JAMES MENESES

Film coming in Fall of 2021

​

Synopsis:

This Summer, Lucia plans on introducing 

her American boyfriend George, to her devout Roman Catholic family in Italy . . . there’s just one problem, George is an agnostic.  After a religious joke goes wrong at a dinner party, George agrees to take classes on Catholicism, but the line between just supporting Lucia’s faith and adhering to it himself becomes slippery.

​

Synopsis:

 A son copes with the grief of his father’s suicide by slowly understanding him through dreams, but the time to reconcile their past begins to run out as a Tsunami wave draws nearer.

​

​

GHOST RECORDING

Synopsis:

During the Covid Pandemic, Paulie, an unemployed construction worker, becomes an actor on a low budget ghost reality TV show. A non-believer of the paranormal world, Paulie pretends and "acts scared," but tonight in an
abandoned Middle School, he witnesses something unimaginable yet real.

Virtual Reading by Theatre Unmasked

PURGATORY TRAIN

​

A play's development:

After starting this in an HB Studio playwriting class in 2016, it stayed in my drawer four years, till March 2020. As I was trying to figure out how to navigate the theater without a live audience, I thought that this piece could maybe work as a radio drama. While rewriting this in the Greenhouse Ensemble writer’s group, some circumstances altered, and the characters became best friends, who just died in an accident and are stuck in purgatory. During my senior year of High School, my friends Michael and Jack passed away in a car crash. One thing that helped me through this time of loss is that I had a dream of being in the back seat of Jack's car, and fiddling around with his car radio like he always did, Jack turned back and said "I'm sorry for speeding.”  

​

Synopsis:

Two best friends are stuck in limbo on an old diesel train. Gabe wants to stay for their graduation ceremony and an unfinished game of poker, while Dave, wants to start the train and leave, unsure where the tracks will take them.

GIG AT THE U

​

The Tank

Selected for Greenhouse Ensemble's Play Soiree. (Postponed due to Covid)

​

Director Hazen Cuyler,   

Cast Matt O'Shea, Joey Rotter

Synopsis: On Halloween, Ryan, a comedian is kicked off a prestigious University’s stage for an unacceptable joke. Him and his boyfriend Evan, discuss how to respond to the vitriol on social media, and whether throwing in the towel on an early standup career is the best option.

​

WHILE YOU WAIT

A collaboration of dance, performance art and dramatic writing to explore how an emotional need of absence can create meaning.

Produced by the Greenhouse Ensemble

West 97th Street Theater

NY, NY

​

Director Spencer Scott

Cast Reanna Armellino, Keegan McDonald, Mary Rawlins, Sara Theresa Burns & Edwina Manuel

​

​

in development - a sci-fi musical

2186, civilians make peace with death, by believing the dreams they sacrifice, await them in an afterlife. Bianca, while pregnant, by-passes her Dream Suppressor and one night dreams of her unborn baby, a grown-up version from the future. She conceals this secret from Devon, her husband, who is next in line to lead the Dream Utopia, and eventually must decide whether it's more vital to reach the eternal dream kingdom or dream alone among the living.

​

(Workshop reading - Greenhouse Ensemble's Writers Group)

MAMA'S BABY BOXER

​

A riot occurs in a hospital’s behavioral health unit. The head nurse is blamed and fired and the next day passes away in her sleep. Her son Gonzalo checks into the same health unit as a patient, carrying his mother's urn. Gonzalo then reveals his plan to fight the patient who started the riot, an ex-prize boxer named Sammy the Screaming Giant.

KARMA OF A

BROKEN

BONE

A restless mind awakes in the middle of the night, weaving moments of nostalgia in order to fall back asleep.

Greenhouse Ensemble Studio Playwrights Reading

a Stage Reading 

a

Director George Pappas

Cast Andrew Mayer, Joey Rotter & Meg Heus

​

TRAINING AND WORKSHOPS

HB Studio | Playwriting Technique | Julie McKee

Greenhouse Ensemble Writer's Group | Spencer Scott

Greenhouse Ensemble | Play Reading Workshop | Kim Sharp

ESPA | Writing for Zoom | Lia Romeo