Rinne Groff Selected Works

1947 is the year that the savvy politicos of the National Woman’s Party will finally get the ERA passed—once they quash that insurgency. Or oust the old guard. Failure is Impossible.

A charming, comical, and stirring fable, drawn from one of the great stories of the Yiddish Theater, The Singer of His Sorrows by Osip Dymov, and adapted by Adrian Guo-Silver and Rinne Groff. When a father’s bedtime story magically comes to life, his young daughter is plunged into the world of a poor shtetl poet, desperately in love with a woman who spurns him. With great wit and even greater heart, The Red Beads explores the beauty – and the pain – of letting love triumph over logic. 

In the Bubble tells the tale of Todd Fielding, a fictional character suffering from the real disease of Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID), which has kept him stuck behind a plastic wall and separated from human touch for the first 17 years of his life. When Todd falls in love with the wealthy and high-spirited Gina Jenner, who lives next door, he is forced to choose between his safe existence in “bubbled” captivity and a risky chance at the life he's always wanted.

Presented as part of the American Music Theatre Project at Northwestern University.

Past and present converge in the battered landscape of Coney Island, New York when a young woman’s boardwalk revitalization project leads her to seek refuge in the seductive vision of an unknown Dutch filmmaker.

The science of sleep is cutting-edge stuff. Though sleep takes up fully one-third of our lives, its purpose has long been shrouded in mystery. One thing’s for sure: the mind at night is anything but quiet.

Sleep Rock Thy Brain was commissioned by Actors Theatre of Louisville for the 37th annual Humana Festival. Three playwrights each created a one-act play based on sleep science and flight after working with University of Louisville doctors in the sleep lab to learn more about the science of sleep. The plays are Comfort Inn by Rinne Groff, Dreamerwake by Anne Washburn, and nightnight by Lucas Hnath.

A high-powered businesswoman, her stay-at-home husband and her socialite mother wrestle with the decision to have another child, while her father braves a squall with his schooner in the Chesapeake Bay. What are the odds?

Great is a magician with a dangerous past and a promising future. His bright young new assistant Trilby is looking for the truth behind the illusion. In this mysterious love story filled with top hats, disappearing coins, floating objects, and seemingly impossible feats, every player has a few tricks up his sleeve. Is it all smoke and mirrors? Only the lovely assistant knows for sure.

"Are you down with G-O-D?" Good girl Mary and her domineering best friend Hilary Faye are starting their senior year at the top of the social food chain at American Eagle Christian High School—that is, until Mary’'s boyfriend tells her he thinks he'’s gay. When Jesus appears in a vision, Mary heeds his message "to do everything she can to help him." When her good deeds are met with dire consequences, Mary is forced to question everything she’'s ever believed. Through it all, she finds faith in unexpected places and learns what it truly means to be saved.

A musical adaptation of the hit film. Music/lyrics by Michael Friedman, book by John Dempsey and Rinne Groff.

In a mythical land called New Hampshire, the Farmers are in trouble. Evil Bandits loot their land, take their food, and generally wreck their lives. Fed up with bowing meekly in the face of this oppression, the Farmers go to the Big City in search of Supermans, a dying breed of men and women in blue tights and red capes who really know how to save the day. The Farmers find the Seven Supermans they need to ward off the Bandits, but they get a lot more than mere bodyguards. A 23rd-century story of courage, and service, and finding the Superman within.

Diane has recently quit her accounting job to devote more time to her newly discovered vocation: building her dream house—, or rather her dream housing project. Unfortunately for Diane, it really is a dream. Day and night she returns to her sleep world as architect and planner of a habitat which will rectify the environmental devastation her husband'’s business has wrought. In a world where even the drinking water isn'’t safe, what chance does love have? What Then, —an urban planning eco-romance.