One-act play, 40 minutes [Serious comedy; 1 interior; 1 man, 4 women];
First performed at the Reality Theatre, Columbus, Ohio.  Award-Winner staged by the Cleveland Women's Theatre Project at the Cleveland Playhouse.

Martha is an electrician in love for the first time--with Katharine, a closeted, young college instructor who is married to a man who truly believes he is liberated.   Martha stands on the outside as these yuppies clash over feminism and the popular culture icons which surround them.  Within the context of "Life Isn't Easy," the television soap opera which Katharine watches every day and whose characters appear onstage in a parallel reality, husband and wife studiously avoid expressing any feelings directly or confronting their marital crisis.  Instead, they hide behind their wide-ranging, witty, and glib repartee--on Elvis Presley, the National Enquirer, Leave It To Beaver, and even Katharine's pregnancy.  When at the end of the play we enter the world of Katharine's dream diary, we understand once and for all why it is so important that Martha continue her heroic fight for Katharine's soul... and why she must win.

WRITER'S NOTE:   Lily Tomlin worries that no matter how cynical you are, it's never enough to keep up. She says that "Life is sad.  No, it's funny." Or maybe she says the opposite, I forget.  I worry that the popular culture that we love so much may not be good for us. Is it necessary that America know Elizabeth Taylor's husbands in chronological order?  I worry that we are what we see and we've been seeing an awful lot of Infomercials  and ab flexors.  Shouldn't those brain cells that are taking in repeats of The Brady Bunch actually be devoted to something more spiritual, like the mandala created by the whirring of the newest Cuisinart Blade?  And yet why must the power structure devalue and attack the popular culture associated with women, such as soap opera and Joan Crawford?  Is there no room at all for ideological subversion in a world in which gay love is still suspect?  It's a difficult world for human beings to connect, and certainly for the love triangle in Joan Crawford Died For Your Sins.

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One-act play, 10 minutes [Drama; bare stage; 1 man, 1 woman];
First performed at the Boll Theatre in Dayton, Ohio; subsequent performances at the Baltimore Theatre Project, the Bank Street Theatre's Unity Fest in New York City, the Theatre-Studio in New York City, and the Los Angeles City Playhouse.  Finalist for Heideman Award from Actors Theatre Louisville. Theatrical version of original short story.   "The best of the evening, this fractured play was profound and devastating," The Off-Off Broadway Review; "A masterpiece in miniature," The Dayton Daily News.

RICHARD: We are in the basement and I am six years old, watching my mother wash the clothes.  Upstairs, my questions seemed naive, like "Why is the sky blue?'"or "Why does it hurt when you put your hand on the stove?"  But downstairs, now, I know that the question I am about to ask is somehow different.  (to his mother)  Why is it that I'm here and you're there?
MOTHER: What?
RICHARD: Why is it that I'm here and you're there?
MOTHER: Because if you were here, then I wouldn't be able to stand here and do the laundry.
RICHARD: (to the audience) But I insist.  (to his mother) No.  I mean, why am I here and you're there?   Why am I... inside...my head, and you're... inside...your head?  And can I ever get out of my head and be inside yours?  Or will I always be me?  And why am I me, rather than you?  (to the audience) She stops working, and I see on her face, for the first time, a troubled expression that I would come to associate with her understanding of the otherness of me, her alienation from what had once been inside her....

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Experimental film, 30 minutes, 16mm, also available on videotape.

A young gay man must deal with the impending death of his father from a stroke.  Featured screenings at Cleveland International Film Festival, Houston International Film Festival, (Bronze Award), San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Philafilm (Philadelphia Film Exposition), Chicago Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Pittsburgh Filmmakers Festival, many others. Currently in distribution through Canyon Cinema, 2325 Third Street, Suite 338, San Francisco, CA 94107, phone (415) 626-2255.   "Cerebral Accident lays down a barrage of visual and aurgal imagery that touches on everything from death to dreams to homosexuality...unlikely to slip quickly from one's memory," The Ceveland Plain Dealer.

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Narrative film, 30 minutes, 16mm, serious comedy, also available on videotape.

Film co-written with Patti Russo.  Featured screenings at the Cleveland International Film Festival, the Houston International Film Festival (Bronze Award), Dayton Movies Repertory cinema, others; screened throughout region on Ohio PBS television stations.  Film was later lengthened and revised, with an additional character, into a playscript.

KATHARINE: I'll tell you my dream, Richard. (pause) I was looking at the sky, which was as blue as my own eyes used to be when you were still looking at them.  I was in Dayton, Ohio, in front of a seedy bar, standing behind a huge eight-ball which was eighty-eight inches tall.  I was unable to move, so I just stood there, clutching a baby doll which I finally flung into the sky and which did not come down. After a few minutes, an old man walked by with a pig on a leash.  I knew the pig was your mother, because it smelled like lemon-scented Pledge.  And then, you suddenly appeared.  For several seconds, you just stood there; only when you turned away from me could I see that you had no eyes.  You touched your finger to your nose like Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless and said, "Are you tired, listless, run-down?  Then you need Vita-Meata-Vegamin.  It's tasty, too!"  It was a reference to my favorite episode of I Love Lucy.  You took several steps toward me, and then I pulled out a pistol and shot you...once, twice, thrice...  After you were dead, I felt a sudden chill and removed my peignoir.  Underneath, I was wearing a tailored suit, the exact one that Joan Crawford had worn on The Merv Griffen Show when she appeared to promote Pepsi-Cola, just before she was ousted by its board...

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Series of nine large works for gallery exhibition, each work containing from 1 to 16 color photographs juxtaposed with text. 

An affirming narrative and surreal chronicle of  gay marriage and social pressures.  Solo Show at Wright State, Experimental Gallery, Dayton, Ohio.  Group Show “Out from Within: An Exploration of Identity” at the Columbus Art League, Columbus, Ohio curated by Melissa Donovan of the Ohio Arts Council and Christine Dunn of the Wexner Center,  with published catalogue.  Group Show: “Road Art,” the 11th Annual Photography Exhibition at the Newark Gallery of Ohio State University.   Artist Fellowship and prize awarded by Culture Works in competition juried by artist Bing Davis of Central State University and Carol White of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.   Group Show: Fine Arts Exhibit of Ohio Exposition, Columbus, Ohio, juried by Kenneth Trapp of the Smithsonian and Barbara Tannenbaum of the Akron Art Museum.  Group Show: “Cultural Context,” at the Newark Gallery of Ohio State University.  Individual show at DVAC (Dayton Visual Arts Consortium Gallery of Dayton, Ohio), juried by Annegreth Nil of the Columbus Museum of Art.   Group Show: “Image Ohio,” at Roy G. Biv Gallery, Columbus [with published catalogue], juried by Tony Mendoza of Ohio State University.  Group Show: "Family Circles and Other Relative Geometries," at the Southern Ohio Museum of Portsmouth, curated by Sara Johnson.

Text above reads: Tom's mother lived all her life in Beloit, Kansas, working as  a nurse.  She moved faster than you'd think, but sometimes she would fall down and have to wait for the mailman to help her up.  We invited her to come live with us in Dayton, Ohio, and although she visited, she said she was too old to move away from Kansas.  The last time Tom and I came to visit her she said, "Why don't you two boys use my bed while you're here.  That's what you're used to, ain't it?  Those twin beds are too small."  Then she added, "But don't tell Sister Henrietta.  I still have to live in this town."  She went to Mass every day.  She sent us peanutbrittle which was inedible.  She liked baloney sandwiches and jello.

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