Work samples

  • Under Poplar Trees sample.pdf
     
    When a realist meets an idealist on the blood-soaked ground of a concentration camp, his life is forever changed...
    Under The Poplar Trees dramatizes the horrific, but life-affirming encounter between two prisoners...Meyer, a prisoner at the concentration camp at Dachau, is joined in the barracks by a newcomer, Josef. The two vary greatly in temperament, but bit by bit, they become friends.
    Josef is a dreamer, bent on seeing life as an unfolding miracle. Whether he’s focused on a cockroach crawling after crumbs on the floor, or bursting into song, his endlessly inventive mind becomes a balm for Meyer, his stronger, but less imaginative friend. Josef even fixes on the minutiae of mathematics to help them both get through having to stand at attention for hours in the bitter cold.


  • JUDY 5 page excerpt.pdf
    Against all odds, a woman outsmarts and destroys a powerful man… That’s the story of Judy And The General, a flip, musical take on the Biblical book of Judith, replete with love, death, violence and sex… Back in the 1st century B.C.E., Judy is living hand-to-mouth, when she meets a wealthy landowner. They fall in love and marry, but when he dies suddenly, she goes into deep mourning. Meanwhile, the king, in a far-off palace, decides he wants to be emperor of the planet. (Why are there always guys like this?) The king sends his powerful general, Holofernes, to conquer the world. The army lays waste to every hamlet and village in the countryside, finally coming to Judy’s birthplace. Desperate to save her town from destruction, Judy goes to Holofernes’ camp, where he is captivated by her beauty. She tricks him into letting down his guard and beheads him with his own scimitar, thus saving not only her town, but all of Judea as well.
  • SHARDS sample.pdf
    SHARDS – THE AFTERMATH OF VIOLENCE Eight actors, 4 male, 4 female, play multiple characters, for a total of 36 roles… It’s a rainy Monday morning in a noisy high school hallway. Four teenagers are venting about classes, parents, and the opposite sex when another teen opens fire and adolescent angst turns to tragedy. Frantic parents face their worst nightmare, while the shooter’s parents walk into a different kind of horror. Their son has killed four kids and they don’t know why. The families of the slain students sue in civil court. They name, as defendants, not only the gunman, but also his parents, his teachers, the principal, his friends, and the entertainment companies that produced the movies he watched and the games he played. But ultimately, the case against all, save one, is thrown out. The shooter alone is deemed culpable.
  • In The Tank sample.pdf
    “If you spend all your time pretending to be dead, what’s the point of being alive?” That’s the question the philosophical Stu puts to Harry when they meet in a restaurant lobster tank. The cunning, clever Harry has been playing dead to avoid becoming someone’s dinner entrée. (Yes. Stu and Harry are lobsters.) Eventually, the two crustaceans trade philosophical observations and move toward understanding as they share thoughts about life, death, and the humans who wield dominion over all. Everything, says Stu, is just another turn in life’s endless maze. And, quoting a scroll found in the Dead Sea, he adds...none there be can rehearse the whole tale…

About Rosemary

Produced on 4 continents, Rosemary FrisinoToohey has had more than 425 productions of her plays around the world. Making people laugh is a big deal ---12 of her comedies are now published--- although she enjoys writing serious work as well and has penned award-winning plays on death, the Holocaust, the Italian internment in WWII, school shootings, and the life of a garbageman. Writing in an anthropomorphic vein has become a real niche. She's given angst and human preoccupations… more

Socks---Left Behind

It’s NO EXIT meets FINDING NEMO---in a laundromat.
 
A tale of abandonment, rejection and hope in the confines of a clothes dryer.  Left behind by careless owners, three socks and a leg warmer debate their plight. The play attempts to answer the nagging question…where do missing socks go???

  • SOCKS---Left Behind.pdf
    It’s NO EXIT meets FINDING NEMO---in a laundromat. A tale of abandonment, rejection and hope in the confines of a clothes dryer. Left behind by careless owners, three socks and a leg warmer debate their plight. The play attempts to answer the nagging question…where do missing socks go???

The Garbageman

The Garbageman won an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council, 
          was a Finalist at both Dreamcatcher Repertory Theatre (now VIVID Stage) in Summit, NJ, & FutureFest at the Dayton Playhouse in Ohio, 
                  a Semi-Finalist in both the Southwest Theatre Play Competition, Austin, TX &  the New Play Festival at Centre Stage, Greenville, SC,
and, First Prize winner, the Carol Weinberg Award, in the Baltimore Playwrights Festival
       as well as Winner of the Oglebay Institute Towngate National Theatre Contest in Wheeling, WV.



  • GARBAGEMAN.pdf
    Larry is a garbageman, and he likes picking up trash just fine. He’s got his routine, he’s bright, and he’s got a way with women. In his view, trash collection ranks up there with the important jobs---and that view holds---until the day he finds more than trash in a trash bag. That’s when an awful discovery prompts bad decisions on his part and ends with his arrest. His story is a modern one, replete with socially conscious themes, and it plays out across the backchannels of urban life in the big city.

    The Garbageman won the artist an Individual Award from the Maryland State Arts Council, was a Finalist at Dreamcatcher Repertory Theatre (now VIVID Stage) Summit, NJ as well as at FutureFest at the Dayton Playhouse and won First Prize, the Carol Weinberg Award in the Baltimore Playwrights Festival as well as the Oglebay Institute Towngate Theatre National Contest in Wheeling, WV

Gladys In Wonderland

“You get up one day, eat a donut, read the paper, and some clown in a Good Humor suit says you’re going to die…”  That’s Gladys’ dilemma in this bittersweet comedy about living and dying. 

50 productions across the US, Canada, Mexico and the U.K.
  • Gladys In Wonderland.pdf
    “You get up one day, eat a donut, read the paper, and some clown in a Good Humor suit says you’re going to die…” That’s Gladys’ dilemma in this bittersweet comedy about living and dying. 50 productions in the US, Canada, Mexico and the U.K.

The Body Washer

A young Iraqi woman has been killed at a military checkpoint and her death is seen through three sets of eyes: those of the body washer who prepares her body for burial, those of the National Guard soldier who fired the weapon that killed her, and those of a reporter, recording the daily tally of death and destruction in war.

The Body Washer premiered in New York  and has been produced more than a dozen times in the US and U.K.
  • THE BODY WASHER.pdf
    A young Iraqi woman has been killed at a military checkpoint and her death is seen through three sets of eyes: those of the body washer who prepares her body for burial, those of the National Guard soldier who fired the weapon that killed her, and those of a reporter, recording the daily tally of death and destruction in war.