Nikki Harmon - Artist & Playwright
Two Acts & Full Lengths
A KIND OF MADNESS
Satire - 6/m/1/w - 1987 in the USSR - Moscow and a Siberian labor camp.
Applying for an exit visa subjected you to imprisonment in labor camps and psycho-prisons. To want to leave the Motherland the State said you must be mad. This is that kind of madness. An arbeter leads the audience on a journey, as Aleksandr Dubinsky is arrested in Moscow for stepping on the flowers in a public park, tried in the Kafkaesque courts and sent to Siberia for tampering with a mail box in his jail cell.
Production History
Finalist................. Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
Production........... Leah Posluns Theatre, Toronto, Ontrio, Canada
Production........... Cerritos College, Orig. Theatre Works, Norwalk, CA
Staged Reading... McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ
Finalist................. Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park
Semi-Finalist........ Denver Center Theatre Co., Primafacie
"The satire in A Kind of Madness lies somewhere between a
Siberian M*A*S*H and a KGB Catch 22 with dark undertones
of an Alice in Gulagland. Not your average evening in theatre."
BOB PENNINGTON, Toronto Sunday Sun
"An offer you can't Refusnik!"
TED LOVISCEK, Toronto Tonight
. . . AND THEN THAT HAPPENED
Satire - 3w/4m - 6 os voices - A typical home in Middle-America, in the not too distant future.
The government’s passed a clean air bill, only it’s their air they’re keeping clean, by putting a solar dome over Washington, and all the state capitals. The problem comes when a heat build-up under the dome causes Washington’s top secret nuclear arsenal to explode and arm 136 nuclear warheads, propelling them directly into downtown Washington, and, Washington into . . . well, just about everywhere . . . including Centerville, a grass roots, middle-America town that Senator Samuel Daniel Harrison is campaigning in at the time. Things worsen when all the capitals of the world explode under their solar domes, setting off their secret nuclear war heads, and sending their country’s capitals flying everywhere.
Production History (under earlier title "The Great Centerville Conflict")
Staged Reading.... So. Appalachian Repertory Theatre Playwrights Conf., Mars Hill, NC
Finalist.................. Boomerang Theatre Company, NY, NY
Finalist.................. Theatre Conspiracy, Ft. Myers, FL
Finalist.................. Theatreworks, Santa Fe. NM
Finalist................... Midwest Theatre Network, Rochester, MN
Semi-Finalist.......... Siena College Int’l Playwrights’ Competition, Albany, NY
3rd Place Winner... Robert J. Pickering Award, Coldwater, MI
THE MAN WHO ONLY WANTED A SCREWDRIVER
Satire - 3w/2m/2os voices - The U.S.S.R mid-50's – a factory, the kitchen of a home in a mountain village; a government office in Moscow.
Alexandur Nicoli Katronivich works in a factory tightening lids on parts that become something no one ever sees. But, if he could get a better screwdriver his quota would be surpassed, he and his co-worker would get bonuses, have more bread on their table, their bills paid, and life would be better. All this would be possible if Alexandur could only get a new screwdriver. So, he does the unimaginable. He writes a letter to the Premier, and when he gets a rejection, he keeps on writing, undetered. In no time at all the whole country is coming to him to write their letters and plead their causes. Avarice overtakes the town and Alexandur is caught in the middle, until he makes a unexpected decision.
Production History
Production.............. Playwrights Forum, Memphis, TN
Semi-Finalist.......... Trustus Playwrights’ Festival, Columbia, SC
Semi-Finalist.......... Oglebay Institute, Wheeling, WV
THE BATTLE FOR SOUTH HOOVER STREET
Comedy/Drama - 3w/3m - A small town West of Chicago – Late Spring - Inspired by the Supreme Court Ruling in Kelo v. City of New London
Three retirees share a house, and one day they find out that the Mayor has declared all of the homes on their street to be “blighted,” because they lack a bathroom for each bedroom and a two car garage. Within a month all the houses will be seized under the Law of Eminent Domain and torn down to build condos. Sinta, Harry and Ida organize the neighborhood, and with the help of Tilly, the town’s Assistant Librarian, battle to save everyone’s homes. But, as they do so, they discover what it’s really about – Oil. In the end, the Mayor’s defeated when Sinta sends the newspapers a picture she’s taken. The Mayor’s own house is declared “blighted,” the neighborhood saved.
Production History
Semi-Finalist....... Trustus Playwrights’ Festival, Columbia, SC
Semi-Finalist....... Lionheart Theatre’s Make The House Roar Prize, Norcross, GA
CLOWN-SPEAK
Comedy/Satire: 3/W/9M - Hollywood, 1945-1954. Set in a 3 ring circus - Harry's West Hollywood house, American Animation Studios, and a pirate radio station, with the FCC on the High Wire.
The importance of names and what you loose in assimilation, set against a backdrop of McCarthyism with its naming of names, changing of names and questioning of what and who you are.
Production History
Production................Generic Theatre, Norfolk, VA
Staged Reading........Lark Theatre, New York, NY
Staged Reading........Village Theatre, New York, NY
Staged Reading........Shaker Playhouse, Enfield, NH
Finalist......................Morton R. Sarett Nat'l Competition, Univ. of Nevada
Semi-Finalist.............Mill Mountain Theatre, Roanoke, VA
