plays etc.

Meet Nolan Blackwell, Teen Sleuth - Girl Detective, and her dog Casper.

Nolan has a love of all things Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown. Casper has a penchant for mischief.

But not all mysteries are hardbound and soon Nolan Blackwell will have to uncover clues and stare down dangers that threaten to reveal more about her past than she may be ready to confront.

Fans of Nancy Drew and Scooby Doo will delight in this hilarious, opioid-fueled dive into the world of latch-key children and the haunted, dangerous places that meddling leads.

A fucked-up Nancy Drew? A Scooby-Doo episode about the opioid epidemic? A love letter to teen detectives and their dogs? Yes, yes, and yes.

When lockdown started in March of 2020, we knew our original plans for CincyFringe weren’t going to make it to a stage in front of a live audience. Our first digital production was created over Zoom in separate households and featured set pieces and props we already had lying around the house. I converted my creepy, oddly-lit office closet into the “Trey Tatum Murder Closet for the Performing Arts” and Killjoy, Ohio was born. Here’s the blurb:

During a late night break-in that goes awry, two strangers discover a hidden connection to each other and the mysterious town that has taken more from them than either fully realize.

Starring Jordan and me, directed by Bridget. It premiered at the 2020 CincyFringe (Linda Bowen All-Access Pick of the Fringe) and was featured at the Saskatoon Fringe Festival in Saskatchewan, Canada.

In 2023, Killjoy, Ohio was published in the anthology Stage It and Stream It: Plays for Virtual Theater, edited by John Patrick Bray and published by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books (Bloomsbury).

Our first Audio Drama Podcast! It’s called Have Monster, Will Travel

Meet Riley and Render. Roommates. Best friends. There's just one small hitch. Riley is a young, career-focused woman with a little bit of burnout and Render... well, he's a monster. When Render admits feelings of sadness over not knowing who he is or where he comes from, Riley makes a bold choice: find his family, whatever the cost.

Have Monster, Will Travel: they're just two best friends on the adventure of a lifetime.

Produced by me and Bridget and starring all of our best friends.

Here’s Episode 1:

You can find the full series in all your favorite places:

Podchaser Apple Podcasts Stitcher Spotify

This was my second Interactive Fiction play. Stephen Skiles, who runs the Xavier University Theatre program wanted us to work with his kids. I sold him on an idea about kids being lost in the woods and then wrote this weird thing instead. It’s an homage to pulpy, schlocky 1950s sci-fi / monster movies, but it’s also a story about growing up and self-isolation.

The set design was this old, dilapidated drive-in movie theater and - mon, oh man - this play had everything: killer komodo dragons, atomic mutants, women who smoke cigarettes! This play was a gas to work on and has some of my favorite, all-time punchlines.

My first foray into Interactive Fiction, which is a fancy way of saying “Choose Your Own Adventure” within running afoul of trademark law! With 451,584 different ways to watch the story (and that’s a low estimate because I’m counting all the possible combination of scenes regardless of order), there was absolutely no way for Jordan and I to memorize it all. So, the script was loaded into an Interactive Fiction program called TWINE and we projected the script live. As the audience made choices, swinging the narrative, the script auto-updated, keeping track of where we were in the story. Not only that, but the soundtrack was largely randomized as well, meaning that none os us really knew what was coming next!

Elizabeth Hopkins … began its life as a workshop production at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, where we were resident artists, before premiering at the 2024 Cincinnati Fringe Festival.

My first (and probably only) solo show, I spent two summers performing this show before packing it up, probably for good. Maybe the most personal thing I’ve ever written, this show took a toll on me, and while it has some of the writing I’m most proud of (I described the island I grew up on as, among other things, a “fur-matted, hook-fanged Neverland” - how fun is that?) I doubt I’ll ever dust off the truly gigantic map of my hometown Bridget and I made.

David Lyman, theatre critic for the Cincinnati Enquirer put this show on his “best of” list for Cincinnati theater in 2018 - I’m really proud of that.

It was originally titled “of Monster Descent” but Paul Strickland wisely give it a new title and poster aesthetic before we took it to Canada. He also helped me write the taglines. We ended up not using the one I liked the best, but I’ll tell you what it was. I mean, come on, you’ve scrolled this far, are we really keeping secrets anymore?

Alabama Monster: If Spielberg had Hemingway’s Drinking Problem

Our second Digital Theater Production, You Will Live Under the Sea, involved a ton of projection, a mini set of the interior of a submersible and a fish tank full of live fish. Directed by Bridget and starring Jordan Trovillion (and me…) this show asked questions about what we can really expect of the future.

You Will Live Under the Sea was awarded the Linda Bowen All-Access Pick of the Fringe Award!

Here’s a video showing a more sprawling look at our setup!

And here’s a pair of links to both our filmed production and the slapdash live encore we did. Or, if you just want a taste, here’s the trailer:

Growing up on an island, watching JAWS every summer was a staple of childhood. It’s a story that makes up as much of my identity as pretty much anything else. But it also sounds like complete bullshit if you weren’t on that boat. A shark sunk your boat? And then it exploded?

Sometimes there’s a story you just want to explore - someone else’s sandbox you just have to play in. What emerged was a story that centered on family legacy and end of life care and that special relationship that belongs to children and their grandparents - a relationship that teeters between admiration and hero worship.

… Oh, and a recreation of the Orca made out of stuff you’d find in a nursing home.

Here’s the blurb:

Dylan grew up hearing the story from her grandfather: the summer of the attacks, his adventure at sea, that final, deadly confrontation. But his memory is failing, and his tales don't match the town's memory of their alcoholic Chief of Police who disappeared one summer to hunt "sea monsters."

Family legacy takes on new life as Dylan recreates her grandfather's tales in a final attempt to jolt his memory in this deep-sea thriller where the only thing scarier than a monster is losing your mind.

In the summer of 2013, Bridget and I participated in ANT Fest, a month-long festival of “All New Talent” at Ars Nova in NYC.

Part puppet show, part zombie movie shadowcast, this docu-drama/slasher flick mash-up combines first-hand accounts, newsreel footage and lo-fi charm to explore the 2010 Gulf Coast Oil Spill through the lens of George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead. A foxy boxing match that is both slippery and toxic!

Read the Script