The action of the play takes place in a mostly abandoned tenement building in Dallas, Texas. Mike Howard—a radical from the far religious right—has kidnapped Dr. Jake McKenzie, Dallas’ famed suicide doctor—with the intent to serve his own homegrown justice upon the doctor, since the courts have yet to convict him of any wrongdoing. Mike presents evidence of McKenzie’s wrongdoing in a mock trial while silencing McKenzie’s attempt to justify his actions. Underestimating his elderly captive, Mike lets his guard down and is overpowered by the wily physician. Instead of escaping his captor, McKenzie places the now-chained radical on trial in like manner, an opportunity the doctor uses to defend his own actions and give voice to the radical left. The plot takes an unexpected turn as the play reaches its climax, throwing both characters into turmoil. Constructed as a dialectic, this play explores the extreme positions (both politically and socially) represented in the Right-to-Die debate active in the United States over the last twenty-five years. Although the play's focus is on doctor-assisted suicide, the author explores the whole of the ethical quagmire represented in the right-to-die movement—abortion, euthanasia, sanctity of life, the life to come, religious zealotry and more.

The newest of Professor Lahaie's plays, this drama uses the domestic conflict surrounding a planned abortion to expose the political intricacies of abortion-on-demand in America, as well as shallow religious hypocrisy in the American church. A powerful 90 minutes of theater!

The play requires a cast of 4 men and 2 women, and a single realistic interior. Running time is approximately 90 minutes. Performance rights are handled by the author. Producers interested in working on this brand new play should contact the author directly to request a perusal manuscript.

Play Synopsis: Joe Seymour and his wife Mary wait in a hospital room for test results. At Joe’s insistence, they are seeking to abort the baby in Mary’s womb. A black man has allegedly raped her one weekend when her husband was away on business. Joe’s southern upbringing makes the thought of bringing this child into the world unbearable. But Joe is a deacon in his church and chairs the local Right-to-Life movement. Counseled against his dangerous course of action by pastors and friends, Joe forces his wife to move forward with his decision to terminate the pregnancy, effectively ending his relationship with church, friends, and community. A tenacious physician discovers that the age of the fetus is inconsistent with the date of the rape—evidence that the child in Mary’s womb does not belong to the man who raped her. This revelation leads Joe to believe that he was just hours away from aborting his own child, which causes him great consternation and regret. While the repentant couple revels in their nuptial joys, the doctor runs a paternity test to verify his assumptions, but discovers that Joe is not the father of the baby. Backed in a corner, Mary owns up to her long-standing marital unfaithfulness, forcing the play to its frightful climax. Mary declares that she will leave her husband for her lover and that she will have the baby. In a fit of rage, Joe strangles her until she is unconscious. With Mary lying prone on the bed, Joe violently pounds her womb, forcing Mary to miscarry her child. With great chaos, the play ends with Joe contradicting everything he has worked to establish, leading to his total ruin.

Located on the thirteenth floor of the Dallas Grand Hotel, the cattleman’s suite is the chosen site of Julie Drithers’ not-so-happy engagement party. Her father, a once wealthy but now almost bankrupt Texas oilman, has rented the old suite again to celebrate his daughter’s engagement in the same place and manner that he had celebrated his own engagement thirty years earlier. Only this time the engagement is the father’s idea, not the bride’s. Through the calculated wedding of his daughter to Matt Snooker, the son of his best friend and founder of the industry’s leading pipe and rigging company, Mr. Drithers hopes to save his own ailing oil company and avoid disaster. However, he gets more disaster than he can handle when Bobby, Julie’s true love, sets out to rescue his one-and-only. Drithers' problems seem small compared to Julie’s wrath when she learns of the deception played upon her. Add an untimely pregnancy, two clumsy villains, a hotel staff from hell, and the recipe for comedy is complete! Published as The Cattelman's Suite: A Comedy in Two Acts. New York: iUniverse, 2002.

This play is the first in a planned trilogy of Texas Hotel Comedies. The following two plays, which are presently in progress, are entitled THE CATTLE BARON'S BALL and COWPOKES AND CATTLEPRODS.

A Long One-Act Play. Written about the first American conflict in Iraq (Desert Storm), this 25-minute post-modern drama looks at the atrocity of war through the eyes of the soldiers who were there. The media coverage hailed Desert Storm to be a major American victory--almost no blood shed by the allied force, while hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers were wiped away or captured. This play reveals that no military conflict is without repercussions for the individuals who fought it. Published in NEW PLAYS FESTIVAL, Volume One: New One-Act Plays by Emerging American Playwrights. New York: iUniverse, 2003.

A One-Act Play. Published in NEW PLAYS FESTIVAL, Volume Two: New One-Act Plays by Emerging American Playwrights. New York: iUniverse, 2004.

Description coming soon.

THE OLD MAN AND HIS WILL

A One-Act Play. William Jefferson Makepeace, age 83, is terminally ill. He has experienced great success in a high-level business career and has amassed a considerable fortune. Unfortunately, he has not enjoyed it and has had no one with whom he could share it. At the end of his life, he summons the four people closest to him for an afternoon tea--his purpose is to read his living will and divide his fortune with them before his illness takes his sanity and autonomy. Not understanding the gravity of the invitation, not even one of his invited guests appear for the reading of the will. Speaking to an empty table, the old man disinherits the four friends and gives his fortune to his servants. He then kills himself in despair.

Published in NEW PLAYS FESTIVAL, Volume Three: New One-Act Plays by Emerging American Playwrights. New York: iUniverse, 2006.

GRASSHOPPERS AND BEETLEBUGS

Description coming soon!

DRESSING FOR THE OCCASION:

or the rise and fall of architect James

MEETING MISTER WRIGHT