New Plays
STEAMPUNKUNDERSEATEMPEST is currently under consideration for new play development opportunities; however, we’re open to non-professional/educational licensing of the play. It’s exactly what it sounds like – a steampunk adaptation of The Tempest set under the sea. There’s a billionaire whose submarine explodes, which was certainly an interesting topic to explore at this time. Plenty of physical comedy, can be done with as few as six actors, lots of opportunities for creating beautiful marine life, and so on. Contact me for perusal copy.
I recently revised FALLOUT OF THE SKY as a commission for the Albuquerque Academy’s middle school program. The world was expanded and the characters deepened. The bones of the story remained — it’s a series of vignettes centering the myth of Icarus, imagining the various members of the community surrounding the missing child telling their view on his story. Beginning, like most tellings of the myth, as a cautionary tale about obeying your parents, a teenager investigates what ‘really’ happened. She speaks with the fisherwoman (inspired by the Bruegel painting) who saw the boy fall; she interviews the fish who ate him; she gathers the testimony from Helios, the conductor of the ‘sun’ who hit him; and so on… The cruelty of King Minos locking him up with this father is also not lost on this version.
When I was in my early twenties, I once gave myself the task of trying to write in with what I called a ‘plural first person’ point-of-view. A community speaking, not an individual. A “we” instead of an ‘I’. I was mostly a fiction writer back then, so I didn’t think to look at choral storytelling in plays. A few years later, I figured out how to pull this off in a short play with the original version of Fallout – then titled ‘Our Flock’. More than ten years since, I was happy to have the chance to revisit the play and expand the chorus. I had more to say.
Also a recent script finished, WHEN ALICE KILLED FREDA is the play that scared me the most to write. It imagines a group of young people in the ’90s using an actual historical murder as inspiration for a movie. Although initially ostensibly making the film homophobic, things get more complicated as characters make some self-discoveries. Even language intending to demonize becomes a way to liberation. In a time of deep and vicious homophobia and compulsory genre roles, these kids find each other.
I am shopping this around for new play development, and will make it available soon.
PRODUCTIONS
It’s been great to see pictures of high school productions of The Apocalypse Project, Twelve Huntsmen, Dead Victorian Child, and others popping up in my feed. This summer I’ll be joining Acme Theatre and their production of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, Late of the Island of Providence…
Basement Demons and Trailer Saints opens at James Madison University this month. Please check out this article on it: https://www.jmu.edu/news/2026/02/27-madison-new-works-lab.shtml
Scriptworks’ Out of Ink will be including my play Out of This World in it’s upcoming ten-minute play festival.
Briandaniel Oglesby 