Playwright

2401 Allen Blvd.
Beachwood, OH  44122
Phone: (216) 292-6211
Email: fsholiton@gmail.com

www.fayesplays.com

Faye Sholiton has developed her work at Cleveland Play House (1996-2011) and Dobama Theatre (2009-present). Her full-length plays have been performed more than 4 dozen times throughout the U.S. and in London, receiving four Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence grants and dozens of regional and national awards. Her play THE INTERVIEW is published by Speert Publishing. Scenes from THE INTERVIEW, V-E DAY, ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL and TELLING LIVES appear in multiple anthologies. She is currently shopping her screenplay, FREE HOWARD MECHANIC, recipient of a 2020 Individual Artist Grant, her fifth, from the Ohio Arts Council. Sholiton writes extensively about theater and teaches playwriting, most memorably to cruise ship passengers. From 2009-2016,, she served as Regional Representative to the Dramatists Guild. In 2011, she founded Interplay Jewish Theatre to revive a nearly century-old tradition in Cleveland. Through Interplay, she produces free staged readings of plays that view the contemporary world through a Jewish lens.

Play Roster

THE INTERVIEW
(drama), set in the home of a Holocaust survivor, explores the impact of silence in families. The play takes place on the day the survivor meets her interviewer, the child of other survivors, to record eyewitness testimony for posterity. “What begins as a simple history project,” says Chester Theatre Company, “blossoms into a story of mothers and daughters forgiving and being forgiven.” National honors: Winner, Dayton FutureFest; Midwest Theatre Network (MN); and Charlotte New Play Festival. Finalist in several other competitions; and winner of a $5,000 Ohio Arts Council (OAC) Individual Artists Grant. Scenes published in two Smith & Kraus anthologies (1998). The play has had more than three dozen readings and productions from New York to L.A.; and is featured in Gene A. Plunka’s book Holocaust Theater: Dramatizing Survivor Trauma and Its Effects of the Second Generation (Routledge Publishing, London, 2018).  (3 mature women; one young man; unit set)

THE GOOD TIMES
(newsroom comedy) is set in the fictional Good, Ohio, where bad things happen to Good people. A sleepy newsroom run by four women comes alive with the arrival of a newly minted journalism school graduate. Before long, they are at odds with the First Amendment, a special prosecutor, and each other. Finalist in three national contests. (5 F; 2M, and a flexible set that suggests multiple locales)

A FORM OF HOPE
(a memory play), written to honor David Mark Berger, the Cleveland-born athlete slain along with 10 other members of the 1972 Israeli Olympic team. Commissioned by the Cleveland JCC, it is a gathering of family and friends who come together to remember David. In articulating their memories, they discover how little they knew him. But this doesn’t minimize the ache of his loss, more than 30 years after his death. (8M; 4F, and a flexible set with special lights and video projections. It’s a lyrical piece done in presentational style).

TELLING LIVES
(drama, with comedy) is the story of a 54-year-old copy editor whose mother arrives one night with a 237-page draft manuscript of her “autobiography.” As the daughter attempts to edit her mother’s life, she discovers some startling truths about her own. When she realizes what prompted the memoir, she understands her mother’s urgency to be sure nothing is left unsaid. Winner of an OAC grant, the play has had multiple readings and productions. It is featured in Mother/Daughter Monologues (International Centre for Women Playwrights, 2009).  (3F, two contrasting living room sets).

V-E DAY
(a light drama/memory play) inspired by a box of actual wartime newsletters. On May 8, 2003, an elderly widow’s normal routine of barking at her daughter, Aimee, and watching the Home Shopping Network is interrupted with the arrival of a visitor from her past. He brings a box of newsletters that Mom had once edited for Jewish Clevelanders in the service. The visit stirs a pot of old memories, including the one love of her life that she let slip away. While the elderly pair revisit the heady days of World War II, Aimee is able to see her mother young again, for one day. Honored in four national contests and by an Ohio Arts Council Grant, V-E day has been fully staged and featured in multiple staged readings. Portions appear in Scenes and Monologs from Best Plays II (Meriwether, 2007); and Duos! Best Scenes for the 21st Century (Applause, 2009). (4F; 2M, and one little girl. Unit set.) The late Norman Corwin, poet laureate of the Greatest Generation, gave the script his seal of approval.

ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL
(drama) What happens when a liberal Jewish teacher receives a pink slip from her school board, following a layoff decision based solely on skin color? In this fictional story inspired by an actual Supreme Court case, she becomes involved in a reverse discrimination lawsuit that she detests – and loses nearly everything else in the process. All Things Being Equal explores the racial divide in contemporary America, and in one human heart. A finalist in three national contests, it won an Ohio Arts Council grant. The script has been read from London to L.A. Scenes appear in Duos! Best Scenes for the 21st Century (Applause, 2009); and Scenes from a Diverse World (International Centre for Women Playwrights, 2012).  (2F; 5 or 6M. Flexible set suggested by movable pieces and lights; some video recommended).

U.S. v. HOWARD MECHANIC
(dramatic adaptation of Fugitive Candidate, A Memoir by Howard Mechanic, The Last Prisoner of the Vietnam War). The life of a Shaker Heights High School classmate took a significant detour on the evening of May 4, 1970. Washington University senior Howard Mechanic was arrested at an antiwar rally, found guilty on the false charge of interfering with police, and sentenced to five years in federal prison. Instead of serving time, he went underground, to emerge as Scottsdale entrepreneur Gary Tredway. There he might have lived out his life had he not decided to become a civic leader and run for public office. The play is about a fellow who keeps trying to repair the world, even after the world has demonstrated it has no use for his services. (2F; 6M, a flexible set suggesting multiple locales in and out of prison. She has further explored the story in her screenplay Free Howard Mechanic.

PANAMA

(drama) An American geologist visits her brother, a Catholic priest, in Panama, to resolve medical decisions for their terminally-ill mother. Somewhere along the way, Mother’s own wishes have been hijacked. As her children insist on their own answers in this winner-take-all debate, they soon learn from the endangered local landscape that perhaps it’s time to reframe the questions. (2F; 2 M)

LONGER ONE-ACTS

ABOVE & BEYOND (40 minutes)

(drama) It’s October 1973 and the U.S. military is on heightened (DEFCON III) alert. Two young Air Force officers report to their underground missile launch silo knowing that this might be the day they have both trained for and dreaded. As the tension escalates inside and outside their concrete bunker, they dare to think about their own role in history and what kind of life they might anticipate when and if the alert is finally lifted. Premiered in 2018. (2 M)

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MAH JONGG (35 minutes)

(comedy for mature women) This piece, set around a card table, explores what decades of weekly get-togethers meant to one quartet of women. It also looks at the impact on these women when their game suddenly disbanded with no explanation. The action takes place on the day 22 years after their break-up, that the women return to sort out an old affront they never knew had occurred. Performed on stages and in women’s organizations all over the country. (6F)

PLAYING DIRTY (65 minutes)

(drama for youth audiences) This piece looks at what happens when adults fail to model civility and respect for their children. In Playing Dirty, high school football players start a racial incident at a game. When it appears that no adult is stepping forward to help them sort out their atrocious behavior, the kids must find their own way back to human decency. (2F; 4M)

A DEATH IN THE CITY (65 minutes)

(drama) An African-American woman offers a power point narration of a sad piece of local history: the death of Bruce Klunder, a 26-year-old white Protestant minister who was protesting segregation in the city’s schools. She plays all the roles in the story, including eyewitnesses, fellow CORE members, Klunder’s family and the reporter who tied to piece together what happened 30 years later. The retelling becomes the woman’s path to understanding her own life: how segregation can become destiny. (1F)

For more details on these and other scripts, visit www.fayesplays.com.