Original Musicals & Plays by Richard Ehrlich
Eight contemporary works exploring family division, moral complexity, neurodiversity, mental health, social anxiety, community resilience, caregiving, and civic dialogue. Five plays and three musicals offering authentic representation and emotional depth for today's audiences.
Where the Noise Becomes Music!
A 17-year-old with ADHD learns to turn her racing mind into music—and discovers her voice, her people, and her power. Jules Chen's brilliant, big-hearted journey from sensory overload to self-acceptance celebrates neurodiversity with warmth, humor, and propulsive pop songs.
A Musical Experience
An 80-minute journey from modern anxiety toward something quieter and more hopeful. Two narrators guide the audience through vulnerability, self-compassion, and the steady inner frequency—the "tonic note"—that's been there all along. No plot, no characters, just honest exploration set to contemporary pop, soul, and gospel.
A Musical
In a neighborhood where visibility can be dangerous, Alex survives by watching from rooftops. Community organizer Sofía believes survival depends on showing up for one another. As surveillance increases and fear becomes reality, their growing love doesn't offer escape—it heightens the stakes. A grounded, intimate musical about choosing presence over isolation.
A Full-Length Play
When the youngest of three siblings becomes the primary contact for his parents in memory care, his siblings' schedules never quite align—and his phone never stops ringing. The play explores a painful paradox—when your greatest strength becomes your greatest vulnerability. David's emotional capacity isn't his strength; it's his poison. David discovers that being the most capable means carrying the weight alone. A devastating examination of family caregiving and the cost of constant availability.
Two fathers. Seventy minutes. No mediator. No mercy. No survivors.
After a physical confrontation at a school board meeting, Sam Morrison and Alex Harper are given a choice: complete court-ordered mediation or face criminal charges. The mediator never shows. Seventy minutes. Alone. Both fathers. Both terrified for their children. Over seventy minutes in real time, they debate immigration, elections, gun rights, federal power, and who decides moral authority. The intensity is sustained and brutal. Both men leave destroyed, not defeated. The empty third chair remains—waiting.
At what point does ordinary life require justification to continue unchanged?
Michael Porter is 62, widowed, and living alone. He's managing fine—until the system decides otherwise. When enough people express concern about Michael's "withdrawal," a mandatory wellness review is triggered. Sara Chen and David Reese are here to help—whether Michael wants help or not. Over 75 minutes in real time, Michael discovers that his solitude, his missed appointments, his preference for quiet have all become evidence in a case he didn't know was being built. A taut psychological drama about personal autonomy vs. institutional oversight. The surveillance state disguised as care.
A Contemporary Play
Eight people attend a social anxiety support group. On stage, we see sixteen performers—each character split between Outer Self (the performed social persona) and Inner Voice (the relentless internal commentary). When a fire alarm malfunction traps everyone inside, social performance becomes unsustainable, and something unexpected emerges: the question of whether authenticity is achievable, or itself another performance. An innovative theatrical exploration of the exhausting gap between who we are and who we perform.
One Family. Two Worlds.
When two brothers reunite to settle their father's estate, a shadow box of political memorabilia becomes the catalyst for a reckoning about moral inheritance and family loyalty. A restrained, emotionally rigorous drama about the unbridgeable divide between love and certainty—and the question: What do we owe one another, and who gets to decide?