Plays
Space Force!
Selected by Cleveland Public Theater for Zoom performance on “Dark Room” in September 2020; registered for international Short & Sweet festival.
SETTING
THE YEAR 2040 IN THE BLUE ORIGIN COLONY ON MARS. OVERHEAD IS AN INFLATABLE BUBBLE THAT SUPPORTS THE ATMOSPHERE. THE PLANET EARTH CAN BE SEEN THROUGH THE GLASS, REMOTE BUT RECOGNIZABLE. THERE ARE SETTINGS ON THE STAGE, AT STAGE RIGHT IS A CONFERENCE TABLE WITH FOUR CHAIRS; AT STAGE LEFT IS THE “FOOD COURT” WITH HIGH TABLES FOR DRINKS AND A FOOD TABLE. ONLY ONE SIDE IS LIT AT A TIME DEPENDING ON THE SCENE.
SCENE 1.
IN THE FOOD COURT OF THE BLUE ORIGIN COLONY. PEOPLE ARE MILLING ABOUT WITH CHAMPAGNE FLUTES DRESSED IN UNIFORMS OF THREE COLORS, OLIVE GREEN, BLUE OR RED (REMINISCENT OF STAR TREK). THERE IS A LARGE TABLE WITH CHEESEBURGERS PILLED ON.
JEFF BEZOS: Hello Mark Zuckerberg! How are things at Facebook these days?
MARK ZUCKERBERG: Hi Jeff Bezos! Well we dropped below ten billion users due to the fighting back on Earth, and the lefties just hate our face recognition technology, so not ideal. How are things at Amazon…
Havana 2020
Written for the StageWrite Dubai contest 2020.
Character cards: 1) a smuggler 2) a cat fanatic
Situation cards: 1) a broken TV 2) a tsunami
SETTING
Havana, Cuba. A single room apartment or hotel room; the walls are dirty white with damaged plaster and what may be bullet holes; there is an unmade bed, a tattered, woven rug, a single wooden chair with broken spindles and a TV stand with an ancient B&W TV with a twisted hanger for an antenna; a door on the back wall leads to a foul bathroom. Outside a storm is raging with hard rain, thunder and lightning.
TIME
The night of the 2020 US presidential election.
[ROGER is alone in the room, pacing back and forth stopping periodically to turn the dials on the old TV and smack the top of the set furiously.]
ROGER
All I wanted to do was watch the damn results! I come down here to do a bit of business, just like always, and here I am! Stuck in this lousy room with no TV or cell phone service!
[Holds his cellphone up in the air in a vain attempt to get service then heads to the TV and gives it a slap on top.]
No CNN, no MSNBC, no BBC, not even Cubavision for Christ’s sake!
[Looking out the window.]
The storm is getting worse. It really feels like something is coming…
A Game for Knights
Written by Mattie Haag to partially fulfill requirements for graduation from Georgetown University in 2018, A Game for Knights was adapted to a ten-minute format by Robert Haag and Sarah Potter. The play was performed at Short & Sweet Dubai in February of 2019 starring Sarah, Robert and one of Robert’s students, Farouk Bilbeisi. What happens when Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Jessica Fletcher walk into a bar?