House, Divided
 La Tempestad
 The Ballad of John Wesley Reed
 Girl Science
 The Allure of Oriental Wisdom
 Memorial Day (formerly Varia)
 Pride of the Lion
 The Dostoyevsky Man


 Monica for Chanukah
 Angie and Arnie Sanguine
 Edward and Ellie Supine
 The Lion Eats His Lunch
 The Lion in His Lair
 The Lion Leaves His Mark
 Prayers


 But Who's Counting?
 Emma Goldman Imagines the Millenium


 Just Before the War Between the Plates
 I Can Handle That


 Talking  with Lee Blessing

...with Tom Coash
...with Mary Fengar Gail
...with Richard Kalinowsky
...with Jamie Pachino
...with David Rambo
...with Jason Sherman
...with Naomi Wallace
...with Tom Gibbons
...with Dick Goldberg

I trace my playwriting career and my dramaturgy career to the same event. In late 1987, I was invited by Marjorie Samoff, the Executive Director of the American Music Theater Festival (now Prince Music Theatre), and Sara Garonzik, Artistic Director of The Philadelphia Theater Company, to work as a dramaturg on STAUF, a new musical theater piece by Eric Salzman and Michael Sahl, which was being jointly developed by AMTF and the Philadelphia Theater Company. The cast of STAUF included John O'Hurley, D'Jamin Bartlett, Patricia Holley, and Tom Young, and the director was Rhoda Levine. I spent three months working on the production, working first with the producers, and then attending every minute of rehearsal from auditions to opening night.. The following year, I was invited by Sara Garonzik, to work as a researcher and dramaturg on a projected production of In the Belly of the Beast.

My first play, Prayers, was written after a visit to Alaska in 1992. It was produced by Theater Ariel at Philadelphia's Annenberg Center in the company's first Ten by Ten Festival in 1993. Prayers was also produced at the Nat Horne Theater as part of the Love Creek 5th Annual Short Play Festival. It was a winner in that festival and subsequently competed as part of the 1993 Samuel French festival.

Also completed in late 1992 was my first full-length play, The Dostoyevsky Man. The Dostoyevsky Man was an unproduced finalist in the Cleveland Playhouse Festival of New Plays, and a semi-finalist in the Julie Harris/Beverly Hills Theater Company Playwright Competition. In 1994, The Dostoyevsky Man was performed publicly script in hand several times at Borders book stores. The Dostoyevsky Man was revised in 1998.

Between March, 1993, and May 1994, I completed a second full-length play consisting of three linked one act plays called Views of the Lion, now retitled Pride of the Lion. Each of the acts has been performed separately, and all three have been performed together. The first act, called The Lion Eats His Lunch was performed as part of Philadelphia Playworks 10.5 festival in September, 1993, and was accepted for inclusion in the 1994-1995 Playwrights Theater of Baltimore 1994-1995 season. The second act, called The Lion in His Lair was performed as part of the 6th Annual Love Creek Short Play Festival in March, 1994, and also as part of the Brick Playhouse Staged Reading Series in June, 1994. The final act, The Lion Leaves His Mark, was performed script-in-hand as part of the Philadelphia Dramatist Center/Brick Playhouse "Philadelphia Listens to the Voice of Philadelphia Dramatists" reading in 1994. In March of 1996, the entire play had a three week run at Denver Colorado's Changing Scene Theater. It had its professional premiere at Theatre Catalyst in a three week Equity run in July, 2000. Pride of the Lion is published by Playscripts.Inc, as is The Lion Eats His Lunch.

As a result of the submission of Pride of the Lion, I was awarded a 1995 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship in Playwriting.

In 1995 I completed a half hour comedy called Angie and Arnie Sanguine, which ran as part of the 1996 Attic Theater Short Play Festival in Los Angeles, and was also staged in the summer of 2000 by Putting on the Ritz Theatre in Oaklyn, NJ. Angie and Arnie had another short run during the 2002 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. In August of 2002, Angie and Arnie was published by Playscripts.Inc

In 1997 I completed a companion piece to Angie and Arnie called Edward and Ellie Supine, which was a recent finalist in Drury Short Play Competition.

In 1996 I began work on Memorial Day (formerly titled Varia,) based on the aftermath of the 1994 murder of a friend of mine, Don Hamilton. Under its former title, Memorial Day had its premier public reading at the Allens Lane Art Center in Philadelphia, PA, in February, 1998, and also had a public a reading at the Changing Scene Theater in Denver, Colorado, in September, 1998. Memorial Day has since been a finalist in the Mill Mountain New Play Festival in Roanoke, VA, a finalist in the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Festival at the Alleyway Theater in Buffalo, New York, and a finalist in the Charlotte North Carolina Playhouse Festival of New Plays. In July, 1998, it was performed as part of FutureFest at the Dayton Playhouse in Dayton, OH. In October, 1998, Varia was named the winner of the Pennsylvania Playwriting Contest sponsored by the Theater Association of Pennsylvania, and was performed as a staged reading as part of the First Annual Showcase of New Plays at InterAct Theatre Company in Philadelphia. Based on the submission of Varia, I was awarded a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship in Playwriting for 1998.

In 1999, I completed a ten minute play called Just Before the War Between the Plates, which was performed as part of the Nantucket Short Play Festival in 1999, and in the Wilma In School program at the Wilma Theatre in 2000. Just Before the War Between the Plates is published by Playscripts.Inc.

In 1999 I also completed two monologues focusing on the millennium, Emma Goldman Imagines the Millennium, published in 2000 Voices: Monologues for the Millennium, InterAct Press, and But Who's Counting?, honorable mention in the 1999 Crossing Borders/Approaching Millennium New Play Contest at Warf Rat Theatre in Boston. But Who's Counting was performed by Kirsten Quinn in 2002 during the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. But Who's Counting is published by Playscripts.Inc.

In 1999 I also completed several short plays including Livery and Monica for Chanukah, and a full length plays, The Allure of Oriental Wisdom, adapted from a screenplay I had written earlier.

In 2000, I completed a full length play, Girl Science. In November of 2002, Girl Science was included in Gather Round, a developmental reading series at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, under the direction of John Petrowski. A short play for children, I Can Handle That, was commissioned by the Wilma In School program in 2000, and performed there by a group of 5th graders in 2001.

In 2002, I completed The Ballad of John Wesley Reed, a full length comedy developed at InterAct Theatre Company. In June of 2002 The Ballad was mounted as a staged reading in the National New Play Network-sponsored National Showcase of New Plays. In October, 2002, it was included in the Ensemble Studio Theatre Octoberfest, at the invitation of the Literary Department there. In 2004, The Ballad was read as part of New Jersey Repertory CompanyÕs staged reading series. The Ballad John Wesley Reed was performed in its premiere production at Theater Catalyst in March of 2005, directed by Becky Wright and featuring Seth Reichgott, Kate Bailey, Rob Hargraves, David Raphaeli, and Martha Kemper.

Between 2003 and 2005 Girl Science, completed in 1999-2000, was workshopped and developed several times, beginning with a table reading in the "Gather Round" series at Playwright's Theater of New Jersey and at InterAct Theater Company where there was also a table reading. In 2004 Girl Science was included in the Philadelphia Theatre Company's Stages Festival, as a First Look reading in the Ensemble Studio Theater's First Light Festival, in the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference in McCall, Idaho, in the Earth Matters on Stage Festival in Arcata California, and as an Ensemble Studio Theater/Alfred Sloan Foundation rewrite commission recipient in the 2005 First Light Festival. It was also read script in hand at New Jersey Repertory Company in 2006.

In 2004 I completed La Tempestad. Resonance Ensemble, a company devoted to producing contemporary plays based on classical drama, produced La Tempestad in October, 2005 at the Ohio Theater. Eric Parness directed. La Tempestad has been published in an anthology of new work based on classical sources called PLAYING WITH CANONS: Explosive New Works From Literature by America's Indie Playwrights.

In 2006, I was awarded two grants, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Playwriting Fellowship and a the New Play Commissionin Jewish Theater to research a write House, Divided, which had its first public reading as part of the Philadelphia new Play Festival in February, 2007.\par

For more information about any of my plays, please contact me at Larry@Loebell.com.