CRAZY BETTY *: Charlotte’s most recent play is a darkly comedic adventure of two Alabama women trying to beat a system run by a bunch of local male dimwits. The play had a well-received reading in NYC and went on to be a finalist (one of 67 plays chosen out of 1400 submissions ) in the prestigious O’Neill 2019 National Playwrights Conference. It was also a semi-finalist in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the Austin Film and Writer’s Conference 2018 and in the Bechdel Test Festival 2019. (The play is available on the New Play Exchange or by contacting us.)
ALABAMA BOUND*: Charlotte’s acclaimed play that was selected for the NYC International Fringe Festival and then chosen by Indie Theatre Now as one of the “Best of the 2013 New York Fringe” Collection. Its success in New York followed sold-out runs in both San Francisco and Sacramento, California. The play recently opened the 41st season for the Lighthouse Repertory Theatre in Crescent City, CA and also was produced by the Rogue Theatre in Wisconsin.
BIRMINGHAM BLUES * Her play about Grace, a former doctor now living out of her car in a homeless encampment in Birmingham, Alabama, is the story of a community of society’s misfits and throwaways who survive their desperate situation with creativity, humor, lies and thievery. The play had well received readings in NYC and Oakland, CA. It has a sold-out run at the Wilkerson Theatre in Sacramento, raising more than $2000 for homeless organizations in the area. It was a Bay Area Playwrights Festival semi-finalist and awarded Outstanding Achievement for Original Script by the Sacramento Area Regional Theatre Alliance. (The play is available on the New Play Exchange.)
VARIOUS SHORT WORKS:
“Mama Won’t Stay Dead” is a darkly comedic glimpse into a Southern family’s multi-generational legacy of lies, deceit and violence. Charr, Helen’s daughter, is rehearsing her recently-deceased mother’s eulogy at the funeral home while Helen lies in the nearby coffin waiting for the funeral to begin. Helen decides to rise from the dead to correct what she considers her daughter’s lame testament to her motherliness. The two exchange insults. But ultimately, Charr refuses to let her mother stay dead until she gets the answer to a long buried family secret. “MAMA” was one of 30 plays chosen out of more than 900 submissions to be presented in the 44th Annual Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival in New York City in August 2019.
The Kitchen Table*, about an old man, a trailer park, and a gun.
9-1-1: A police dispatcher, preparing to leave on a long-awaited vacation to an Indian casino with her no-good boyfriend, receives a frantic call from a child in trouble.
The Trophy Wife: A very unhappily married couple goes on a safari at a Texas wild-game park with disastrous, albeit darkly humorous, consequences.
Blue Hairs: A long-married lesbian couple of a certain age goes to a steamy movie about a young gay love affair, leaving the theater amazed and aroused.
No Breathing Room: A monologue about a woman at a desperate point in her life dealing with her downtrodden husband Donald and tyrannical mother-in-law Noonie.
FICTION
BLUE MONDAY: Charlotte’s psychological suspense novel about a woman who returns to San Francisco to find out why her young daughter jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.
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Charlotte Higgins
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