THE STORIES: Prelude to a Crisis by Ari Roth. A traveling teacher up for reappointment becomes obsessed by a student's "glistening brown lip gloss" and, for the first time in his marriage and career, contemplates giving in to temptation. She invites herself up to his hotel room, ostensibly in need of special instruction, and brings along her laptop. He presses her cursor. Together they scroll through her incendiary new story as the flirtation of earlier office-hour banter gives way to sobering reality when the student becomes the bearer of some most destabilizing news. She leaves. He knows he has a crisis to report home to his wife. (1 man, 1 woman.)
Plan Day by Leslie Ayvazian. One woman plays a mother to her only child, a son, in four different stages of her life: her 30s, 40s, 50s, and 70s. Each monologue begins "lights up" and ends with "blackout." This connotes the beginning and end of a day, as each decade passes and her love for her son ages and ripens. (1 woman.)
Mary MacGregor by Keith Alan Benjamin. A young widow laments the loss of her husband while unbeknownst to her, his spirit is in the room, listening. (1 man, 1 woman.)
