LAURA HARRINGTON
MORE PLAYS
|
NIGHT LUSTER
Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 1985
A Discovery in Marin … Everything that could go right did at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival production of Laura Harrington’s Night Luster. This is one of those rare instances at a play festival where the long-sought new “voice” is apparent. Harrington’s use of language is original. The author’s ability to create emotion-charged scenes with a minimum of words is remarkable.” —The San Francisco Chronicle
Winner of the San Francisco Chronicle’s “Bernie” Award for 10 Best New Plays.
MERCY
Shakespeare and Co, Lenox, MA, 1996
With: Annette Miller, Elizabeth Aspenlieder, Jason Asprey, Dennis Krausnick, Corinna May, Walton Wilson
Synopsis: Faith, dying with cancer, wants the gift of one more day of life to rewrite her troubled family history.
“It’s a fine match. Laura Harrington’s 1996 Clauder Competition award winning play Mercy and Shakespeare & Company, the winner of the 3rd annual Boston Theatre Award for “continued excellence in theatre” teaming up for the plays’ world premiere. The heart wrenching story of a woman who wants the gift of one more day of life to rewrite her troubled family history is one anyone who has known love and loss and thought about their own mortality can relate to. No smoke rising from the ground or moving sets, just the playwright’s eloquent language, eloquently delivered. Mercy leaves you gasping for breath and impatient for more.” — CurtainUp
“Playwright Laura Harrington has the gift of the poet, of being able to lyrically wrap language around a core so distilled that the images it conjures are vivid, immediate and resonant. Her most recent play, Mercy, vibrates with poetry that ebbs and flows within the story of a dying woman’s final day.”—Boston Herald
Winner: Clauder Competition for Best New Play.
FLAG GIRLS
Boston Theatre Marathon, 2000-2007
Synopsis: Waiting back stage to go on for the Memorial Day ceremony at the turn of the century, 6 teenage girls, wrapped and trapped in the American flag, fight their own Civil War. Published by Baker’s Plays.
THE HEART OF AN EMPEROR
Boston Theatre Marathon, 2000-2007
Synopsis: A farcical autopsy of the Emperor Napoleon
UNIVERSAL SOLDIER
Boston Theatre Marathon, 2000-2007
Synopsis: Somewhere in the Middle East, 2 young boys try to cross a minefield.
EINSTEIN + THE ANGELS
Boston Theatre Marathon, 2000-2007
Synopsis: In a post-apocalyptic world, 2 teenagers search for love, connection, and something to believe in.
Published in 2008: The Best 10 Minute Plays for 2 Actors,”Smith and Kraus, L.R. Harbison, editor |
ANGEL FACE
BACA Downton, Brooklyn, NY, 1987
Presented by Primary Stages, NY, Casey Childs, Artistic Director, in association with BACA Downtown, Fringe Series, Greta Gundersen, Artistic Director
With: Terres Unsoeld, Tom Wright
“In Angel Face, the real protagonist is Harrington’s language, which swells and rises above the plot – like Wagner’s music above his librettos. Risking pompousness, she fills the text out with scriptural constructions (“He lay with his head in the hollow of my belly and I knew peace”) and incantatory repetitions (“Night vision will save me, night vision will slay me”) just to the point where credulity flags, then rescues it with a few incongruous mythic images… Imagination, it seems, is the divine power to create a world in which you can live. Angel Face, too, is about its language, and the simple, elegant recitations of Terres Unsoeld (Lil) and Tom Wright (Gabriel) on the almost bare stage – the set consists of glass shards on a dark wood floor – is all the spectacle it needs.” — The Village Voice
Angel Face Rises Above BACA Downtown to Earn its Wings …. Angel Face opens to a stage floor littered with swaths of mirrored glass shards. The illusionary shadow of a pair of broken winged birds is cast on the blue-gray downstage wall. Windows in the theatre arena are unshaded, and Brooklyn street lights turn the windows opalescent. There is the slight figure of a woman crouching on the inside window ledge. As the composer Roger Ames’ music slowly rises with Pat Dignan’s lighting at BACA Downtown, and Lil speaks from her ledge, “I need a pair of night wings,” the parts become whole. The blending of dramatic elements is pure and potent. The play continues to walk the ledge, but with director Liz Diamond in firm control…The 40 minute performance is intoxicating.” — The Phoenix
LOST AT SEA
Performed as part of Fifteen Minutes at Midway at Tulane University, New Orleans, 2005
Synopsis: June 4, 1942: Torpedo Squadron 8, off the USS HORNET, attacked the Japanese carriers off Midway. Flying old, slow aircraft armed with defective torpedoes and lacking fighter cover, they were all shot down without inflicting any damage on the enemy. But by attracting the attention of the Japanese combat air patrol, their sacrifice made possible the success of the American dive bombers that arrived overhead minutes later, to devastate the Japanese carriers Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu, bringing victory at the famous battle at Midway.
DRESS RIGHT
Boston Theatre Marathon, 2000-2007
Synopsis: A comic look at Civil War re-enactors and the unexpected power of dressing up and the imagination. Published by Baker’s Plays and COMPOST.
THE LIFE YOU SAVE
Boston Theatre Marathon, 2000-2007
Synopsis: A monologue about a girl trying to save her mother’s life.
ROUND MIDNIGHT
Urban Stock Company, 1985 |