TO PROTECT AT ALL COSTS
a play
Logline:
As a disinformation campaign about extraterrestrials unfolds, a battle for the truth ignites between a fiery, aging female astronomer and a rookie Air Force agent.
Story:
Paula Brode, a brilliant astronomer wrestling with drug addiction, captures strange anomalies on film and intercepts signals she believes originate from extraterrestrial sources. Convinced she may be working for Russia, the Air Force assigns inexperienced OSI agent Fine to assess her. Ordered to indulge her UFO theories while investigating, Fine—supported by the CIA and NSA—helps stage a fabricated UFO crash to keep her occupied.
When Brode uncovers inconsistencies in his story, she confronts him, sparking a tense intellectual duel that blurs the line between paranoia and genuine discovery. As Brode’s stress mounts, she begins experiencing unnerving phenomena she cannot explain—moments that shake her confidence and deepen her dependence on drugs.
Meanwhile, drawn to a clandestine facility on Bonanza Peak, Fine investigates its origins and, through careful manipulation, manages to embed himself within the shadowy organization that runs it. Brode soon intercepts and deciphers classified transmissions between the U.S. military and a nonhuman source—messages hinting at a covert Space Force operating beyond Earth.
Attempting to reveal her findings during a public lecture, Brode collapses under the pressure—an episode officials dismiss as drug-induced. While she spirals, Fine, on assignment at Bonanza Peak, finally encounters the truth lying at the heart of the mountain—and the fate that has been waiting for him there.
THE TCHAIKOVSKY LETTERS*
a play
Thirty-eight-year-old Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky is driven to become Russia’s first international composer but he is moving into middle-age and gossip around Moscow is that he is a notorious homosexual. He needs a wife. As if by fate, two women come into his life: Nadezdha Von Meck, a fabulously wealthy dowager and Antonina Milyukova, an assertive, unbalanced seamstress. Von Meck befriends Tchaikovsky via elaborately written letters. She eventually offers to pay his all his expenses on one condition - they never meet. Antonina, also sends him over-the-top love letters letting him know that she is a virgin and that she has saved herself for him. Tchaikovsky takes advantage of Antonina’s naiveite and inexperience and marries her. The marriage is a fiasco. Tchaikovsky flees Russia fearing more gossip but Antonina is not as naïve as he thinks and threatens to expose Tchaikovsky. With the patient, nurturing love of Von Meck, he comes to grips with his homosexuality and realizes his true nature.
* Semi-Finalist in Bay Area Playwrights Festival
Playwrights Foundation enthusiastically recommends this play THE TCHAIKOVSKY LETTERS, as a Semi-Finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2020. We were moved by the quality of the writing and the relevant and compelling themes that spoke to the mission of our festival. It excelled in a competitive process of 735 plays submitted this year and rose to the top after a six month long process discussing its merits with both national and local Bay Area readers, and we hope it moves swiftly towards production.
My gosh. I literally read hundreds of scripts per year, plus work on my own scripts, so I'm serious when I ask you — how is this not already being produced today in a major theatre? Or, in my opinion, in a film studio? I thoroughly enjoyed reading your work. You've accomplished so much with the way you downplay the set and additional fanfare and keep the focus on these incredible relationships. And you did so many clever things with the blocking without telling us how to produce it... I'm not even sure where to start with my appreciation for this wonderful story. - Southwest Theater and Film Productions.
THE BURNING OF THE WHITE HOUSE
an original musical
Paul Jennings, the 15-year-old house slave to President and Mrs. Madison, discovers his true heroism, strength and purpose, living through one of the most momentous event in the nation’s history -
The Burning of the White House.
Book by Colin Speer Crowley
and Norman L. Berman
Music by Norman L. Berman
Lyrics by Colin Speer Crowley
Click below to listen to our opening number:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny4vuDeu30Q&list=RDny4vuDeu30Q