The Utah Review: “Matchstick Girl is a lyrical gem resplendent in its symbolic warmth and heart-rending poignance.”
FULL LENGTH PLAYS AND MUSICALS :
Matchstick Girl
Book and Lyrics by Jennifer A. Kokai, Music and Additional Lyrics by Kenneth Plain
5W/5M + Ensemble
It is New Year’s Eve in 19th century Denmark. As the people bustle about the town, carrying treats like cakes of marzipan rings to share with friends, Sofia stands alone, shoeless in the bitter cold with a handful of matches for sale. A chance encounter with an old friend, Johan, on his way to his family’s ball, gives her a glimpse of a world of warmth, love and safety that she is denied and leaves Johan troubled and conflicted about what he should or could do for her. Hans Christian Andersen’s beloved story is brought to life in a sweeping family friendly musical about what we owe to each other in a community.
Semi-Finalist 2023 O’Neill National Musical Theatre Conference
Utah Theatre Bloggers: “I can see Matchstick Girl becoming a beloved yule-tide show like A Christmas Carol, which audiences love to return to again and again each year to reflect on the problems we can see in ourselves and society and resolving, like Johan, to go out into the world and try to make it a better place.”
Front Row Reviewers: “A heart-warming new musical adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Matchstick Girl premiered at Weber State University and I could easily see as a holiday staple with enough merit to join A Christmas Carol.”
The Florida Variations: A Duet for Mother and Child
2 W/1 Any
The Mother has a parasitical alligator living inside her. The Child is making a lot of mistakes. The Writer wants to be heard. An absurdist play about Florida Man, chronic illness, raising a teenager, alligators, and the failures of communication and meaning making in a chaotic world.
The Robots of Walmart
4 W/1M
Annie’s life is crumbling underneath her. She’s pretty sure her husband is an alcoholic and maybe even a little abusive. Looking for certainty in an uncertain time, she gets sucked further and further into a home organization show on Netflix, whose hosts, Sutton and Taylor, promise that rainbow organizing your belongings is the path to inner calm and acceptance. Then they ask for more and more. They might be a cult? Her only true friend is an inventory Bossa Nova robot in the home organization aisle of Walmart (he doesn’t talk, or know she’s there, but he’s a good listener). Where is the line between finding purpose and meaning in life and being addicted to things? Or is it really that adulthood is just finding acceptable things to be addicted to?
Singing to the Brine Shrimp
(A Fantasia in 12 Scenes with Sock Puppets, Ukuleles, Wine, and an Accident)
3 W/1 M
Music by Ken Plain
This is the theatrical opportunity of the lifetime for playwright Allison, a mom from Utah. At least that’s what the people in New York keep telling her. But the director hasn’t read the play, the actors keep competing over who has been on Law and Order the most, and Allison is a ball of stress and insecurity. Thank goodness the singing brine shrimp are there to help her find her way.
Semi-Finalist 2019 Bay Area Playwright’s Festival
Semi-Finalist 2019 B-Street New American Comedy Festival
Produced by Plan-B Theatre in 2020.
Salt Lake Magazine: “Singing to the Brine Shrimp is just the right kind of quirky, and it’s been too long since I’ve seen something genuinely weird and whimsical onstage.”
15 Bytes: “With a script rich with deadpan humor and characters that comment on the elitist attitudes and people in the big-city art world, the play is timely, entertaining, and more than a little meta.”
The Utah Review: “The rhythm was sharp, precise and natural in a brilliantly written comedy with a smart set of songs. It is the model marriage of aquaculture and the theatrical arts.”
The Art of Floating
3 W/1 M
Marian lives in the sleepy town of Spring Hill, Florida where she spends her days hanging out at the senior citizen center and drinking wine with her best friend Fran. After her estranged granddaughter has a crisis of faith and moves in with her, marvelous things begin to happen. A play about death, faith, and learning to float through Jello.
Winner Hippodrome New Play Festival 2024
Semi-Finalist Seven Devil’s Playwrights Conference
Girl of Glass
2 M/1 W/ 1+ Flexible
Edgar delivers a package to the wrong address. The store he enters is a strange place filled with glowing glass jars and run by a magnetic woman Truly. Edgar visits her every week, falling more and more in love. But Truly is not who she seems to be, and what is in the jars?
Girl of Glass was selected out of 948 plays for inclusion in the Lark Play Development Center’s 2014 Playwright’s Week and was a 2015 Semi-Finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Playwright’s Conference.
Produced by THML Theatre NYC April 4, 2019.
Lost Land
4 W/1+ M/2+ Flexible
Lost Land is a tale of hope and dreams, of love discovered and ultimately lost. Spanning three centuries from the late 1950’s to the present to the year 2150, the play is set in an ill-conceived nautical theme park designed around Moby Dick, the all-seeing, all-enduring commentator who takes us on a journey from a world built to delight to a world filled with despair.
Lost Land was produced in the 2011 Frontera Festival in Austin, TX.
White Rabbit
4 W/2 M/1 Flexible
John is just trying to buy some Triscuits and go home when he meets Alice, not in Wonderland, but the supermarket. She insists that she is Alice and it is he who is lost and confused. This causes him to examine the essential truths of his life with help from a mysterious man in the park who promises him the meaning of life for two dollars, or a game of chess for one.
Rita on Wednesdays
2 W/2 M
On Wednesdays, Bethany likes to go to her favorite diner and meet her friend Rita, a large man in a tutu who carries a flaming baton who promises to teach her how to be happy. When a sadistic waitress begins working at the diner, a contest of wills erupts that involves cheese sticks, a hostage situation, a room full of Cabbage Patch Kids, and does not end well.
Glue
2 W/1 M
Gabrielle is a plumber. Adam writes romance novels under the non-de-plume Alexandra Poppy Montgomery. They meet because Adam’s sink is inexplicably clogged with industrial glue. They agree to go on one date, which rapidly spirals out of control when Adam’s Nana predicts Gabrielle’s impending doom.
THEATRE FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES
Zombie Thoughts
written with Oliver G. Kokai-Means
Flexible casting- 2 M/F or 3 M/F or 10 M/F
Sam and Pig are avatars in the video game “Zombie Thoughts.” Sam’s character is intelligent, anxious, and armed with a book. Pig is goofy, distracted, and armed with a rubber chicken. Can Pig and the players in the audience help Sam overcome anxiety and defeat the monsters and trials the Machine throws in the way? A 45 minute video game inspired TYA play about childhood anxiety where the audience determines the outcome. Written for grades 3-6 with help from someone in grade 3. A website full of info on Zombie Thoughts is available here!
Zombie Thoughts was commissioned by Plan B Theatre in Salt Lake City and toured to elementary schools in 2018-19 with Plan-B. It has been produced by Riverside: The National Theatre of Parramatta (Sydney, Aus), Birmingham Children’s Theatre, Montana Rep, Building Better People, Sam Houston State University, State Fair Community College, St. Andrew’s The Priory, and more.
Ballet for Aliens
written with Gerard Hernandez and Oliver G. Kokai-Means
1 M/ 1 W
Jacob loves ballet, turkey sandwiches, Pokedudes, and his rainbow blanket. He hates nurses that can’t get the IV in on the first try and living with Chron’s Disease. On the day of his second infusion, he meets Sophie, a nurse unlike any other– who might be an alien. A play about being a child living with a chronic illness and how imagination can help get you through.
TEN MINUTE PLAYS:
Reacting To Myself In an Apocalypse (Not Clickbait) (Gone Wrong)
A Radio Play
1 W
Lola is a perpetually sunny, perpetually enthusiastic, perpetually selling something youtube superstar. Today’s recording is going very, very wrong.
Commissioned and Produced by Plan-B Theatre, originally broadcast on KUAA 99.9 and available to listen to on the Plan-B app.
Mitch/Janine
1 M/ 1 W
Two five minute monologues based on verbatim interviews about identity, politics, and America in a post-election world. Written as part of Plan B’s (In)Divisible performed in June 2017. Janine was subsequently performed at The Blocks Kick Off, The Utah Citizens Summit, and was included in the #theatreactionimmigration plays collection from Protest Plays.
Bird Brains
4 W
A singing hummingbird, snobby barn owls, a dysfunctional vulture couple, and ducks that want to be dinosaurs. It’s another day at the Aviary.
Commissioned by Plan B for the 2016 Rose Exposed: “Flight” benefiting Tracy Aviary.
A Long Way to Fall
2 M
Adam is a mountain climber who meets the devil at the summit.
Bob’s Beef Jerky
2 W/2 M
Giri has chained herself to a beef jerky machine to protest mistreatment of animals. The media, however, is interested in telling a different story.
Playing Castle
1 W/1 M
Kenneth and Cassie have imagined an ideal lives for themselves, but the reality of post college life is different than they thought.
An Idiotic Dorothy
2 W
Meghan is alone after a catastrophe. Until a strange woman shows up to help her face some tough decisions.
Lucy and the Statue
1 W/1 M
Lucy’s family is not fond of her boyfriend. Because he is a statue in a park.
