Cindi Sansone-Braff
she
East Patchogue,
Cindi is a Long Island playwright, author, and theater critic.
Biography

Cindi's full-length, dramatic play, A Whole, Empty House, was a finalist in the Robert A. Forest Playwriting Competition. Her full-length romantic comedy, Angel's Mice and Men, was a finalist in Lodi's National New Play contest and Theatre Festival, produced in 2019 at the Summerfest Theater Festival at the Hudson Guild Theatre in NYC, and published in 2021 by Next Stage Press. Her full-length, dramatic play, Phantom Pain, was a finalist in Minneapolis's Playwrights Center's Playlab program. Her full-length music drama Beethoven's Promethean Concerto in C Minor WoO was produced at the BACCA Center on Long Island in 2017, received rave reviews, and is published by Next Stage Press under the title Beethoven, The Man, The Myth, The Music. Her plays, To the Zoom and Back, The Karma Bums, and Welcome to the House of Karma, received staged readings by the Fishlickers Improv group in 2020. To the Zoom and Back was a finalist in the Think Fast Theater Festival 2021 and won the Audience Choice award. To the Zoom and Back was published in 2022 in English and translated in Spanish in Borderless Thalia: A Multilingual Comedic Collection, Solis Press, UK. To the Zoom and Back was in the 2nd Act Players Spring 2021 Script Competition and received a production. No Rest for a Soul was in the Equity Library Theater Festival Spring 2021, the Manhattan Repertory Theatre Stories Film Festival Spring 2021, and the Think Fast Theater Festival 2023. The Karma Bums had a reading from Play Reading with Friends in 2020 and a Zoom production in 2021 by Tomorrow's Classics Theatre Company. Her radio play, My Struggle, had a reading at Clifton Public Library in New Jersey in 2021. In 2023, her short play, "Way Out," was part of The Rogue Theater Festival, NYC, and "The Menu" was featured in Kingdom Theatre's Playwright's Weekend.

A monologue from The Karma Bums is published in Smith & Kraus Best Women's Monologue 2022, and a monologue from My Struggle is published in Best Men's Monologue 2022. 

She has directed several of her plays, including Beethoven's Promethean Concerto in C Minor WoO, Angel's Mice and Men, To the Zoom and Back, No Rest for a Soul, Textual Abuse, and The Karma Bums. She had a dancing and acting role in Beethoven's Promethean Concerto in C Minor WoO.

She is a respected theatre critic for Patch.com, Smithtown Matters, The Messenger Papers, and Fire Island News.

She graduated with honors from the University of Connecticut at Storrs and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting, directing, and playwriting.

Cindi is the author of Grant Me a Higher Love, Why Good People Can't Leave Bad Relationships, and Confessions of a Reluctant Long Island Psychic. She is a proud member of the Long Island Authors' Group and the Dramatists Guild.

 

Plays

by Cindi Sansone-Braff

An aging, down-and-out, one-time-Oscar-nominated Diva inherits a New Age business from her Wiccan aunt and proceeds to wreak havoic on the pack of metaphysical misfits who run the joint,  It's the classic fish-out-of water story,  or Monster-in-the-house story with Cathy Cloony-Colucci, a larger-than-life material girl, scheming her way through an over-the-top-spiritual world.

Cast:
I strongly encourage diversity in casting. Cathy Cloony-Colucci, a woman in her late 40s Destiny, a woman in her early 40s. Doc, a man in his late 40's. Bobbi, a woman in her late 20s. Dick, a man in his late 20s. RIta, an 80-years-young woman.
by Cindi Sansone-Braff

A full-length play in one-act

It was the summer of 1992, and Angel Ventura, or the widow Ventura, as her younger sister, Gina liked to call her, had the whole summer off from motherhood and teaching.  What is heaven's name would she do with it?

Cast:
Rose Bloom, a widow in her late 70s. Angel Ventura, a widow in her late 30s. Gina Signorelli, a woman in her late 20's. Steele La Chance, a man in his early 40s.
by Cindi Sansone-Braff

Beethoven’s Promethean Concerto in C Minor WoO. Following Aristotle’s principles of three unities, this Four Movement music drama takes place on August 6,1826, the fateful day when Beethoven's beloved nephew, Karl, shot himself in the head.  Beethoven, forced to review the soul record of his life, ponders the universal question that had plagued him, Hamlet, and all of humankind since the dawn of time: "To be or not to be?"  Yes, for any soul-searching being, this is always the question.

This is a story about great love – obsessive love for his nephew and for his “Immortal Beloved,” Josephine.  Countess Josephine von Brunsvik was Beethoven’s Soul Mate, more accurately his Twin Flame.  Like the star-crossed lovers in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, whose tragic love story continues to mesmerize audiences centuries later, the story of Ludwig and Josephine will fascinate today’s audience, as they witness what happens when a great love -- due to fear, convention, and class constraints -- falls apart. Many people self-destruct, and indeed, Beethoven went through periods of great angst and depression, but ultimately, this musical genius chose to use his passion and pain to create some of the world's most memorable music that is heard throughout the play.

 

Cast:
Ludwig van Beethoven, the master is 56 years old and gravely ill. Karl, Beethoven's twenty-year-old nephew. Chorus Members Egyptian Dancer Josephine, Beethoven's Immortal Beloved, who appears as an apparition, at the end of the play.
by Cindi Sansone-Braff

A 15 minute comedy about two lonely, lively senior citizens who meet on a dating site during the COVID-19 pandemic and decide to try a virtual date via Zoom.

Cast:
Ava Lucello a woman in her early seventies Thomas Chaton a man in his early seventies Robin a woman in her early thirties
by Cindi Sansone-Braff

An aging, down-and-out, one-time-Oscar-nominated Diva inherits a New Age business from her lateWiccan aunt and proceeds to wreck havoc on the metaphysical misfits who run the joint.

Cast:
4 woman ages twenty to eighty.
by Cindi Sansone-Braff

Two human beings hook up, and the following day, one of them shoots off a tirade of over-the-top texts, totally ambushing the other one.

Cast:
Two actors of any gender, race, age.
by Cindi Sansone-Braff

An aging, one-hit-wonder rock star has recently taken his own life. Now, as a Soul-in-Spirit, he is getting prepped to meet his maker, with the help of a Spirit Guide, known only as the Second Keeper of the Records. A monologue from this play is in Smith & Kraus's Best Women's Monologues 2024.

Cast:
One man, 50, any race One character any race, gender, age
by Cindi Sansone-Braff

Set in 1981, the day after the failed assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan by John Hinkley Jr., the Sunnydale Nursing Home celebrates the hundredth birthday of their oldest resident, Dr. Abraham Kasper. A holocaust survivor, Dr. Kasper takes a disturbing trip down memory lane, as he laments the dire consequences of not listening to divine guidance.

Cast:
DR. KASPER: Man, age 100, 1ST STAFF MEMBER, 2ND STAFF MEMBER, THE RADIO ANNOUNCER, MAGDALENA VOICES COULD BE DOUBLED.
by Cindi Sansone-Braff

Set in the Final Exit Bar and Grill, Chris gets an Evite to a Come-As-You-Are party that takes on a tragic twist.  This play was produced in 2023 as part of the Kingdom Theatre's Playwrights Weekend.  It will produced as a radio play in 2024 by Theatrical Shenanigans.

Cast:
Two adults, any race or gender
by Cindi Sansone-Braff

Two teenage friends find themselves in an unknown location, totally unaware of how or why they are there.  This play was featured in the Rogue Theater Festival in NYC in 2023.

Cast:
Two Teenagers of any race or gender.

Successes

A monologue from my one-act play, "No Rest for a Soul," will be published in Smith & Kraus's Best Women's Monologues 2024.

My ten-minute play, "The Menu," will be produced as an audio play in the upcoming 2024 season of Theatrical Shenanigans, a U.K.-based company hosted and produced by Rachel Feeny-Williams.

My ten-minute play, "The Menu," was produced as part of Kingdom Theatre's Playwrights Weekend in NYC.  It was directed by C.Kelly Wright.

My short play, "Way Out" is featured in the Rogue Theater Festival, NYC.

No Rest for a Soul was featured in the Think Fast Theater Project Festival.