ONE ACTS

   
     
 

BETWEEN HAWK AND BUZZARD

A view of life in the Virginia border county of Loudoun during the Civil War reveals complex relationships and new perspectives on the most dangerous time in American History.  This living history play features dramatic readings from civilian and soldier diaries and letters interwoven with music and drawn together with a narrated overview of Loudoun County, Virginia's Civil War experience. The play was first commissioned by The Loudoun Museum to celebrate the Museum's 25th Anniversary in 1994 and featured music provided by Dr. Paul Cooksey and professors and students of the Shenandoah Conservatory.


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Premiered: 1994, Loudoun Museum 25th Anniversary Celebration
Cast: 14
Length: 45 minutes
Performance Rights: Meredith Bean McMath
     
     
     
 

CASE 22


A dark farce that explores the very real issue of physically abused children trapped between courts and home.
Premiered: 2010, produced by Run Rabbit Run Theatre at the 2010 Capital Fringe Festival, Washington, D.C.
Find out more...


Cast: 8
Length: 30 minutes
Read D.C Theatre Scene's RAVE REVIEW
View ROBERT W. TOPE PHOTOS
Performance Rights: Meredith Bean McMath
     
     
     
 

THE UNION BALL


Based on a true story from Taylorstown, Virginia, The Union Ball was created for The Loudoun Museum's
"Road To Antietam" living history weekend in Leesburg, Virginia (1995). During this 30-minute production,
members of The Loudoun Rangers (the only Union troop ever formed in Virginia) are holding a dance in the Union town of Taylorstown in otherwise pro-Confederate Loudoun County, Virginia.

Susan Stevens and Amy Ulland in the original production

As they begin another dance, Confederate cavalry soldiers of the 35th Battalion burst in. The Confederates begin to take prisoners, when Molly Anderson runs to the Confederate Lieutentant, throws her arms about his neck, and begins to beg him not to send her brother to prison. Deeply affected by the display, the Lieutenant promised to give her brother parole on one condition: that Molly dance the next sette with him. The Confederates then took partners and proceeded to dance.

Events are taken directly from an account of the ball written by Loudoun Ranger Briscoe
Goodhart in his biographical history, The Independent Loudoun Rangers (Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg). The
production ends as the Confederates leave, and two young men, enraged by what they've seen, vow to sign
up with The Loudoun Rangers the very next day.

Cast: 35

Length: 30 minutes
Performance Rights: Meredith Bean McMath

 
     
     
     
 

WATERFORD'S WAR


Commissioned by The Newseum in Arlington to be presented in conjunction with its 2001 "War Stories" exhibit, this 30-minute, narrated living history play brings to life the true story of Civil War journalists Lida and Lizzie Dutton and Sarah Steer. Under constant threat of Confederate reprisal, they wrote a pro-Union newspaper out of Confederate Virginia and sent the subscription monies north for Union Soldiers' Aid. Highly educated and well-ahead of their time, they are the only women known to have created a pro-Union newspaper during the Civil War.
Premiered: 2001, The Newseum (commissioned and produced in conjunction with the "War Stories" exhibit)


No set

Cast: 8
Length: 45 minutes
Performance Rights: Meredith Bean McMath

This play is 30-minute summary version of McMath's two-act play, ALL FOR THE UNION in Confederate Virginia!

For more information on the true history of Lida, Lizzie and Sarah, read McMath's "Bent on Having Their Own Way: Three Women Journalists of the Civil War."