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Synopses of selected plays by Rosemary Frisino Toohey
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The A Word A full-length drama Call it the perennial female condition…any country, any season, any century, a woman between fifteen and fifty is either trying to have a baby or trying not to have a baby The A Word looks at the pressures exerted by love, family, career, religion and society on four young women. From a high school senior in a single parent household to the wife of a wealthy businessman in India, from a young black woman struggling to make a name for herself in an all-white office to the happily-married mom who's told her unborn baby has big problems…four women, four takes on a controversial subject.
Agnes's Little War
Do citizens have the right to judge elected leaders on personal morals?
An idealistic voter lost faith in a political candidate after his extra-marital philanderings were revealed. She has waged a battle of letters demanding that he return the contribution she made to his campaign. A gentleman with ties to the unnamed individual appears at her door offering her money if she will stop writing the letters. Will she accept his offer?
Incest is the subject of this highly-charged drama. When her son flunks out of college and decides to follow in his dad’s footsteps, a mother resorts to desperate measures. On a hot night in June, she reveals an ugly secret that shatters all family bonds.
Baltimore’s City Paper said the playwright "...demonstrates a sure feel for the dysfunctional forces lurking beneath the placid surface of this farm family."
The play premiered as part of the 2000 Baltimore Playwrights Festival, winning Third Place. In May 2007, it was produced at Playwrights Forum in Memphis, TN.
Jon is having a dull day at the cash register of a market ringing up fruits and vegetables and then -- she walks in. All she's after is a box of strawberries, but his appetite takes off at warp speed. He smells the nectar of her breath, hears the pounding of the surf, sees verdant hills, plunges down into deep valleys...and then...she puts her $2.59 on the counter and leaves.
Berry Season premiered in the Run of the Mill Theater's Variations on Desire project in 2005.
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Mara is the body washer who prepares her body for burial as part of the Islamic ritual. While she admits here work is difficult, Mara says there's a sense of peace that comes after she has washed the deceased and wrapped the body in a shroud.
Nikki is the National Guard soldier who fired the fatal bullet. The mother of a little girl back in the States, she joined the Guard like so many others - to get money for college. But this? It's certainly not what she signed up for.
Amy is an American reporter recording the daily tally of death and destruction in the war. After a chilling interview with the dead woman's sister, she struggles to make sense of the story.
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Can love between two people survive when one of them is struck with debilitating disease? Fencing was once Laura's passion, but now that she has multiple sclerosis, the only matches she can win are the verbal battles with her husband. The illness leads her to a decision about marriage that might seem strange to someone not in her position.
The Baltimore Sun says, "What's most intriguing about Cornered
is the way it defies preconceptions...Love, like life, can thrust and parry in unexpected directions. And victory isn't always a joyous affair." Cornered won First Prize in the 2005 Baltimore Playwrights Festival. It premiered at Spotlighters Theater and has since been presented in New York, Los Angeles and Silver Spring, MD
Think living in a fishbowl is tough? Try a fruit bowl. Talk about tension! There’s Orange, the self-centered star, Apple, the guy hiding a secret, and Banana, bruised by self-doubt. Is the focus on looks? Or what’s inside? Appeal? Or a peel? The arrival of a strange fruit from down under only ups the ante. Is Kiwi truly a fruit or---horrors!---a bird? And will she be accepted, or will one of the regulars be rejected? There’s lots more than seeds and juice in this fruit bowl.
Crabs
Three generations of a family meet for dinner at a seafood restaurant. The eldest couple speculates that the gathering is a surprise anniversary party for them, but then their daughter and son-in-law appear, fresh from a fender bender in the parking lot. Things get tense when the other couple involved in the accident arrives. Then, the daughter of the one couple and the son of the other burst in with dramatic news: Not only are they madly in love, but they want to save the sea creatures of the world. And…they plan to stage a demonstration in the restaurant dining room!
Cucarachas
A trio of cockroaches is living the easy life. Ensconced in a research lab, they’re well fed and cared for. They just
have to do their thing…run…when the lights go on. But the endgame may not be all roses and buttercups---or sheetrock and insulation from the roach point of view. What happens when the researchers find out all they need to know? Will the guys in the lab coats let these bugs just scurry out the door? Then, a new player appears on the scene and this roach says…rules, schmules! But is he right? And if they change their pattern will it be the
dawn of a new day or curtains for cucarachas?
Final Round
The focus is the disintegration of a boxer. Propelled by dreams and fueled by the ambitions of his working-class family, Danny Mannix battles his way to the middle rungs of the sport. But the fights exact a bitter toll.
Frozen Fishsticks
Three women have been selected by a market research company to be part of a focus group, offering their opinions on frozen food packaging. While expressing their views on boxes of frozen fish sticks, the women reveal themselves on men, sex, and life.
G-Man
The G-Man is Larry, a garbageman, and he likes picking up trash just fine. If other people have a problem with his career choice, well, that's their problem. He's smart, he's got a good buddy to share good times with and he's got a way with women...he seldom sleeps alone. He also regularly visits his mom in a nursing home, something his sister can't bring herself to do, though he does lock horns with the home's director. Then, a change in his work shift leads to a dreadful discovery, a night of bad decisions and ends with his arrest. But help comes from an unexpected quarter...prompting changes in his job...and in himself.
Gladys in Wonderland
"You get up one day, eat a donut, read the paper, and some clown in a Good Humor suit says you’re going to die…" That’s Gladys’ dilemma in this bittersweet comedy that pokes fun at a very touchy subject.
First produced in 1999 as part of the Baltimore Playwrights Festival, the play has had subsequent productions in Baltimore and in 2003 was done as a fund-raiser by the Baltimore County Department of Aging as part of the agency’s 25th anniversary celebration. It’s also been done in Memphis, TN and in Midland, TX, where the critic for the Midland Reporter-Telegram called it a "laugh-out-loud kind of evening".
Having Fun
It’s a rough morning-after. All Abby wanted after a tough exam was to have a little fun. But did things go too far when she had a few drinks? And if she rats on the guy, will it end up hurting her more than him? Tough questions, tough answers in HAVING FUN.
The Ice-Cream King
The hero in this full-length comedy is Lenny, the original nice guy. He runs an ice-cream shop in an old downtown neighborhood and, in the eyes of some people, his biggest accomplishment, at the age of 33, is concocting butterscotch sundaes.
His sister thinks its time he got a "real" job, his best friend wants him to be more of a "player" with women, his mom thinks he ought to move in with her and his grandmother, and the pizzeria owner next door says he's got to persuade the landlord not to tear down the buildings and put up condos. Lenny is struggling to respond to this list of demands when tearful young woman enters the store. Over a shared tunafish sandwich, a bond is formed, a transformation occurs, and we learn that nice guys don't always finish last
In the Tank
In the Tank, an award-winning one-act comedy, focuses on two lobsters: Stu and Harry. Harry, a clever lobster in the tank of a seafood restaurant, is pretending to be dead to avoid becoming someone's dinner entree. Stu, a new arrival in the tank, takes a more philosophical approach to their dilemma. The two move from confrontation to understanding as they share observations about life, death, and the humans who wield dominion over all.
It premiered in Baltimore in 2001 where it was one of four one act plays produced under the title Seafood Buffet as part of the annual Baltimore Playwright's Festival. Seafood Buffet won second place honors for Best Play and second place for Best Production in the Festival that year. As a stand-alone production, In the Tank was chosen by Silver Spring Stage as that theater's entry in the 2005 Maryland Community Theater Festival.
Three siblings have gathered following the recent demise of their father. Angela stayed home taking care of her elderly parents before they passed away and now her brother and sister have come back home to visit the mausoleum where Papa has been laid to rest. But there are questions about the arangements. Would Papa really be okay with the fact that his name is misspelled on the stone? And even though Angie says he’s closer to the angels, would he appreciate being in a niche way up under the peak of the roof?
School Shooter
The Baltimore Sun called School Shooter "carefully crafted and elegantly written." The playwright received a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council for this drama which has eight actors playing 35 characters
It is a rainy Monday morning in a noisy high school hallway. Four teenagers are venting about classes, parents, friends and the opposite sex when a gunman opens fire - and we move from adolescent angst to tragedy. Teachers scurry to crisis stations and the scene shifts as a hospital nurse struggles to answer frantic parents facing their worst nightmare.
When the shooter pleads guilty but mentally ill to murder charges, the families of the slain students sue not only him, but his parents, his teachers, the principal, his friends and the entertainment companies that produced the movies he watched and the games that he played. Ultimately the case against all the defendants except the shooter is thrown out.
The parents of the dead kids are left with the realization that no one truly understands what they lost that rainy morning in a high school hallway.
Smoke in the Canyon
It’s mid-June when Mary Beth arrives in Colorado for a summer job at the Last Chance Café and everyone there seems to be hungry for something, whether it’s true love, financial good fortune, courage, or just megawatt fame. There’s Dixie, a girl much too generous with her favors, Sherri, the ambitious runner-up in the Miss Snake Day contest, Gail, the girlfriend who can’t let go, and Will, the bartender with a past. The boss is a womanizing scrooge named Jack who’s always just a step ahead of his creditors.
As Labor Day looms on the horizon and Jack’s bill collectors become more demanding, he decides to solve his financial problems with a marriage proposal to Gail, whose daddy is hip-deep in oil. She says “yes” and the wedding day is set, but there’s a surprising hitch in the proceedings.
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The inside story of a clothes dryer. Left behind by careless owners, three socks and a leg warmer debate the existential realities. At least they’ve got a leg up on humans: socks know how to pair up. The British publisher Lazy Bee Scripts, Southampton, has chosen the one-act comedy Socks for international publication and distribution.
Tilapia
Deserted by two younger couples who had been their dinner guests, an aristocratic older couple savors a meal. We hear of broken chairs, a smashed piano, a nasty fall into the baked alaska…there seemed to be some sort of….row among the young people. And then, the "he" of one couple went off with the "she" of the other. What did it all mean?
Premiering in Baltimore in 2001 as one of four one-act plays under the title Seafood Buffet, Tilapia took second place honors in the Baltimore Playwrights Festival.
Way, Way Up
The year is 2046 and a reporter is interviewing a media spokesman for the “Space Elevator” about to make its inaugural ascent in Clearwater, Florida. Two retirees have paid to be aboard the craft, but there are problems. There’s a marital squabble between the elevator passengers, and what’s with the cavalier attitude of the elevator design team? What exactly will happen when the car goes way, way, up?
Woman on the Edge
Even before Woman on the Edge premiered in the 2004 Baltimore Playwrights Festival, the play won the prestigious National Towngate Theatre Playwriting Contest at the Oglebay Institute. Awarding the 2004 prize, the theater called the play "a riotously funny play about a woman’s searching for a raison d’etre."
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A young Iraqi woman has been killed at a checkpoint and her death is seen through three sets of eyes.
Why would sane, sensible, 64-year-old Nettie wrap explosives around her bathrobe and fire a gun at a police officer? Is it because her husband is driving cross-country with his late brother’s ashes, showing his deceased sibling the sights? Could it be because her niece insisted on holding the family reunion at Nettie’s house? Perhaps it’s because Nettie’s older sister keeps telling everybody where to get off?