Saturday, June 20, 2009

Works By Martha Patterson

PUBLICATIONS

International Centre for Women Playwrights' Anthology of Mother/Daughter Monologues, 2010. Includes monologues by:

Fiona, from long one-act NEW YORK'S FINEST
Mrs. Evans, from full-length FAMILY AFFAIRS (see below)
Jean, from long one-act WHAT REMAINS


PLAYS

THE MAID'S DAY OFF - Inspired by Mick Jagger. Present-day, full-length comedy about Sophia, a young, struggling American actress shacking up with Nick, an aging, semi-retired English rock star in London. With booze flowing freely, their talk ranges from Shakespeare to interracial marriages, snooty shopkeepers, and Sophia’s career as an actress. Impatient with Sophia, Nick sends her packing. When they meet five years later in New York, Sophia is now a successful but troubled film star. Will they connect this time, or will their conversation revolve mostly around Nick’s obsession with losing his current maid?

FAMILY AFFAIRS - Dedicated to my parents. A two-act present-day farce. Mr. Evans collects junk he finds at yard sales and pays zero attention to his family. His wife entertains their boring neighbors and tries to rescue her daughter from a debilitating depression. Their son, Evan, a student with wild ambitions of becoming a writer, is engaged to an older woman, Marjorie, an OB/Gyn insanely bent on being a wife and mother. But Evan agonizes over his choice of a fiancee, and even his sister takes a dim view of Marjorie. Throughout the Christmas holidays the family fights and makes up, and fights again. Will Marjorie have the wedding of her dreams?

TALKING TO STRANGERS - Produced at the Harold Clurman Theatre Off-Off-Broadway, 1990s - a one act comedy set in New York City, about a young man and woman who meet by accident on a bench in Central Park. Anne’s boyfriend has just knocked her into a fountain and she enters dripping wet. At first put off by her openness, Harry, a friendly but quiet graphic artist, seeks to end the conversation quickly, but then finds Anne more interesting as she reveals her insecurities to him, and they develop a friendship through a long conversation about their jobs, love lives, dates with celebrity look-alikes, and loss of virginity. At the end of the play Harry invites Anne to spend the night on a sofa in his apartment, just to get away from her boyfriend – but will Anne accept his invitation?

AMANDA AND MR. TARTABULL - Reading performed at Gaia Studios, Jersey City, New Jersey, October 2009. One act comedy about a stuffy 45-year-old banker living in a townhouse in New York in the year 1900, and his warm and lively housekeeper of two years, whom he invites to share dinner with him one evening while she is setting the table. Through a conversation about his dead wife, and Amanda’s lost opportunity of an engagement to be married, they learn more about each other, and at the end of dinner, after an unsuccessful attempt to seduce her into his “boudoir,” Mr. Tartabull finally proposes marriage to her. She is stunned and honored by his request, and accepts, and the evening ends with a kiss between the two.

THE BIG HAT - Staged Reading performed at Arlington Center for the Arts, Massachusetts, 2000s - a comedy, set mostly in the 1980s, about a young Southern woman in her 30s whose sole ambition is to be a slut. Well, not exactly. Through a flashback to 1961 we see that Marnie, as a child, always wanted to be like her sexy long-lost aunt in the 1950s, who wore torpedo bras, open-toed shoes, big hats, lots of nail varnish, and always managed to find a man to take care of her. Through her eventual encounter with the aunt, the young woman realizes she can make a bit more of her life than just by “finding the right man.”

A CHRISTMAS KISS - What happens when two long-distance, platonic friends meet just before the holidays?

A KISS FROM ROME - The conversation gets heated when an agnostic American woman has a date with a very religious man from Italy.

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ESSAYS:

SUPERNUMERARY - THE LIFE AND TIMES OF AN EXTRA (About Working On a Movie Set)

MEETING ROCK STARS - (A Memoir About Encounters with Rock Stars in the 1980s)

ODE TO A GRECIAN JOURNEY (What happens when your traveling companions don't like you - and you don't much care for them, either?)