Brendan Bourque-Sheil's plays include DOGROSE PATROL (O'Neill Finalist, written with Madison Smith), SUNRISE COVEN (Stages Theatre, Know Theatre of Cincinnati, Penny Seats Theatre), BETWEEN TWO CAVES (Landing Theatre, Garden of Voices), and THE BOOK OF MAGGIE (Finalist, Reva Shiner Comedy Award, Stages Theatre, Death and Pretzels Theatre Company). He has participated in the Stillwright Retreat and won the Writer's Colony's Real People Fellowship. For Alley Theatre's Department of Education and Community Engagement he's been a principal writer of 12 devised theatre plays for teens. For ten years, he has worked as a teaching artist for Alley Theatre, and a consultant in Creative Writing for the Kinder High School of Performing and Visual Arts. He also tells personal narrative stories for a live audience at shows including Grown-Up Storytime, City Cast Houston and World Channel's "Stories From the Stage." He enjoys long walks in graveyards.
Plays
During World War One, the British government hired Girl Scouts to act as spies and couriers to protect King and country; this is the story of a troop who took their jobs way too seriously. Dogrose Patrol is a comedic whodunnit that follows a troop of teenage spies, as they investigate a mystery that calls into question where their true loyalties are.
Hallie Heaton is a beloved Nurse Practitioner in a tiny Texas town beset by every economic and existential struggle one could think up. But after showing up in the ER one night with enough Oxy in her system to kill an elephant, she loses her medical license and has to forge a new path to treating her patients...by teaming up with a local witch and a drug dealer, to bypass the medical establishment. Magic and Medicine collide and coalesce in Sunrise Coven, a dark comedy about healers, healing, and pharmaceuticals, in a town that’s barely holding on.
A one-hour comedy thriller about modern conspiracy theory culture. Alex, the host of a successful podcast, is in the middle of a media storm, after hosting a controversial interview on her show, when Parker, an old friend from high school shows up at her door, to pitch her a wild story that he believes will launch both of them into the national spotlight. When Alex says no, the ensuing debate delves into conspiracy theory culture, mental illness, and how we engage with people who's interpretation of reality is fundamentally different from our own.
Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate, whiling away the afterlife as frenemies in the eternal Inferno, are offered a chance for redemption by a sci-fi-writing Saint Peter. The assignment? Teach a suicidal woman the value of life—before the whole world goes to Hell.
Successes
Finalist, National Playwright's Conference, Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center, 2023, for Dogrose Patrol,
Finalist in Southwest Theatre Productions "Plays With a Strong Female Lead" Competition
Reva Shiner Comedy Award Finalist