Emily Ball Cicchini's Open Play Archive

2 M 2 F. 1 ½ hour without optional intermission. Cantankerous Northern Michigan roadside motel owner Lara Lonigan gets courted by big city Realtor Caroline Cooper with a proposition she CAN resist. Living in a world filled with missing persons and unsolved mysteries reruns, the pair inexplicably shack up together as winter approaches. The local deputy keeps an eye on them and begs Lara to keep out of trouble. Just as Caroline is cooling off, in walks Frank, a mysterious high tech stranger who digs holes at night and tells stories that don’t add up. The clues and accusations escalate, until everything falls in place with the unlikely truth being far stranger than fiction. A fast-paced comedy with a heart of hope, where financial and emotional trust cross the boundaries of time and space to reveal a beautiful if unexpected maturity. Selected for the Harvest Festival of New Plays, State Theatre Company, Austin Texas.

2 hrs., w/music. 22+ characters, or can be doubled to: 4 W, 5 M, 1 Boy. The play celebrates the history of women’s fashion magazines, and their influence on early America. As the editress of one of the first ladies’ magazines, Godey’s Ladies Book, Sarah Josepha Hale mingles with the likes of Emerson, Hawthorne, and Poe, and influences the reading, learning, economic and political consciousness of women across America. As The Civil War begins and the country appears to be falling apart, Hale campaigns for Thanksgiving as a unifying national holiday, and struggles for a delicate balance between motherhood and career.

Staged reading, The Pollyanna Theatre Company, directed by Judy Matetzschk.

Tom, a successful investment banker, comes home with a kill, and Trixie, an architect, is after funding for her chosen charity — a modern dance company. The argument for every nonprofit performing arts group’s annual fund drive is played out while dancing to Miles Davis, discussing modern art, and eating chocolate covered strawberries. A surprise guest casts a doubt of infidelity, as boundaries are drawn and dissolved, and art gets lucky.

Awards: Winner of “Best of the Fest” in FronteraFest, Austin, TX, 1999, Austin Script Works sponsored project.

2 hrs. 2 W. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was easily one of the most beloved figures of our times: TIME dubbed Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the founder of American Atheists, as “the most hated woman in America.” These two women were on a mission to make the world a better place, but with radically different means. This play is a fantasy based in a plausibility: what if “Mays” and “Terese” had known and influenced each other? (mature language)

Developed at the New Harmony Project, with the assistance of the City of Austin Arts Commission, and produced at Bloomington Playwrights Project.

2 hrs. 3 W, 1 M. It’s the summer of 1839, and would-be-writers Charlotte and Emily Brontë bicker and daydream, trapped in their sheltered Haworth Parsonage home. A handsome but troubled young curate comes to study with their Reverend father, and romances their younger sister, Anne. Could this deceiving but flattering young man be the inspiration for the sisters’ most ambitious and passionate achievements, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights? Romantic and bittersweet, this tightly-woven play deftly captures the joy and tragedy of “being in love” with being in love.

Winner of the Austin Critics Table Award, the Live Oak Award for New Play Development, and the Richard and Betty Burdick National Playwright’s Festival.