Act One, Scene Two

from Annette Roman

It’s the Rapture, or is it? Samson (Greg) sits at home with his wife (Mandy), teen-aged daughter (Joy) and 8 year-old son (Steven) getting more and more agitated as the minutes of judgement day tick away. Then his spiritual leader Pastor Bob Judas (Clay) arrives to say a surprising group of people have vanished. Meanwhile, in heaven, Eve’s boyfriend Adam (Steven), Adam’s atheist mom (Joy), Eve’s transgender Aunt Jezebelle (Merrill), and the old Arab imigrant couple the El Sawhis (Mandy and Greg) learn that God is going to send them back to Earth for three days. Then they can choose whether they come or get left behind. Adam tries to figure out how to bring Eve with him. Pastor Judas loses his faith and finds Jezebelle, and God is too busy playing mini-golf with Ghandi to pay too much attention.

from Larry Williams

Grandfather (Steven), Father (Clay), and Son (Greg) all successively play the brilliant clown character of Papito in a Mexican circus. Pepper, the son and the last Papito, is now an old man. He tells the story of his life growing up in the circus watching his father struggle to win and hold onto the love of Pepper's mother, the beautiful aerialist Countessa Ducas (Mandy). As changing times bring ever more dangerous acts to the circus, young Pepper learns that for as much laughter and happiness the circus brings, it also brings tragedy and sadness, but as his grandfather always said, a clown’s job is to turn sadness into hope.

from Steven Westdahl

At the dog park, it’s not just dogs checking each other out. Through a series of vignettes, we see the rhythms of a day in the life of a dog park. Among the regulars: Sonny and his bitter owner Rex (Aaron), who’s trained his dog to seek out women by cup size; Princess and Jack, two dogs who really like each other, while their owners (Stacy and Christian) can’t seem to connect; Maggie’s mommy (Joy) who scoops all the poop she comes across, just to be nice; an exiled ex-Dog Whisperer (Aaron); and Buddy’s owner (Clay), who tries to pick up a cute girl but ends up accidentally giving her his dog. Though the people here are just as screwed up and hopeful as your average human being, at least in the park they’ve got one thing in common that MIGHT bring them together: dogs.

from Diana Di Costanzo

It’s just a regular day at 7-year-old Dani's (Mandy) house; 8-year-old Elroy (Steven) is on a playdate, refusing to play Barbies. But today, those dolls come alive, right in the middle of the tea party! Barbie (Joy), Raggedy Jane (Stacy), and … Lady Blowfish (Merrill), Daddy's blowup doll. They're fairy godmothers on a mission to right a wrong: Elroy has a huge crush on Dani but won't admit it. Traveling through dungeons, castles, snake-infested caves and hallways full of lava, the group winds their way through the human psyche until Elroy and Dani are playing their own parents, and then each other. Can these two ever learn to be friends, and will the dolls ever get to go home?

from Marissa Skudlarek

Some girls have all the luck... and some girls have NONE. Annie (Stacy) has devoted herself to studying self-help books, convinced that she can make her wildest dreams manifest. But instead, when she makes her insecure friend Elise (Mandy) describe an "ideal man," BAM! Jacob (Aaron) appears -- the flying-carpet-riding, handsome billionaire whose every touch brings her waves of pleasure.. While the universe whisks off Elise for romantic adventure, Annie is stuck with nothing but her un-classy mom (Merrill) and sister (Joy). Elise's life spirals ever farther into the fantastic, but even Annie's "ideal man," when he appears--Jacob's trillionaire rocket-scientist twin--turns out to be a total ass. Yet somehow, as their lives get further apart, the women stay friends...and who can say, in the end, whose life is really happier?

from Garret Groenveld

Scholarly Bent (Greg)--short for Bentley--meets hunky Carl (Aaron) at a party where, it seems, neither of them got the memo about what to wear. From this chance meeting stems an intense monogamous relationship, surprising them both. Bent's best friend, party boy Alan (Clay), watches over them with loyalty he can never show his many lovers, who all seem to have names starting with "D" (Steven). When one of his one-night-stands keeps surprisingly showing up in the same cafe, Alan must struggle with the idea of real intimacy. The three men live through their frustrations with their situations and each other, every one of them feeling out of place and time, loving each other despite the devastatingly ever-present threat of loss. The story unfolds as a story to friends, and we know from the first scene that it’s being told In Memoriam, for Bent.

from Mercedes Segesvary

In Vegas, like in poker, everyone's playing their own game. Julia (Joy) is just trying to get out of Vegas with her poker winnings, to get some much-needed dental work... but she's caught by Mr. Griggins (Greg), and pressed into the service of Ms. Barley (Merrill), the kingpin (queenpin?) of a mysterious gambling cartel. Harris (Aaron), a smooth-talking Texan from New Jersey, and Jacques (Clay), a joke-cracking Frenchman, round out the little crew, which at first SEEMS like one happy family. Soon the poker faces fall, revealing fangs. Everyone in the group becomes obsessed with the lovely young gambler whose teeth are the only thing about her that don't seem perfect.  As they make their plays for her one by one, they each end up folding, and Julia moves on to richer game: Barley's arch-nemesis, The Doc (Aaron).

from Daniel Heath

Is it a play about two people in bed? Or two people in love? As the lights come up, there are only minutes until the house opens, but Harrison (Steven) the director is obsessively reblocking the bedroom scenes, trying to remove all the intimacy between the male lead (Aaron) and Harrison's leading lady-slash-now-ex-girlfriend (Stacy). With a wounded leader, the rest of the production falls apart: the stage manager (Mandy) tries to hold things together as the light op (Joy) fights for her union breaks, the sound op (Bryce!) screws up all the cues, the leading man actually discovers acting, and the ex-couple can't talk to each other without shouting. The next day, they all reexamine why they're there making theater in the first place. And Harrison, serial dumper (just ask the stage manager) must confront his real problem: that what he intended to be a lie, a casting-couch relationship, may just have become real by the time it ended...

from Tim Bauer

Sometimes when a couple's been together awhile, some time apart might be the best vacation of all. Rather than plan for summer vacation this year, Gary (Aaron) thinks he and his wife Stephanie (Stacy) should take separate paths, and end up at Romeo's in Kansas City, where they first met. Though they make a bet on who has more fun, they both lose. Stephanie visits old friends, but Beth (Mandy) in New York is in a self-centered anguish spiral over an ex, and Stephanie's ex-boyfriend (Greg) in Boston has been pining for her through his own marriage and divorce. Gary's doing no better at Club Med Cancun, where the waiters are surly and the girls are all squares. They both realize--especially after encountering sad-sack drifter Ron McDonald (Steven)--that there's NOTHING wrong with their relationship at all...and they meet up back at Romeo's as if no time had passed.... awwwwwww. That's Amore!

from Nicole Brodsky & Dana Teen Lomax

At San Francisco's Strybing Arboretum, every third Friday is a birding walk. April (Mandy) is a regular, and this week she's brought her friend Hannah (Merrill), trying to distract Hannah from obsessing about her husband's food addiction. This week, the rest of the group is mostly regulars: Scott (Steven), obsessive bird list-keeper; Karen (Joy) and Lisa (Stacy), a middle-aged couple; Bob (Christian), an aging hippie therapist; and Blake (Greg), the birding guide. Bob has also brought his shy grandson Samuel (Aaron), bird enthusiast. As the weather turns foul, so does the mood. The once-polite group of acquaintances start to reveal their own addictions and secrets. And they discover, it's difficult to distinguish between a harmless addiction and one that's dangerous to others or even oneself. Hoarding? Sex? List-making? Counting? Overeating? Who's to say? Hannah realizes that if she can't change her own situation, the least she can do is help push April towards what she's looking for... humans, unlike birds, don't have a mating season.