ANDREW MARTINEAU
THE PLAYS
THE LACEMAKERS
A group of women convene at their friend Gwen's house for a book discussion group meeting. This week they are reading a book entitled The Tutor, which concerns a group of women lace makers in the nineteenth century who improvise writing a novel about a male tutor, who comes to teach a young lady about literature. In the story within the story (which is enacted by the lace makers as they write it), the young lady, Emily, slowly falls in love with her tutor. The plot thickens when her sister threatens to tell everyone that the tutor impregnated her, and she could easily get away with it because the tutor's brother got her pregnant and ran off. In the present day, the contemporary women discuss the story that the lace makers are writing as well as the story of how they wrote it. As it begins to snow heavily, the ladies order a pizza. The pizza delivery person, April, robs the women and ties them up. As they sit there, April gets them to continue their book discussion, and she gets caught up in the plot, as well. What happens to the women after that is as suspenseful as the book they are discussing!
Functions
Skipping class for four high school seniors starts out with a few drinks in the park; it starts out with a discussion on movie sequels, popcorn, past mistakes, future goals; it starts out a few days before graduation, a few hours before commencement practice, and a few minutes before they get in a car and drive back to school, drunk. On that short trip from the park back to school, not even two miles, not even ten minutes, everything changes. A voice-over of a news reporter describes the accident in which two of the teenagers have died. One tragic decision to drink and drive and their friends and family are left with memories and a few photographs. This play communicates to our children that alcohol is a drug and that drinking and driving can lead to serious, even fatal consequences. It also encourages open channels of communication and could provide educators, concerned parents, and others seeking ways to prevent underage drinking with another prevention resource.
Recent Productions:
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Santa Fe Unit School Drama Club - Santa Fe, TN
School District of Augusta - Augusta, WI
Taejon Christian International School - Daejeon, Korea (South)
Dodgeball Theatre - Great Falls, VA
Richardson High School - Richardson, TX
Martinsville High School - Martinsville, VA
Benet Academy - Lisle, IL
Berean Christian High School - Walnut Creek, CA
Brooks High School - Killen, AL
Western Local School District - Latham, OH
Etched in Stone
Etched in Stone follows an elderly couple, Fanny and Peter, who meet as they have their own separate picnics at their future grave sites. It turns out that their spouses are buried there, and one day they will be side by side for all eternity. As they get to know each other, despite a rough start, they relive the times that they each first visited the sites with their spouses.
"Etched in Stone" won the Best New Script Award at The Northern Virginia One-Act Play Festival in 1993 (Castaways Repertory Theatre), the Watermelon One-Act Play Festival (2016) in St. Mary's City, Maryland, and has been produced in New York City by Love Creek Productions.
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The Dotted Line
The Dotted Line interweaves two stories: the true story of Louis Braille, inventor of the Braille alphabet for the blind with the fictional story of Brian Walker, a middle-aged man rapidly losing his eyesight to macular generation. Reggie, a New York street performer, is a pseudo-Greek chorus who serves as a narrative link between the stories.
Louis loses his eyesight at age 3 when he is playing in his father’s saddle-making workshop and accidentally pokes one eye with an awl. The infection spreads to his other eye, permanently blinding the young boy. A Marquise who lives in the small French town of Couvray helps pay for him to attend the Royal Institute for the Blind in Paris. At the school, Louis must deal with horrible living conditions, which later cause him to develop consumption. Brian learns that he has macular degeneration in his early-forties, even though it mostly affects the elderly.
Louis develops the raised dot system of reading for the blind, after an Army captain named Charles Barbier comes to the school with his own raised dot system he developed during the Revolution called sonography and presents it the headmaster, Dr. Pignier. The students have trouble learning the system because it has too many dots and sounds. Louis demonstrates his system of King Louis-Philippe, and the rest, as they say, is history!
The Dotted Line was produced by Sundial Theatre Company and was a "Pick of the Week" in THE WASHINGTON CITY PAPER in December 2003.