Orabelle's Wheelbarrow

Winner of the Women Playwrights' Initiative playwriting competition for 2005. 

View the published play here 

Orabelle's Wheelbarrow is play about promises - the ones we break, the ones we keep, and the ones that transform into new promises, whether we want them to or not. 

When the play opens, Leona's mother has just died, and she's left taking care of her dependent and emotionally unstable aunt and uncle. She wants to make a new life for herself, but feels weighed down by family obligations. Then her old friend Rubie shows up with her elderly grandmother, Miss Orabelle, in tow. Orabelle pushes a wheelbarrow everywhere she goes, and she claims that her wheelbarrow is full of broken promises. As Leona explores her own responsibilities to her aunt and uncle, Orabelle and her promises help Leona understand the nature of promises. Orabelle guides Leona as she decides which of her promises she can keep and which she will have to let go. Throughout the play, promises leap out of Orabelle's wheelbarrow - or sometimes come crashing into it - for monologues that illustrate or complicate key points.