of Hestia, Exit Press, Spring 2012
The beautiful Hephaestus Poster is by Nathan Anderson.
1956. Rock and roll is tearing apart the First Family of California Country Music. If her boys like it, Mama likes it, but Daddy’s hates the sound, but the boys want to rip this thing apart. A California Country and Western music retelling of the myth of Uranus, Gaia & Cronos. Music by Tom Darter.
Commissioned: San Francisco Olympians Festival 2011, (Stuart Bousel, Artistic Director)
Staged reading, October 13, 2011, The Exit Theatre, San Francisco, as part of the 2011 San Francisco Olympians Festival, directed by Rik Lopes.
Award: Best Staged Reading, SF Olympians Festival
Poster Credit: Walking The Starry Path Poster by Adam Miller.