Other plays & musicals

Joanne Koch’s many plays include

Nesting Dolls, based on the true story of a woman struggling to overcome childhood sexual abuse and emerging integrated and supportive, is performed by three women and three men. Nesting Dolls was broadcast on local PBS stations after winning the Southern Illinois University Best Play Award and produced to rave reviews in Michigan and toured to Northwestern University, with portions excerpted in the Southern Illinois University anthology The Good Parts. Teeth , an irreverent comedy about sex and power, was produced in Chicago at the Theatre Building and in Kalamazoo, Michigan at the API Theatre, and received an Illinois Arts Council grant and development support from the Dramatists Guild Fund, Inc.

Haymarket: footnote to a bombing , uses a story theater approach employing four women and six men to view the 1886 Haymarket riot from the point of view of the widows of those unjustly executed. Haymarket won the Chicago Cultural Center Patrons’ Award and the Eighth International Playwrighting Contest sponsored by the Piscator Foundation and Southern Illinois University where it was produced and directed by Christian Moe.

Hearts in the Wood, with book by Joanne Koch and music by James Lucas, won an Illinois Arts Council Playwriting Fellowship and was presented in Chicago at the Stages Festival, at Northeastern Illinois University and at the Acorn Theater in Three Oaks, Michigan. Jim Post appeared in the original presentation of Hearts, playing the West Virginia folk singer and dulcimer maker brought back to life when he discovers his citified granddaughter.

Teeth, a feminist farce on the connection between sex and power, is set in the late seventies and employs three women and four men to send up notions of militant women, chauvinist men, venal shrinks, and sensitive couples genuinely trying to change. Produced in Chicago and Michigan after development at the Midwest Playwrights Conference, Dale Wasserman director, and readings at the Victory Gardens Theater funded by the Illinois Arts Council and the Dramatists Guild Fund, Inc., this comedy allows us to laugh at some real challenges at the heart of the battle between the sexes.

Sandburg Among the Goats is a one-man show, with a guitar accompanist, that requires the famous poet to hit high points of career as journalist, Lincoln biographer and poet of the people, finally coming to grips with his personal demons. The show toured Illinois, including Harper College, the Galesburg Sandburg Festival, Chicago Writers’ Bloc Festival and the Society of Midland Authors Benefit.efit.