In this short piece I gave characters names which strongly hinted at their personalities, e.g. Stephen Bright, Lucy Heart, while also trying to move between periods - the 1960s and the present. The story, though, is simply of a man who is intellectually able but fails in emotional intelligence when it matters most.
This short piece starts with an old couple who appear to be bickering about a trip to the north. They could be living in the south of England with the husband's brother living somewhere in the north. We eventually discover that they are in a country which has been divided since a war many years earlier, and travel is not merely a matter of personal choice. In fact, I based the story on the Korean situation and the news in early 2014 that permits were possibly going to be issued to allow meetings for family members separated by the war, which ended in 1953. The play has been performed, and I insisted the actors should not look remotely Korean because the play is about the impact of a situation on the characters, not the specifics of Korea.
This short piece is a three-character verse play, about the mysterious death by fire of a singer in the club she owned. The reason for verse is that it ties together a narrative, where there are actually three different accounts of the singer and what happened to her. There's a senior police officer (m or f), the singer's embittered son, and Gloria, an adoring fan.