Thanatron
A Comedy in Two Acts
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The housekeeper saves the day!
  • 2017, National Finalist, LezPlay Screenplay and Stage Play Contest, Chicago.
  • Published in Three Comedies, Gage Press.
  • Reading by invitation, at Pen and Brush Club, NYC.
  • Named one of the “Best Productions of the Year,” The Portland Phoenix, Portland, ME.
  • Cauldron & Labrys, Portland, ME.

"The play follows the family... as they struggle with the concepts of leaving and remembering... audience members laughing their heads off as the death machine is erected on stage."-- The Portland Phoenix.

This is a rollicking farce about the world’s most dysfunctional family, a doctor with a penchant for assisted suicide, and a lesbian housekeeper with a crush on her employer. An over-the-top comedy about leaving, being left, and what it takes to stay.

The play opens a few hours before Molly Hawthorne’s assisted-suicide, going-away party. Molly, a depressed, middle-class housewife, has become distressed by what she perceives as a loss of memory that has impaired her ability to function as a perfect wife and mother. Convinced that suicide is an empowering choice, she encounters a snag in her plans when she attempts to recruit her lesbian housekeeper to bartend for the party.

Dani, an Italian butch, is appalled by Molly’s project and disgusted with her family for supporting it. She teams up with Caitlin, the ten-year-old, tomgirl daughter, to sabotage Thanatron, the notorious “death machine” for the doctor-assisted suicide.

Thanatron relies on a sodium pentathol intervenous drip to render the “patient” drowsy enough to trigger the lethal chemical that will stop the heart. When the sodium pentathol dose is altered, Molly finds that, instead of losing consciousness, she is regaining her memories—including memories of repressed childhood trauma.

A satiric commentary on a culture that would rather see its women dead than telling the truth, Thanatron deconstructs the social machinery that makes death an appealing alternative for the old, the disabled, the single, and the lesbian.

Five women, five men, one girl, and a variable number of adult extras
Single set
Two hours