Acting and directing are fun, but I've always enjoyed playwriting best. Unlike my books, these works have all been presented publicly.
Murder Mystery
A comedic mystery in two acts for 7 men, 4 women.
At isolated Codwall Manor, Devonshire, the guests are dropping like flies. Taciturn detective Stanford Scriven and his amiable partner, Murdock, are on the trail of the homicidal madman responsible. But there's something deucedly odd about Codwall. The fire in the fireplace isn't real. The books in the book-case are painted on. Slowly, Scriven and Murdock grasp the horrible truth: they and their companions are characters in a murder mystery, and the author is killing them off one by one. As if that weren't bad enough, the author has disguised himself as one of them. But which?
This play was performed as a dramatic reading by Staged and Confused Productions in the fall of 2006. It won the 2005-2006 J. C. W. Saxton Prize in Playwriting, awarded by the Queen's University Department of Drama.
Read an excerpt from Murder Mystery online or download it as a PDF file.
In a Dark Room
A dramatic collage for 6 performers.
Shakespearean. Romance. Movement. Comedy. In eight different styles, this play has eight different ghost stories to share. From a tale of a housewife who puts her trust in the wrong spirit to that of a man who must uncover why his dead best friend appears to him as a silent little boy, each narrative explores our hopes, fears, and dreams of what might return from beyond the grave.
This play shared the 2006-2007 J. C. W. Saxton Prize in Playwriting, awarded by the Queen's University Department of Drama. It was performed as a staged reading at that institution.
Read an excerpt from In a Dark Room online or download it as a PDF file.
Plot/Counterplot
A quartet of sketches for 2 men, 2 women
Boy-wizard Dante Dirkson refuses to inspire any more best-sellers until his demands are met. The honeymoon is over for an aging Romeo and Juliet. And psychiatric patient Wolfram Samovar can't be a real evil mastermind... can he?
In four interludes, eight characters (like teenaged Stacey, who discovers her sitcom family adopted her from the "real world") probe the differences between fiction and reality and answer every fan's secret question: what if our favourite characters really could come to life?
Various scenes from this piece have been produced by the Vogt Studio Series (Kingston, Ontario), Gnu Ground Theatre (Kingston, Ontario), and students from Merivale High School and the University of Guelph.
The interlude "Laughtrack" is currently available through JD Drama Publishing.
Reviews include:
"The script [...] is a wonderful case of wit and sarcasm blending to create a story that laughs at literature and its authors." (Queen's Journal, on the scene "Writer's Bloc")
"...containing many funny lines and clever Shakespearean in-jokes, it [...] serves as an interesting meditation on the contrast between the romantic fictions people have of life and death, and the mundate reality" (Queen's Journal, on the scene "As Time Goes By")
Read an excerpt from Plot/Counterplot online or download it as a PDF file.