Tom Stoppard did it to Hamlet so we decided to do it for  George Bernard Shaw’s play, “Mrs. Warren’s Profession.”  Everyone knows the profession that Mrs. Warren followed.  No one remembers what her daughter, Vivian, did.  (Just as no one remembers what Rosencranz and Guildenstern did when they visited Elsinor, beyond being school chums of the Danish Prince.  

Vivian Warren was a mathematician.  Unlike her male peers at Cambridge, she could not expect much of a career in field beyond doing statistical tabulation for banks and insurance companies.  It was blue collar work.  Repetitious and exacting, but it gave women a modicum of control over their own lives.  Perhaps a very little modicum, surrounded as it was by domestic concerns, care for children, the eternal need to hustle for business and competition from a new technology that promised to do calculation automatically.  

Cast:

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Produced, Written and Directed by David Alan Grier

The quick summary that is found in the final scene of our play.  The Lady Dressed in Black, whose presence is usually avoided, comes to explain the story and suggest where it will all end.

Cast:

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Produced, Written and Directed by David Alan Grier

HWMS is in a network of alternative theatres.  One of our closest partners is San Francisco Recovery Theatre.  Twice a year, they do a show called “Night At the Blackhawk”.  SFRT Artistic Director and HWMS cast member, Geoffrey Grier, talks about the show.

Host: Michelle Thomas Hanson

Guest: Geoffrey Grier

An HWMS Production 

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It’s a meeting of “shoulds.”  They are eyes you should have known.  A face that should be familiar.  A voice that sounds like others you have heard but yet has its own cadence and timbre.   This is the consequence of a having a randy father, a father who believed that he somehow deserved more than one family and that he didn’t need to share his lives with others. 

Pinky meets Kylie Shawn, his half-sister, three months younger.  He has suspected her existence for many years but only now is taking the steps to introduce himself.  And of course, she knows much more about him than he knows about her.  

Cast:

A Pinky and Beta Show

Produced by HWMS Audio Theatre

Written and Directed by David Alan Grier

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“How close have you ever come to death.” It began as an exercise in a writer’s workshop but sparked a bigger debate.  Most people  chose to avoid the question and answer the less profound question “How badly have you ever embarrassed yourself.”  The initial question remained unanswered and this is our attempt to find a response,  

Four characters.  All try to make good decisions for their careers.  Strong friendships that age supported good work in the past.  And yet things go badly.  The full version of this story is posted on this page but this version focusses on the seven monologues that drive the narrative.  She has to return constantly to the question that drives this show and return she does. 

Cast:

Written and Directed by David Alan Grier

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“One Hen. Two Ducks.  Three Squawking Geese.”

And the rest is silence. 

Eight Chatbots, trained in latest, most efficient ways, undertake to teach a human being how to use a microphone.  In the process, they rediscover the classic “1940 National Broadcasting Corporation Radio Announcer Test”, conflate it with the canonical “12 Days of Christmas”, run roughshod through the western literary canon, retell the story of the Tower of Babel, and recreate their own ordinal poem (which probably has no more meaning than the two texts that form the basis for this show.)

Recorded globally on November 8, 2025.  

Refined locally in the weeks that followed.  

A story that may or may not be a parable for our future with Artificial Intelligence. 

Cast

/Written and Produced by David Alan Grier

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A story of life, of family history, of an all too human fall and of a recovery.

Cast:

A short from our new show “Pinky and Beta Read Roberts Rules of Order.”

Technically, it is a short from “behind the show.”  We’re using shorts to develop the characters, to explore how they operate in a different environment.  

Pinky and Beta are the comic relief of the new show.  The expected characters who behave in unexpected ways.  They love meetings, especially board meetings, because of the social possibilities they offer.  

Except maybe not this time.  

“Maybe the Basquiats”

Produced and Directed by David Alan Grier

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How close is close? 

A desert.  A forgotten conflict.  A pair of lost souls. One trying to make a make as daring scientist.  The other trying to be forgotten as a loyal soldier.  Neither can get what they want nor can they fulfill the needs of the others.  

One name trying to be made.  A second one trying to be forgotten.  Such is the way we make in the world.  You try to follow the examples of others, but your results may vary. 

A story of science on the battlefield.  It’s not Afghanistan.  Not Iraq.  Not even the gray and distant world of Vietnam.  It’s about trying to build your reputation and learning that that reputation may not be worth the cost.

Cast

Written and Produced by David Alan Grier

Music and Sound Design by Hilbert Space with additional music from Alibi Music under license

A rainy night in Ireland, as if there is any other kind of Irish night.  An American businesswoman and her advisor – Irish, perhaps, or Polish plausibly or Gujrati more likely, stride through the sheets of water to get an early glimpse of a company that is a possible take-over target.  The businesswoman, Rosemary Hawley, had been briefly affiliated with that company some twenty years before when it was led by a dashing but somewhat reckless young man named Jamie Gavin.  In her return, she is trying to determine if there is anything in the company that might make her some money.  She is also curious to see if there is anything left of that dashing young man. 

A modern adaptation of “Life is a Dream” by Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Written and Directed by David Alan Grier

Music Sound Design by Hilbert Space with material from Sound Audio LLC

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