Full Length

Paradise

Moving in with his uncle Mateo seemed like a great way for Charles to save money (and avoid his mother) (and his mother’s new girlfriend). But as Charles and Mateo embark on their own quests for romance, the tiny gay community in their small town suddenly becomes even smaller, especially after their circle is struck by an unexpected tragedy.. A complicated web of intergenerational gay relationships forces this unlikely constellation of queer people to reexamine everything they thought they knew about themselves and their assumed community.  (7m, 2w, 1nb)

Optimism

Jessica and Nathan Bach, two college professors happily in a lavender marriage, resettle in North Carolina after their communist sympathies cost them their jobs. Their teenaged son’s slow recovery from Polio is balanced by Jessica’s scholarship to help draft the Environmental Protection Act: modern industry is saving her son’s life in the same timeline it’s destroying the planet. The explosive and contradictory psychology of 1960’s America comes into sharp focus in the story of a family’s fight to care for each other. (4M, 4W)

Developmental support provided by the Queens Council for the Arts in 2022 as well as the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Jo & Laurie

A contemporary take on a beloved classic: Jo March and Theodore “Laurie” Laurence III are best friends in Concord, MA. And they’re both gay. The familiar love between these two best friends is expanded into an exploration of queer friendship. (1m, 1w)

Developmental support provided by the Queens Council for the Arts, 2019. Finalist for the Princess Grace award, 2020

And One

Max is secretly taking basketball lessons to impress his new boyfriend Jordan’s six-year-old basketball-obsessed brother. As Max and Jordan learn what it means to be in a relationship, they’re forced to confront their understandings biological and chosen family. Semifinalist for the O’Neill New Play Conference. (2m, 1w)

Short Pieces

“Trudy, Carolyn, Martha , and Regina Travel to Outer Space and Have a Pretty Terrible Time There”

A crew of astronauts share the quiet beauty of infinite space and a peaceful reflection on our place in the universe. But it's been nineteen weeks. And that's just about long enough. (4w)

Premiered in Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival of New American Plays, 2016, directed by Jessica Fisch.

Licensing info here.

“The Tire”

Inspired by the painting Tire Jumping in Front of My Window by Allan Rohan Crite, this 20-minute solo performance piece brings the characters in the painting to vivid new life: an original, fantastical tale of a group of children on a hot Boston summer day who discover an old tire in a junkyard. Before they know it, they’re off on an adventure they’ll never forget.

“The Tire” was commissioned by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and was performed annually in 2017-2019 by Deaf actor Elbert Joseph in American Sign Language.

To inquire about any of these pieces, please contact James directly at jamesholodkennedy [at] gmail [dot] com.