
Matthew Ethan Davis
Playwright.Screenwriter.Actor
Battered
A two-character play that debates if a man charged with Domestic Violence: Strangulation With the Intent To Stop Breathing, if he is the abuser or is he the one who was battered and is, in fact, a battered man? Set in the realm of a criminal courtroom trial, the actor and actress first act out the testimony according to the woman and then according to the man. However, with such contradictory stories, how are we to know who to convict? What if we send an innocent man to jail?
Vagabond
Set in 1853 America, the Dawn of the Industrial Revolution, as well as the end of the traditional shoemaker, a gay vagabond who claims to have a direct access to Jesus, falls in love with a small-town male shoemaker. Their romance turns his life and the lives of the shoemaker works with upside down.
Abnormality of the Mind
Mental Hygiene Law Article 10 determines if a sex offender who has served time in prison can be released back into society or should remain in jail or a psychiatric hospital for the rest of their life. A jury must decide if he will offend again, if released.
The burden of this decision drives Dean, a juror, into a fantasy world of courtroom interactions but if Dean votes for this man’s release, what will happen if he rapes a child, again? Where is the glass ball a juror is supposed to use to predict the future behavior of another human being? Especially when this juror, Dean, was molested at the same age as the child the rapist attacked.
“Extraordinary. Shattering. An Abnormality of the Mind dives into the endlessly ambiguous echoes of sexual abuse that resonate through a lifetime.” Austin Pendleton.
“I believe An Abnormality of the Mind is the most amazing piece ever written about sexual abuse, it's victims, perpetuators and enablers wrapped in the absurdity of our legal system supposedly designed to prevent it all.”
williamroudebush.com
Husbands
Three husbands meet by accident at a coffee bar and form an unlikely bond that quickly turns into weekly meetings where they lay out their hearts and souls to each other. Over the course of a year, their lives turn upside down, the stakes of intimacy between them increasing with every passing week.
Loving Diamond
Loving Diamond is a romantic comedy about, Aiden, a newly sober heroin addict returning to the lover he abandoned, Diamond, a man who believes he has a direct line to God and the entire universe inside him reachable to others by praying to him. Aiden brings with him Star, a homeless girl he wants them both to adopt and become a family. Due to the abandonment they clash until they finally come together to make love, just as Chester, Diamond’s fiancé walks in.
Lost Ticket Stubs On the Carnival Grounds
An absurdist comedy about four people who run a traveling amusement park. Jude and Ivy are wildly in love but Jude can’t remember anything from the previous day or anything in the past. Every day is new to him and he takes constant notes to try to stay in touch. Ivy tries her best with him anyway, because they are soul-mates. Vanessa, who works with them, meets Lydia a wandering folk singer. The two women fall immediately in love and decide to get married right away before they get to know each other and possibly ruin everything. The play follows the story of these four vagabonds in love.
Walker
Walker is an absurdist comedy. As all theatre of Absurdism, Walker challenges the very notion of reality itself being nothing more than a matter of perception. In the world of Walker, what is an extremely windy day for one person, is a perfectly calm day for the person standing next to them.
Riptide
A play about a sex addict who relapses and struggles to overcome his condition. His relapse threatens his long-term relationship with his boyfriend, as well as his life. As he goes deeper and deeper into his past, he desperately tries to find the core of his disease.
Ticket to Eternity
An absurdist comedy about an actor on the precipice of stardom when all he really wants is to be a waiter. In fact, his obsession is so complete, restaurants are the only place where he feels sexually aroused. He struggles with his own desires against the relentless pressure of his parents, who consistently show up in everyone he encounters.
Falling Awake
A comedy about love, loss, the supernatural, and struggling to keep a radical newspaper from closing. Two women and two men try to keep the newspaper where they work from going bankrupt. The two men die, leaving the two women to go on a search for them—finding answers in the supernatural realm.
Eddie
Eddie is about a hard of hearing high school student in an inner city; gang infested school, and how he turns relationship with a bully turns completely around.