Our Plays
Good Country People
by Stan Heleva ©2000
adapted from the Flannery O'Connor short story
two acts, four characters
Joy changed her name to Hulga when she turned 21. That was after she lost her leg in a hunting accident and before she met Manley Pointer, the Bible salesman that comes calling on her and her mother, Mrs. Hopewell one hot evening in the red hills of the Carolinas.
"...a grotesque and chilling examination of religious hypocrisy... "
-- J. Cooper Robb, Philadelphia Weekly
"Playwright Stan Heleva retains O'Connor's distinctive voice, finds much of the work's moral complexity, and effectively dramatizes the author's sardonic commentary."
-- Doug Keating, Philadelphia Inquirer
Gloria Uber Alles
by Stan Heleva & T. H. Cornell ©1994
two acts, three characters
This archetypal drama in verse, called a "decomposition for public consumption," tells the bizarre tale of Dr. P. E. Mudd, a mad cleric-cum-archeologist, and his chief discovery, "Y-Man," a mummified pre-Iliad god, whom Mudd digs up in a landfill in New Jersey in 1982.
"A treat for connoisseurs of weird…the rushing stream of words has a certain hypnotic quality, and phrases leap and flash like small fish..."
-- Welcomat (Philadelphia Weekly)
"Scarier than a headless horseman, Freddy Krueger, or a hockey-masked Jason..."
-- Philadelphia Inquirer
Robert DeNiro Knows
by Michelle Pauls ©1996
one act, three characters
An idealistic young wanna-be actor, as an extra on a movie set, meets up with the mother of all stage mothers and her very scary daughter, in this rollicking, fast-paced comedy.
Cappuccino and Regret
by Stan Heleva ©1996
two acts, four characters
Two women, long-time friends, take very different routes to get their husbands to pay more attention to them in this "comedy of manners in a time without manners."
"This thoroughly engaging romantic comedy seduces..."
-- Montgomery Times Herald
"...Heleva knows what he is writing...and keeps focused on the situation at hand..."
-- Philadelphia Inquirer
Sacraments
by Stan Heleva ©1998
two acts, six characters
A woman struggles to hold onto her spirituality and sanity in the face of rural isolation, grinding poverty, and domestic abuse, in this modern tragedy set in the mountains of North Carolina.
"...Sacrament's recipe is a savory blend of Sam Shepard and Deliverance. The characters...don't so much appear as leap off the stage and into life."
-- Philadelphia Weekly
"...Heleva has adeptly created a self-contained microcosm... populated with compelling, well-drawn characters... does an uncanny job of injecting humor into a fundamentally dark view of the human condition."
-- Nathan Lerner, Star Publications