Drama

Features three imagined encounters between Joan of Arc and American writer/activist Dorothy Parker. Both are facing death, with only words to defend themselves. Joan has failed to drive the oppressors out of her country; Dorothy despairs about humanity and her own legacy. Ultimately Dorothy is able to reassure Joan about her place in history while Joan challenges Dorothy to reconsider the impact of her life’s work.

Full-length

Joan of Arc

Dorothy Parker

“There’s fun to be had in Fresh Hell‘s cross-century juxtaposition of certainty and skepticism… an exotic and wildly unexpected case of female bonding.”

“Massing, a witty writer with an ear tuned to Parker-type wisecracks…”

“Funny and touching…”

- Liz Nicholls, 12thNight.ca

“Entertaining and enlightening…...Fresh Hell is a winner.”

“Clever repartee...that combines comedy and drama.”

“ a spirited conversation about life, death and the meaning of it all, punctuated with great jokes”

- Liane Faulder, Edmonton Journal

Drama

Amy has noticed some disturbing occurrences in her apartment complex. Socks are missing from the dryer. Tupperware lids have disappeared. A dead letter, years old, arrives in her mailbox. Despite the protestations of those around her, Amy obsessively investigates the incidents, sure there’s a cosmic connection between them. Turns out, she has her own reasons for wanting messages from the universe…

Full-length

Amy, thirties

Doug, thirties

Maggie, early seventies

Dead Letter a Near-Perfect Must See… “One of Massing’s talents is the ability to turn the tables over and over again, creating new sources of dramatic tension that keep audience members enthralled throughout the play.”
- Liane Faulder, Edmonton Journal

Dead Letter… “a surprising tale of innocuous small-scale comic obsession that darkens to become a murder mystery and a domestic struggle about trust. There is fun to be had, and a place in it for heartbreak. One of Massing’s best.”
- Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Dead Letter…”full of surprises and heart, a celebration of meaning in a world marked by things we can’t control.”
- Lucy Haines, infoedmonton.ca

Romantic comedy

Kate, a curator at a museum, takes on the investigation of romance as a personal and professional challenge. Her love life hilariously spirals into crisis just as her elderly mother rekindles a relationship with a man she dated sixty years earlier.

Full-length, two acts

Kate: female, mid-thirties
Louisa: female, plays herself at ages seventeen to seventy-five
Man: male, thirties

“A romantic comedy for the age of irony”
“…charming and funny… features hilariously ludicrous “perfect” man…”
- Edmonton Journal

“Playwright Conni Massing can pull in an audience all by herself, because the turf she occupies is pure prairie-grown cracked wheat.”
- Edmonton Sun

Seasonal rom-com

A relentlessly cheerful Christmas-lover and a cynical holiday-hater plan to get married but first they must deal with the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.

Full-length, one act, approximately 90 minutes
(One-act, 55 minute version of the play also available)

Lucy: female, mid-thirties
Algar: male, mid-thirties

"The playwright hangs a whole series of small, unexpected funny moments in an artfully-crafted plot, delighting the audience."
- Gig City

" …a show filled with laughter and poignancy. But underneath the whimsy is an important message that will linger in your heart for a long time."
- St. Albert Gazette

Drama

The death of an elephant sparks a crisis at a city zoo. Matara, the lone remaining elephant, grieves for her companion while her keeper fights to protect Matara from the zoo’s ambitious fundraiser. Meanwhile the river by the zoo is rising and the only person who seems to care is the night security guard, who is haunted by his inability to avert a disaster.

Full-length, one act (approximately 85 minutes)

Karen: (female) forties
Marcel: (male) late twenties, a Rwandan immigrant
Romney: (female) mid-thirties

“Massing sure knows how to tell a story. Through often quite poetic asides, lectures, dialogue, monologues and speeches…all sides of the prickly argument are brought out.”
- Gig City

“The issues are there. But there’s a strangeness, too, that gives the play its lustre. Matara is infiltrated by lyrical visions, the sense of loss, dreams, dreams-turned-nightmares. Home, in the end, is what haunts you, says Massing’s play.”
- 12thnight.ca

Mystery, coming of age
Based on the novel The Aberhart Summer by Bruce Allen Powe

Fifteen-year-old Doug spends the summer of 1935 investigating the suspicious death of his best friend Babe against a backdrop of sweeping societal change: the Depression and the rise of William Aberhart’s Social Credit party.

Full length, two acts

Cast Breakdown: The large cast of characters requires a group of 10-12 actors.
Typically performed with 8 males and 3 females

"At its best, Aberhart Summer is a vivid and unsentimental depiction of small-town Canadian life in the 1930s…It was the hit of the [Pan-Canadian PlayRites] festival."
- American Theatre

"Massing’s marvelous play is at once a gripping Alberta history lesson, a sweetly nostalgic comedy and a cracking-good murder mystery, all rolled up into on big, bright ball of theatrical energy and verve…"
- Calgary Herald

Comedy - Adapted by Conni Massing

Jake makes a wild promise to his young friend and the community of Crocus that he will end the summer’s drought by making rain.

Full-length, two acts

Cast breakdown: 4 males, two females (playing a cast of twenty-one characters)

“Conni Massing’s new and skillfully structured adaptation… is a big, lighthearted story of faith."
- Calgary Herald

“Prairie Play a Real Pleasure…what Conni Massing has created with this adaptation is a play that will become a staple for community and high school theatres.”
- SunMedia

”…a whopping crowd-pleaser of a play…"
- Prairie Dog

Comedy

A lightning strike and the inspirational story of Joan of Arc trigger a series of magical occurrences for 16-year-old Jessica and for everyone else around her caught up in the fleeting euphoria of this most maddening season of the year

Full length, two acts

Breakdown: 5 female, three male

Jessica: sixteen years old
Brenda: mid-thirties
Jackie: early thirties
Mordred: late teens
Dacia: forty-ish
Kevin: early thirties
Melanie: mid-twenties
Werner: late twenties

“It’s a grand, comic spectacle… bursting with comedy and dynamic characters in a world both familiar and hilarious in its failures. While summer seldom fulfills our expectations, Massing’s play exceeds them.”
- Fast Forward

“…sashays from poignant moments to deep belly laughs…”
- Calgary Sun

“…uses spare, evocative language and the vagaries of memory, to create familiar landscapes that take on a dreamlike quality.”
- Edmonton Sun

Dramedy

Rhona needs advice from her mother, Clara about how to bake bread and what to do about her deadbeat boyfriend, her stalled country and western career, and an unexpected pregnancy.

Full-length, two acts

Rhona: early thirties
Clara: Rhona’s mother, sixties
Cliff: Rhona’s father, sixties
Gary: Rhona’s boyfriend, early thirties

“The tone of the play wobbles surreally from comedy to drama…like a reflection of the tumult of family life… Homesick hits a home run.”
- Vue Magazine

“Conni Massing’s laugh-out-loud Homesick…soon settles down to deal with bigger, more important issues…with humour and sensitivity.
- Edmonton Journal

Gravel Run

A full-length gothic comedy about a young woman returning to her dysfunctional small-town family accompanied by her charmingly clueless fiancé.

Home Ice

A free-wheeling comic adaptation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, set in the world of hockey violence.

Terminus

A large cast teen drama, set in a dystopic universe of media brainwashing taken to its inevitable extreme.