Check out nine (9) plays plus a trio of monologues all featuring the sister relationship! From rabbits on the run to sisters contemplating marriage in the 1700s to adult sisters with a foster baby—and more—these 9 plays explore the challenges and connections of this unique sibling relationship. There are plays here for children, teens, young adults and mature adults, ranging from absurdist to dark comedies to dramas.
Read MoreThe Bechdel Test or Bechdel-Wallace Test, is one measurement of how well women are represented in film, and has carried over into plays and other literary work. It was first written by cartoonist, Alison Bechdel and she credits her friend, Liz Wallace, for the test. The test is simple. Your writing passes the Bechdel-Wallace Test if you can answer YES to the following 3 questions:
Does your writing have at least 2 women in it?
Do the 2 women talk to each other?
Do the women talk to each other about something other than men?
I’ve written about sister-relationships before (in The Bronze Lining and The Moon River Raft to name a few), but the relationship is especially unique in my two Ruby and Millie plays. These plays both feature the same sisters, but at two very different points in their lives.
In Ruby and Millie and the Dying Cucumbers, Ruby is a child around 9 years old and her older sister, Millie, is around 16. It’s 1943 and their father is a Prisoner of War in Europe. He has charged Ruby to lead her apartment building’s rooftop Victory Garden on the homefront in White Plains, NY. With their mother working long hours and their father gone, teenage Millie carries weighty responsibilities of her own. In the play, Millie has been searching for her little sister at night, and finally finds her on the rooftop. While Millie tries to convince Ruby to come inside to bed, Ruby discovers some of her vegetables are dying, and fears this is a harbinger of bad news for her father and the war.
In Ruby and Millie and The Old Chemical Plant, we fast forward 50+ years. The war is a distant memory while Seinfeld blares on the tv at night. Ruby has had a successful career but never married; Millie is a widow with children living all over the globe. The sisters live in the same senior apartments, and are tending to a fig tree in their 1990s community garden together. Ruby and Millie have always been close. Neither one can imagine life without the other by her side. But now they struggle with decisions that may, for the first time in 60+ years, take them very far away from each other.
Read MoreI first discovered the Netflix show, Dead To Me, when my dear friend, Jessica, recommended it when it aired in 2019. Jessica and I became best friends when we were 14 and she went from home-schooling on her family farm to attending my small public school (she thrived and never looked back!). We acted in plays together, went on family vacations together, tons of sleepovers, visited each other at college and beyond, made crazy recordings, dated brothers once, spent every moment we could together. And for the next few decades, we shared almost daily phone calls as teens, to regular calls and letters as we made it through young-adulthood, to almost daily calls again, as we shared marriage and motherhood. We talked about anything and everything—relationships, society, philosophy, politics, families—and also cooking, cleaning hacks, books, tv. When I recommended the book Pachinko, she read it. When she recommended a recipe for a homemade ice cream cake, I made it. So when she recommended “Dead to Me,” I watched it. I remember her saying it was not like any other show she’d seen.
“Dead to Me” is a show about mistakes and consequences—and how you deal with both. It’s dark and funny. It’s tense and poignant. It’s a lot about guilt, but it’s also about motherhood and daughterhood. And at its core, it’s about friendship and love.
I’m actually a little shocked when I see that this show aired in May 2019 because Jessica was battling Stage 4 cancer at the time. She passed away 4 months later.
Shocked isn’t the right word.
Anyone who has lost a loved one knows that Grief kind of jumps up in your face and screams at you at any random moment it feels like.
Read MoreIn 2019, I wrote The Bronze Lining, a 10-minute dramedy, with 2 great female roles. It’s about estranged sisters who attempt to reconnect during a hike after their mother’s death. There’s a lot of damage between them, stemming not only from some traditional sibling rivalry, but also from how each one handled the sickness of their mother, the process of dying, and now, the process of grieving. You can read an excerpt of the play here or get the whole play here.
This play was originally inspired by a painting, as part of The Living Art Event, a collaboration between visual artists of the Ossining Arts Council and the performing artists of Westchester Collaborative Theater (WCT). Jill Kiefer's piece, "Such a Bewilderness...", drew me in. I loved the richness, the muddiness, the twists, the brown and white and black, the textures, and that dragonfly escaping the mire into the air. The sisters in The Bronze Lining are also entrapped in their shared history, intertwined in the muddiness of complicated relationships that ebb and flow, damage and repair. Siblings have a connection that is going to bind them forever—although what sisters Mindy and Anne choose to do with that bond in the future, especially now that both of their parents are gone, is uncertain.
The production of this play has had its own complicated history, not without grief. In January 2020, at our first round of auditions, I met the director slated for this festival, Joe Albert Lima. He was smart, good-natured, experienced, and I immediately felt I could trust him with my play. He apologized for being a bit out of breath and coughing occasionally; he used an inhaler and mentioned his asthma had been bothering him. Tragically, less than a week later, he was hospitalized and passed away. While I didn’t know him well or long, I was shocked and pained by this loss, especially for his family and close friends. The theater community also felt this loss as he had a long history as a director in the area and was a founding member of WCT.
Meanwhile, covid-19 was making more and more headlines abroad.
Read MoreSo…you’ve fallen in love with the Mall Santa. I mean, what’s not to love, right? (Well…) But what if you’ve never seen him sans-white beard and velvet coat? Can you be sure you’ve fallen for the real man behind the suit? Will you still be happy to share hot cocoa with him when he doesn’t smell like candy canes?
This is the situation Brandy, and her new Mall-Santa-Boyfriend, Kris, find themselves in. Kris is scared Brandy won’t love him when he doesn’t hold Holiday Celebrity Status anymore. He’s been dumped by women post-Christmas before. In the monologue, More Than Santa, Brandy has to convince Kris that she is not only attracted to his white beard (because, come on—that beard!), but she will keep on being attracted to him when she sees him for the first time tomorrow, December 26, not dressed as Santa.
Read MoreIf you’re a woman looking for a short comedic Christmas monologue, check out Christmas China That Can Only Be Handwashed. In the monologue, it’s Christmas Night. Daphne and her partner, Jamie, have enjoyed a large Christmas dinner with family. Daphne has lovingly spent many hours preparing the meal she knows Jamie will enjoy, on the Christmas China she knows Jamie loves. But now it’s time for Daphne to feel a little love… and it just might take the shape of someone else (ahem: Jamie) hand-washing all those Christmas plates…
This is a comedic monologue which runs around 1.5 minutes, and is appropriate for a female actor in her 20s-50s. Check out below to read and excerpt and to download the free monologue of Christmas China That Can Only Be Handwashed.
Read MoreMy full-length dramatic play, For My Silent Sisters, gives voice to four young people who struggle to escape the dark world of human trafficking. *Before I discuss the monologue and play, please note that while I write with great respect and care, this monologue contains references to human trafficking and violence and may not be suitable for all readers.* Please also note that while the play is fiction, there are many experiences, very similar to the ones I give voice to, which have happened to real people. No country is immune to this egregious crime. At the time I’m writing this, criminals are trafficking an estimated 25 million people worldwide. For more information on human trafficking in the USA, how to help or report, visit the Human Trafficking Hotline or Polaris.
For My Silent Sisters journeys how criminals use manipulation, lies, or force to commit this crime. But it mainly journeys how four teenagers survive within this world, hold onto hope, strength, friendship, and how they all eventually leave that world—one way or another.
Engulf the Evil Ashes is a monologue from Marta. Marta, an excellent student from a large family in Romania, sees her way to a brighter future by accepting a position as a translator in England. However, after leaving home with the job recruiter, she discovers the role she thought she would receive does not exist. Instead, she is taken to a “training facility” in the woods in Albania, a place where girls are “trained” for forced prostitution (enslavement), then sent to other countries to make money for their enslavers. While their situation is terrifying, Marta immediately bonds with a confident Romani girl, Tasaria. They share stories, looks, secrets; they become closer than sisters. Tasaria develops a plan for them to escape the facility, but when the moment comes, Marta does not follow her. Tasaria’s escape attempt fails and she is killed. Marta is devastated.
In this monologue, Engulf the Evil Ashes, Marta has been punished, by friendship association, for Tasaria’s escape attempt. She is placed in the ground, simulating being buried alive. Though grieving, her rage and determination give her strength, and Marta comes up with a plan for freedom. She hides sticks from the outdoors and brings them with her when she is placed in an isolated room inside. During the course of a few hours, she is able to start a fire and begin burning down the old wooden building. While the building goes up in flames and smoke, Marta only smells freedom.
This monologue is about 2.5 minutes long, suitable for a mature teenager or young adult looking to sink into a dramatic monologue. It is a moment of empowerment, a moment when a frightened and beaten-down person finds strength in righteous anger, a moment when she finds a powerful voice, not only in words, but in actions. A moment when she changes the fate for herself—and hundreds of other girls.
Read MoreIf you’re looking for a 15-minute comedy/drama for 2 female actors in their 60s, check out Ruby and Millie & The Old Chemical Plant. Sisters, Ruby and Millie, have been through a lot together. During WW2, 9-year-old Ruby took charge of her apartment building’s rooftop Victory Garden, hoping her patriotic war efforts on the home front would help bring her father back from a prisoner-of-war camp. Teenage Millie, disillusioned as her own boyfriend was fighting in the war abroad, cared for her younger sister as their mother took on a job, working long hours.
Now, over fifty years later, Ruby and Millie still live just down the hall from each other, in a senior living community. They still tend to a community garden. And they still take care of each other. But today, something is different. It’s not just that Ruby sat on her glasses watching Seinfeld last night or that Millie is suspicious someone has been stealing their tomatoes. Today, Ruby and Millie both have secrets and dreams to share which may, after all these years, lead them in very different directions, very far away from each other…
Read MoreAre you ready for a little history leading up to a new 5-minute dramatic monologue? So in the early 1940s, “Victory Gardens” sprang up around the US in an effort for Americans at home to lend their support to armed forces and allies fighting overseas in WWII…
(click READ MORE below for the new 5-minute dramatic monologue, His First English Words)
If you’re searching for a dramatic/thriller (in time for Halloween!) 1-minute monologue for a female (or could be male) actor, check out Shelley Knows. In this monologue, Louise, riddled with guilt after murdering Shelley in a fit of passion, fears this friend may be coming for her, from beyond the grave…
Read MoreIf you’re searching for a dark, dramatic or thriller monologue for a female (in time for Halloween!), check out Buddy’s Mommy. In this 2-minute monologue, amidst the sounds of sirens drawing near, Cali imparts her final motherly words to her young son, Buddy. She hopes he will remember her for the strong love she has for him, not for the murder(s) he’s going to soon hear about…
This a great monologue for someone looking to tap into complex emotions and the process of a breakdown. Cali is riddled with grief, guilt, regret—but also love and her confidence that what she did was necessary and the right thing to do. There is horror, there is desperation, there is panic, and at the core, there is the deep, crazy, consuming love of a mother to her child.
Read MoreKeeping in line with my month of Halloween/eerie drama, here is a newly released monologue of mine, Remove the Rock, Please. What happens when a reasonable request made by a good upstanding citizen is repeatedly ignored by the town mayor? A Banana Republic dress gets blood on it, apparently. Check out the dark comedy/thriller/dramatic monologue below, for a female actor.
Read MoreSo she's been around a couple of years, but when NPR interviews her, you know she's made it to some sort of new level. I'm talking about Poppy. That 20-something, eerie, but empathetic blonde who occasionally resembles a slightly southern Marilyn Monroe, but, like her eyebrows, has a darker undertone, and a satiric bite about the very idea of fame which has made her famous. So who is Poppy and why do I want to take the time and space to write about her?...
Read MoreIf you're a parent in theatre, and have encountered some challenges or figured out some solutions to this ever-present balancing act of art and children, check out this important new advocacy group touching on this not-talked-about-enough subject...
Read MoreIf you're a woman in the arts (and we'll talk about theatre here), you are going to face many similar issues women in any field face, but it typically is compounded by an intimate environment, late or odd hours, no simple "Human Resources" department to turn to, and lines that blur far more easily than most fields...
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