I consider most of my plays to be “in progress,” at least the ones that I’m still interested in seeing produced. Here’s a list of what’s available for your perusal.

All material is © Tim J. Lord. All rights reserved.

FULL-LENGTHS

We Declare You a Terrorist     

One year after being held hostage in a Moscow theater by terrorists demanding an end to Russia’s war in Chechnya, one man is still haunted by the relationships he made during the crisis and unable to move past  the tragic events that surrounded the siege’s conclusion. In a desperate attempt to understand where he and his country have come to he attempts to sneak into Chechnya only to be captured by Russian agents and suspected of being a terrorist himself. All alone in an interrogation room on the Russian frontier he is forced to confront just what happened during those sixty hours in 2002.  

(2 men, 2 women)

We Will Never Reach the Shore

Adapted from Euripides’ The Phoenician Women.

The twin sons of Oedipus have come of age and are fighting each other for the control of Thebes. The exiled Polynices has returned home with 7 armies to back his claim, while Eteocles would rather see the city destroyed than hand over power. The twins’ mother, Jocasta, and sister, Antigone, seek to intervene, forcing a parley, while their uncle, Creon, works behind the scenes to avert disaster–but only if that work won’t cost him personally. Thrust into the heart of this tinderbox is a group of Phoenician women. Fleeing war and upheaval in their home country, they have come to Thebes seeking refuge among their distant relatives only to find themselves caught between the brothers’ indomitable wills and subsequently forced to choose a side. Family strife builds to all out war where ultimately the innocent pay the price.

(6 or more actors)

The Hard Price (in progress)

Faced with a “nothing future in a dead end North Dakota town,” Joe Erekson enlisted in the Army. He got to see the world, met a beautiful girl from a foreign country, started a family—and all on Uncle Sam’s dime. It was only supposed to cost him a few easy years, but then George H. W. Bush declared war on Saddam Hussein and his “easy years” turned into a career and two wars in Iraq—a life his eldest daughter would follow him into in a post 9/11 world. The Hard Price is an exploration of the lives of people on the frontlines of the wars the Bush Family gave us and an exploration of how they pick up the pieces in a radical reimagining of The Oresteia.

(3 women, 1 man)

On Every Link a Heart Does Dangle; or, Owed

The town of Thebes was once the jewel of Southern Illinois, but the river has turned poisonous, the crops are failing, and pregnant women and their unborn babies are dying mysterious deaths, all while the town’s leader has locked himself away, leaving the residents to cast about for answers. Suspicion falls on Mellie, a young woman born with a serious disability. Despised from birth by the gods and barely tolerated by the rest of town, it falls on her and the other women of Thebes to wrest power from the man who has led them to catastrophe in this radical reimagining of the Oedipus myth.

(7 women, 2 men)

Down in the face of God

Life for the kids of Thebes, Illinois, is a predetermined sort of thing: short with a bloody end, so when a new kid shows up in town with no regard for curses and gods he threatens to turn the old order on its head. But just what brought him to town and the destruction that follows could overthrow a lot more.

(5 women, 3 men)

Peloponnesus

The Southern Illinois towns of New Athens and Sparta share a lot of history. When New Athens native Tom returns after years of running away from his past and gets involved with Rachel, a Sparta girl with quite a past of her own, everyone begins to understand just how unrelenting history can be.  

(4 men, 3 women)

Fault & Fold (in progress)

The lives of two sets of siblings–a brother and sister in Iowa and a brother and sister in Afghanistan–become intertwined following an act of violence. Now if they want to move on, they have to find the ways to bridge the distances between one another, a journey that will cross continents and culture and delve deep into the earth. 

(3 women, 2 men)

The View from Mt. Langley

A young woman, attempting to heal her family’s wounds, undertakes an impossible journey across California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains.

(2 women, 3 men)

The Secret History of Caleb Caan (in progress)

It’s 1993, and if the city of St. Louis isn’t swallowed by the rising floodwaters surrounding it, it will mostly likely be burned to the ground by the encroaching Mongol hordes currently riding across the Great Plains. Caleb Caan takes this as the perfect cue to get out of the city and rediscover the life he’s lost.  

(3 men, 2 women) 

Santa Ana Winds

The lives of five drifters come crashing together as one man tries to escape his past in the Southern California desert.

(2 men, 3 women)

11 Hills of San Francisco

Kansas City to San Francisco and all the land in between. All the mountains, all the space, all the people, and all the faces. Can you cross the desert, or do you carry it with you? What does it take to cross that expanse? What does it take to make it? 

(5 men, 3 women)

G-Men!

Dateline: 1956, The Big City! Spcl. Asst. Deputy Director Norman and his crackerjack agents are on the trail of a mad, dress-wearing bomber who’s blowing up ladies’ clothing stores. Led by no less than J. Edgar himself, our heroes brave a world full of liberals and commies and foreigners-Oh my! They banter, they quip, they defy time & space and rewrite history. They are…G-Men!  

(6 actors, flexible casting)

ONE-ACTS:

Better Homes & Homelands     Brenda knows growing the perfect garden will please Jesus, not to mention her politician husband and the Subdivision Committee. Too bad her mysterious horticultural benefactor seems to come from an altogether more subterranean place.  (2 women, 1 man, 2 Cabbage Patch^® Dolls)

10-MINUTES:

Uprooted   After being turned into a tree, Daphne awakes in Apollo’s private garden and plots her escape. Unfortunately, her only ally is a bumbling botanist who’s more interested (and more capable) in expanding the scientific record than mounting a rescue. A contemporary riff on the Daphne & Apollo myth.

Department of the Interior     Agent Mark Rollins has kept the Department of the Interior running through good times and bad, lean times and fat, school days and federal holidays. But now he faces his greatest challenge ever, a nosy president and an American public who’s never even heard of his department.  (a cast of thousands, assuming you have a giant audience)

Water Rights     (2 actors)

Montana Lovesong     (1 man, 2 women)

God’s Love Poured Out in Texas     (3-6 men or women)

Marshal South Is Out Of His Mind, a puppet play     In 1930, Marshal South packed up his life and moved with his wife Tanya to the desert east of San Diego in order to begin a utopian life homesteading atop Ghost Mountain. This is the historically inaccurate history of what happened, as performed by a puppet cast as big as expansive as the Salton Sea.

The Good Housekeeping Guide to the Coming Apocalypse     It’s just another typical morning before school at Jimmy and Jilly’s house-That is, if you consider Mom cooking up potions and Dad fighting demons from the Ninth Circle of Hell “normal.”  (3 men, 2 women)

In the Garden of the Gods     Get off the interstate in Eastern Colorado. Try stopping. Shut off the car. Get out and walk around. Forget you have the keys. Forget the tank has fuel… And wait for someone to pass. Will someone pass? If someone does pass, do they stop? And if they stop, what do you say?  (1 woman)