Ruby and Millie & The Old Chemical Plant by Tara Meddaugh: A One-Act Play for 2 female actors
If you’re looking for a 15-minute comedy/drama for 2 female actors in their 60s, check out Ruby and Millie & The Old Chemical Plant. Sisters, Ruby and Millie, have been through a lot together. During WW2, 9-year-old Ruby took charge of her apartment building’s rooftop Victory Garden, hoping her patriotic war efforts on the home front would help bring her father back from a prisoner-of-war camp. Teenage Millie, disillusioned as her own boyfriend was fighting in the war abroad, cared for her younger sister as their mother took on a job, working long hours.
Now, over fifty years later, Ruby and Millie still live just down the hall from each other, in a senior living community. They still tend to a community garden. And they still take care of each other.
But today, something is different. It’s not just that Ruby sat on her glasses watching Seinfeld last night or that Millie is suspicious someone has been stealing their tomatoes. Today, Ruby and Millie both have secrets and dreams to share which may, after all these years, lead them in very different directions, very far away from each other…
Enjoy my play, Ruby and Millie & The Old Chemical Plant. This 15-minute play is the 7th movement of The Victory Garden Plays, and I am now releasing it as a stand-alone short play.The Victory Garden Plays is a 7-piece collection of short individual plays encompassing journeys of individuals on the American home front during WW2. Ruby and Millie & The Old Chemical Plant is a comedy/drama for 2 female actors in their 60s-80s. Click here to read more about Ruby and Millie & The Old Chemical Plant and click here to read more about The Victory Garden Plays.
Click here for a free excerpt for Ruby and Millie & The Old Chemical Plant.
Click below for the complete digital copy of Ruby and Millie & The Old Chemical Plant.
Sisters, Ruby and Millie have always been extremely close—from Millie caring for Ruby during the strain of WW2, to Ruby watching out for Millie’s bad knees, now that they are in their 60s. Neither one can imagine life without the other by her side. But for the first time, they struggle with decisions that may, for the first time, take them far away from each other.
This dramatic/comedic play has a running time of around 10-15 minutes, and is for 2 female actors, 50s-70s.
Ruby and Millie & The Old Chemical Plant stands alone as its own short piece, but was originally written for the full-length play, The Victory Garden Plays, and is the 7th and final movement in that play.
If you would like more information about the entire play, The Victory Garden Plays, please click here or purchase the entire digital copy of the play below:
While soldiers fight abroad in WW2, those remaining in Westchester County strive to make a difference on the Homefront by creating Victory Gardens, supplementing limited food supply. But the pressures on the homefront extend much further than simply growing produce. A child worries her failing rooftop garden is an omen of misfortune for her father’s return from a POW camp. An infertile woman throws her purpose into feeding neighborhood families. A wealthy man whose chemical plant is commissioned by the government for war purposes struggles with how to leave a meaningful legacy not tainted with warfare. These stories, and more, are given light in The Victory Garden Plays, a series of vignettes chronicling people’s journeys with their new realities of love, growth, life and death.