Joan Sween

I wrote my first play in fourth grade—a puppet drama—and we produced it! Fourth grade, but still pretty exciting to me. Since then I have always loved theatre. My college degrees are in English and theatre, and I have acted and directed for educational, community, and repertory theatres and local radio and television. I am a former regional vice-president of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, and the founder of the Rochester Playwright Festival. At the risk of sounding sappy, I feel almost spiritual about theatre. It can be entertainment, it can be therapy, it can change hearts, it can move nations.

Sort by

Display per page

Southern Surrender

Melodrama by Joan Sween

48 pages

3 m, 6 w

Aurelia Archibald, a Southern widow, and her four daughters are all that remain on Archibald Plantation when it is taken over by Union forces. Expecting Northerners to be heartless brutes, they are confounded when the Yankees treat them courteously. The villain of the piece – actually a villainess – is the beautiful but treacherous Gardenia Galsworthy. She is determined to save her plantation from destruction by revealing to the Yankees where the Archibalds have hidden their jewels. Little does she realize they are also hiding Beauregard Burnside, a Confedera...

Murder by Accident

Farce by Joan Sween

67 pages

10 m (doubling possible), 6 w

Elaine has had enough. Ralph, her exasperating, risk-taking husband, has got to go. With the help of Pookie, her younger sister; Anthony “Prettyboy” Ferrari, her father; and Rudy Gambruzzo, her father’s personal assistant, Elaine sets out to stage an accident that will rid her of marital stress. In the space of one morning, Elaine accidentally gets the pool guy and the mailman killed before finally clobbering Ralph. Then she learns that Ralph must be alive that afternoon to sign a vital contract or she will be not only happily widowed, but unhappily bankrupt....