award winning playwright
Full-Length Plays
Sam & Jim in Hell
Cast: 2 w, 2 m
Genre: Dark comedy/drama
Samuel Beckett & James Joyce discover the afterlife is not all it's cracked up to be in this world premiere of Jeanne Beckwith's comic drama. It's about Language, it’s about Legacy, …Oh hell, it's about Life! Beckett and Joyce commiserate, confide, cajole, criticize, and confound each other. They also trade wits with Colleen the Gatekeeper, Beckett's wife Suzanne, and Joyce's daughter Lucia.
Produced by Lost Nation Theater, Montpelier, VT
Both Eyes Open - The Annie Oakley Story
Cast: 1 w
Genre: adventure, comedy, biography
Full of humor, heart-break, sharp wits, and white-knuckled determination, Oakley sets the record straight. Defying death at least three times, this Little Sure Shot's determination saw her through from the poor farm to dining with Queens and Kings and blazing her own path all the while. And she always shot with both eyes open.
Produced by Lost Nation Theater, Montpelier, VT, 2022
Maura O'Brien as Annie Oakley
Opportunity of a Lifetime
Cast: 2 w, 4 m
Genre: adventure, comedy, mystery/thriller, science fiction
Ted Rivers has arrived at the island residence of a “Mr. Solomon.” He is interviewing for a job which he desperately needs; however, as the interview progresses and he becomes acquainted with the odd residents of the island, he becomes increasingly aware that something is not quite right on the island. As the situation becomes more bizarre, Ted concludes that he doesn’t need this job that badly. The problem is that the “job” apparently needs him. The action takes place over the course of one day on an island off the coast of Massachusetts.
Produced at the Thistle Dew Theater, Sacramento, California, in January, 2014.
Produced for the Vermont Contemporary Playwrights Forum by MOXIE Productions in July, 2012.
Winner Best SciFi Play, Redd Tale Theater, NYC, 2011
Winner Best New Play, Mountain Road Productions 2010 (under the title Companion)
Vermont State Winner, Clauder Award, Portland Stages 2008 (under the title Companion)
MOXIE Productions
Mary Katherine is a woman with many questions about her identity and a great deal of anger about the past. She comes home to the funeral of the hurtful old woman who had banished her from home years before. She encounters a world she had tried unsuccessfully to escape. The same people and the same issues have been there waiting for her all these years. The play follows the events of the day and the night before the funeral. Broken Circle is a dark comedy about how families fall apart and come together in times of loss and how we sometimes define relationships by our ability to forgive.
Broken Circle
Cast: 3 w, 5 m
Genre: dark comedy/drama, loss & relationships
Produced by the Valley Players, Waitsfield, Vermont, 2016
Vermont State Winner, Clauder Award, Portland Stages, 2010
Produced by the Turkish National Theatre, 2010-2011
The 900 Years War
Formerly known as "A War Story at the Rialto"
Cast: 2 w, 5 m, 2 either
Genre: dark comedy/absurdism
Some time in the near future, a military processing center in a foreign land comes under attack. The local hospital chief wants the army out of his country, while a reckless army clerk refuses to send anyone home, and the intellectual post commander is too absorbed in watching old movies to do much about anything. A darkly comic tale of war's absurdity.
Turkish National Theatre
Produced by The Producers Club, New York, NY, 2019
Produced by the AlphaNYC Company at the Roebuck Theater at NYU, 2017
Produced by Lost Nation Theater, Montpelier, VT, 2010
Love Letters Made Easy
Cast: 3 w, 3 m, expanded cast possible
Genre: dark comedy, romantic comedy, satire
An ensemble cast leads us through a series of thirteen scenes that contrast today’s methods of communicating true love, with accepted etiquette of the past. Characters range from an abductee to a restroom artist; a spurned college professor to an elderly woman with a secret past.
