The Firehouse Center for the Arts presents this second day of our 2025 New Works Festival featuring the Honnegger Prize winning One Act, Extreme Gridlock by James Ferguson. In addition to this one act, the performance will be supported by 4 shorts include: Home Invasion by Candace Perry, Meteor by Tori Stubbs, What Is Due by Deirdre Girard, and A Woman in Need by Martha Patterson.

Extreme Gridlock by James Ferguson

A couple struggles to understand why they're stuck.

James C. Ferguson is an award-winning writer whose plays have been produced throughout the United States as well as in the UK and New Zealand. He has written two novels, numerous screenplays and a number of projects for television and the web. James is also the co-writer and director of the well-reviewed feature length independent motion picture Happy Holidays, available through numerous digital platforms. In 2023, his play Thanks, Nick was produced as part of The Magnetic Theatre’s One Act Play Festival in Asheville, NC.

Home Invasion by Candace Perry

An uninvited guest shows up at the home of Martha and Paul, and they must figure out how to manage this unwelcome intruder.

Candace Perry is a writer, teacher, and social justice activist who strives to change the world, one play at a time. Over 40 of her short plays have been produced in the US and Ireland; her four full length plays have had readings, workshops and productions in New York and at Cape theaters; and a dozen of her short plays have been produced online. She lives in Wellfleet with her husband, Charles Thibodeau.

Meteor by Tori Stubbs

Two strangers meet on a roof hours before the end of the world.

Tori Stubbs is a Massachusetts native and a New Hampshire resident. When she isn’t working or chasing around her two rambunctious kids, she loves to write. Her short stories have been published in magazines such as Daily Science Fiction and The Story Shack as well as an anthology, Enter the Rebirth. She is fairly new to playwriting but has “caught the bug” and has finished writing more than 30 short plays since her start in August of 2023.

What Is Due by Deirdre Girard

Suzanne is about to lose everything, but she’s come up with a series of solutions that grow more and more surprising….

Deirdre Girard, who tells women’s stories, received her Playwriting MFA at Boston University. She has had dozens of award winning one-act plays produced both nationally and internationally; her full-length productions include The Christina Experiment at The Firehouse Center for the Arts, Reconsidering Hanna(h) at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and Short and Scary at the Lynn Arts Center. Short and Scary II will be produced at the Actors Studio of Newburyport in October 2025. Her work has been published by Applause Books, Smith & Kraus, Next Stage Press and Heuer Publishing. Deirdre was named a 2012/13 and returning 2013/14 Playwriting Fellow at New Repertory Theater, and was selected for both the Company One Play Labs and Central Square Theater’s TWSS play development programs. Her one-act play In the Buff was commissioned by Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA and subsequently won QC Theatre’s Susan Glaspell National Playwriting Award. Most recently, Women at the Center, her collection of short plays featuring female protagonists was published, her short play Fungus was filmed for the Recover-Me Festival in LA, she was selected for Barrington Stages 2023 10 x 10 festival and The 2023 Boston Theater Marathon, had a monologue from her full-length play In This House selected for The Best Female Monologues of 2022 anthology by Smith & Kraus, had her play Soulmate selected by Smith & Kraus for their Best 10-minute plays of 2023 anthology, had an evening of her short plays produced at The Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport, MA in February of 2024, and had two NY productions with outstanding reviews of her short play A Year to Grieve. She is a playwriting instructor/mentor for several organizations including Gloucester Stage, Boston University’s Massachusetts Young Playwrights Project, and Northeastern University’s Silver Masque Theatre as well as a member of the Boston Playwright’s Theatre Advisory Council and a founding member of the Newburyport Arts Collective.

A Woman in Need by Martha Patterson

On the patio of a New Orleans bar, a detective investigating a crime meets his Maker.

Martha Patterson’s 27-story collection “Small Acts of Magic” was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. Her work has also been published in more than 20 anthologies and journals, and her plays have been produced in 21 states and eight countries. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and loves being surrounded by her books, radio, and laptop.

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