SELECTED PLAYS
Jeffrey Harper's plays have been produced and received staged readings in New York, Los Angeles and London. He has won the Playwrights First Award, a Canada Council grant in playwriting, a writer-in-residence fellowship from New River Dramatists and was named a Finalist in MultiStages 2011 New Play Contest. He was commissioned by Sundog Theatre to write the book and lyrics for the musical If You Could See: The Alice Austen Story, which premiered in New York in November 2011. His plays have been presented by actors including Tony Award nomineees Jayne Atkinson and Tim Daly, and by Andrew McCarthy, David Margulies, Richard Portnow, Bruce Davison, Michel Gill, Stephen Lang and others.
Jeffrey Harper's plays have been produced and received staged readings in New York, Los Angeles and London. He has won the Playwrights First Award, a Canada Council grant in playwriting, a writer-in-residence fellowship from New River Dramatists and was named a Finalist in MultiStages 2011 New Play Contest. He was commissioned by Sundog Theatre to write the book and lyrics for the musical If You Could See: The Alice Austen Story, which premiered in New York in November 2011. His plays have been presented by actors including Tony Award nomineees Jayne Atkinson and Tim Daly, and by Andrew McCarthy, David Margulies, Richard Portnow, Bruce Davison, Michel Gill, Stephen Lang and others.
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EDEN: Eden is the story of Sarah and Philip Kane, a prosperous Connecticut couple living in Rome, Italy, recovering from their recent ordeal in Rwanda. Set in 1994 in a Roman art school studio where Philip is pursuing sculpting lessons from the volcanic Alfredo Savarese and his beautiful model Victoria, the play explores the Kanes’ struggle to fashion new lives for themselves out of the unspeakable horror of the Rwandan genocide and a secret from their buried Rwandan past that will test the limits of their love. (2f, 2m)
“This is a wonderful play…Eden is a beautiful and timely story, challenging our ‘out of sight out of mind’ consciousness [and] an absorbing exploration into the role art plays in counteracting our need to bury truths we’d rather forget.” - Daryl Roth, Daryl Roth Productions, New York “This is an extraordinary script... It is one of the best scripts I have read in many years.” - D. Lynn Meyers, Producing Artistic Director, Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati Read an excerpt of Eden - A Play by Jeffrey Harper ... |
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REMEMBRANCE: In this imaginative and expressionistic meditation on memory and enduring love, set in Moscow in the 1930s, three lifelong friends – Mikhail, Nikolai and Mariya – encounter the savant Solomon Shereshevsky, a man with infinite memory, as they desperately attempt to survive Stalin’s Terror and make life and death choices about who and what they will choose to remember. Mikhail, recently returned from Paris, attempts to hide and avoid history, Nikolai, a history professor and agent of the secret police hopes to survive by going along, while Mariya, a librarian fights the authorities to save her father. Each must choose between life and death and what each of them will remember. Finalist in the 2011 MultiStages New Play Contest. (2f, 5m)
Read an excerpt of Remembrance - A Play By Jeffrey Harper... |
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If You Could See: The Alice Austen Story (Book & Lyrics by Jeffrey Harper, Music by Louis Tucci, Additional Music by Jeffrey Harper): Commissioned by Sundog Theatre, premiered New York, November 2011. If You Could See: The Alice Austen Story tells the true riches to rags to redemption story of Alice Austen – a pioneering photographer and iconic feminist hero – whose images recorded the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the worlds that were transformed, created and lost. Her photographs are a story of her age. Her life is a story of freedom. Alice Austen’s indomitable, individualistic spirit – and her commitment to live and die by the consequences of her free will and actions – defined her life and her work, portrayed in this panoramic musical that encompasses her life, her photographs and the tumultuous worlds of America that were born and lost. (4f, 3m) Read an excerpt of If You Could See: The Alice Austen Story - Book & Lyrics by Jeffrey Harper, Music by Louis Tucci...
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IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW: Winner Of The Playwrights First Award, a national literary prize, In the Valley of the Shadow is based on the true story of Daniel Judgeson (a pseudonym), a mentally retarded, schizophrenic African-American teenager and choir boy, who, after reading the 23rd Psalm from a Bible in a New York police station, confessed specifically and accurately to the brutal rape murder of a woman in his apartment building – and then claimed his innocence. This true crime drama, performed with gospel music, is the story of Daniel’s defense by Tom Harrison, a burned out, contemptuous defense attorney who joins forces with Alison Powell, an African-American psychologist, to save Daniel from prison. To understand Daniel and why he would confess, Tom returns repeatedly to his estranged brother Peter, meeting him in the confessional of Peter's church in East Harlem for bitter questioning that turns to outrage when Tom learns that Peter possesses deeper knowledge of Daniel's case than he has admitted. A play about faith and doubt, knowing, not knowing, where nothing, neither guilt nor race, are matters of black and white. (4m, 1f) Read an excerpt of In The Valley of the Shadow - A Play by Jeffrey Harper...
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MY MARINERS – A Murder Mystery Drama with Traditional American Music By Damon DiMarco And Jeffrey Harper: Inspired by real places and events, My Mariners is set in 1883 at Sailors Snug Harbor, Staten Island. The play tells the story of Captain Charles Reinbeck, a disgraced sea captain, who comes from Manhattan to the Sailors Snug Harbor in response to a mysterious and ominous letter. When he arrives, he learns of a sailor’s brutal, vicious murder – “gutted like a fish” on the grounds of Snug Harbor. Captain Reinbeck enters a maze of mystery and contradictory tales – from the Harbor’s authoritarian Governor Thomas Brack and his assistant Enoch Fancher – to a group of angry disgruntled sailors, led by seaman Will Garland. Each step of Reinbeck’s investigation leads him deeper into Sailors Snug Harbor’s cruel secrets and the hidden brutality, with more confounding discoveries – until Reinbeck, confronted with his own shameful past, must choose between the safety of resignation and the danger of fulfilling his mission to lead and save his fellow mariners. Commissioned and produced by Sundog Theatre. (7m, addition female chorus roles optional)
Read an excerpt of My Mariners - A Murder Mystery Drama with Traditional American Music by Damon DiMarco and Jeffrey Harper... |
THE APPASSIONATA - A Play by Jeffrey Harper (Based on the play Minuet in a Minefield by Cornelia Ravenal): The Appassionata is the story of the Marks family: Joel Marks, a once great, now failing, classical pianist, and Pauline Marks, an interior designer, and their daughter Nicole, a sensitive, troubled twenty-two year-old girl on leave from music conservatory. The play portrays the systematic destruction of Nicole’s life by her brilliant, charismatic, narcissistic parents – and her struggle for freedom.
The main action of the play takes place when Nicole Marks is 22, on leave from music conservatory and recovering from a hospitalization, with brief flashbacks 9 years earlier to a happier time in the life of the Marks family. The narrative begins with the Marks family in a state of financial crisis. Living a life of wealth and luxury in Larchmont, New York, beyond their diminishing means – a fact which they do everything to conceal – Pauline Marks has entered the world of black market dealing in antiquities to save the family from ruin and disgrace. She plots her financial salvation with the help of Tom Davidson, her young and handsome partner – who is also an aspiring photojournalist seeking her help. Joel, Pauline’s husband, can only dwell on his diminished career as a concert pianist and ignores the increasing and ominous press of creditors and the IRS with blither indifference, as he pursues his grandiose plans to return to concert performance.
Stuck between the parents – and their demands on her for performance and perfection – is their daughter Nicole. Both Joel and Pauline have designs for Nicole’s life, which they demand with subtle, exacting cruelty and seduction – while ignoring her evident suffering and slow slide into emotional collapse, as Nicole attempts, with increasing pain and futility, to satisfy and placate her parents’ need for aggrandizement. In the course of the play, with its brief flashbacks to a happier time, we witness Joel and Pauline’s separate and increasingly desperate struggles to preserve their brittle shells of their once perfect lives – and their use of Nicole to serve their own needs – while Nicole fights to preserve her life from their insidious ambitions – until she must choose between her family’s destruction and the destruction of her life.
Classical music, particularly the work of Beethoven, is an integral component of the play – acting as a virtual character in the drama – embodied in Beethoven’s alternating solemn, wild and tempestuous Appassionata sonata. (3f, 2m)
Read an excerpt of THE APPASSIONATA - A Play by Jeffrey Harper (Based on Minuet in a Minefield by Cornelia Ravenal)...
The main action of the play takes place when Nicole Marks is 22, on leave from music conservatory and recovering from a hospitalization, with brief flashbacks 9 years earlier to a happier time in the life of the Marks family. The narrative begins with the Marks family in a state of financial crisis. Living a life of wealth and luxury in Larchmont, New York, beyond their diminishing means – a fact which they do everything to conceal – Pauline Marks has entered the world of black market dealing in antiquities to save the family from ruin and disgrace. She plots her financial salvation with the help of Tom Davidson, her young and handsome partner – who is also an aspiring photojournalist seeking her help. Joel, Pauline’s husband, can only dwell on his diminished career as a concert pianist and ignores the increasing and ominous press of creditors and the IRS with blither indifference, as he pursues his grandiose plans to return to concert performance.
Stuck between the parents – and their demands on her for performance and perfection – is their daughter Nicole. Both Joel and Pauline have designs for Nicole’s life, which they demand with subtle, exacting cruelty and seduction – while ignoring her evident suffering and slow slide into emotional collapse, as Nicole attempts, with increasing pain and futility, to satisfy and placate her parents’ need for aggrandizement. In the course of the play, with its brief flashbacks to a happier time, we witness Joel and Pauline’s separate and increasingly desperate struggles to preserve their brittle shells of their once perfect lives – and their use of Nicole to serve their own needs – while Nicole fights to preserve her life from their insidious ambitions – until she must choose between her family’s destruction and the destruction of her life.
Classical music, particularly the work of Beethoven, is an integral component of the play – acting as a virtual character in the drama – embodied in Beethoven’s alternating solemn, wild and tempestuous Appassionata sonata. (3f, 2m)
Read an excerpt of THE APPASSIONATA - A Play by Jeffrey Harper (Based on Minuet in a Minefield by Cornelia Ravenal)...
