Tag Archives: Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative

THUMP
Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative
Oct. 15
Aronoff Center Fifth Third Bank Theater [Downtown]

Written by Michael DeFrancesco

A director and two couples meet to discuss and agree on a scenario for a community theater contest. For one of the couples an event lays bare their fight of conscience.

About the Author:
Michael taught drama and English to high school students outside of Cincinnati. While teaching, he was awarded a Rockefeller grant to the University of Cincinnati’s Theater Arts program, where he earned an M.A. His Master’s thesis was a Readers Theater production of Black poetry with five black students in the high school where he was teaching. Because of getting a family quickly while in graduate school, he backed off of the Theater except to watch it.

He became more interested in writing than acting, and engaged in that off and on over a number of years. In the past dozen years he has written several plays: four full lengths, two as one acts and four as ten-minute plays.

He is a member of the Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative and has had several staged readings at CPI: The Circle, The Car Ride, The Hound, and for October 2024, Thump.

Tue, Oct. 15 at 7:30pm

Official page | Facebook event |

HeARTLAND
Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative
Sept. 17
Aronoff Center Fifth Third Bank Theatre [Downtown]

Written by Paul Shortt

Rural Kansas 1970, Phillip and Bobby Hart, art and music teachers with a sideline antique business, have a developing conflict: Bobby disapproves of Phillip’s rising ambition, grandiosity and, most particularly, his art forgery ¬– forgeries Bobby once considered mischievous and exciting. Suddenly, malicious accusations from the outside are made against Phillip.

About the Author:
Career set design professor, UC-CCM, with Playhouse, Opera, Ballet and other credits; also delving into architecture and themed attractions in the US and abroad. Hooked on writing short fiction, poetry, and plays from several summer stints with Antioch Writers and Kenyon Playwrights workshops.

• Tue, Sept. 17 at 7:30pm

Official page | Facebook event |

EARTHFEST 2024
Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative
April 16
Aronoff Center Fifth Third Bank Theater [Downtown]

This evening of eight ten-minute plays celebrates Earth Day 2024 in support of the Miami Group Sierra Club.

• IN AND OUT by Eric Brose
  Would you rather sit inside watching a screen with terrible news or go outside and enjoy nature as it burns away?
• END OF THE LINE by Liz Coley
  For some folks it’s the end of the world; for others, it’s the beginning.
• THINK! by Roger Collins
  With their daughter’s birthday approaching just ahead of Earth Day, Sally and Robert find the tables turned as their daughter and son-in-law present them a very unusual “gift.”
• EARTHWORKS by Doug Decatur
  Love for our Earth began at Fort Ancient and the Hopewell Tribe.
• IT’S THE ECOLOGY, STUPID by Susan Medure Decatur
  Things ain’t what they used to be, or are they?
• THE EARTH DAY PLAY (NO PAGEANT) by Alan Jozwiak
  Socially conscious middle-schoolers find some unexpected benefits to recycling while protesting their school’s Earth Day Play [no—Pageant!]
• EXPRESS YOU LOVE by Rick Schoeff
  A grandparent, deeply troubled by their sensitive, young granddaughter’s depression over the state of the environment and the politics that seem to deny the problems, has returned to a psychotherapist.
• C.C.N.A. (CONCERNED CRYPTIDS OF NORTH AMERICA) by Rose Vanden Eynden
  Concerned about the escalating climate crisis, a group of cryptids meet to discuss their options to save their world.

• Tue, April 16 at 7:30pm

Official page | Facebook event |