Rick Butts the
Canadian playwright
formerly known as SpookyB

Love is Complicated  

Three women. And love that’s complicated. An anthology of one-act love stories. A nasty husband and friendly raccoons. An odd one-night birthday celebration for an unhappy woman with a theologically trained creepy clown. An artificial Mom about to be shut down by the government on her son’s twenty-first birthday except that her kids aren’t having it.    

Six Days in the Life of Mom, 2126. 

Over six days in 2126, brother and sister Mats and Thena figure out what to do with Mom. Once they don’t need her, what’s the point of Mom?   

Happy Birthday Dear Maggie

Maggie spends a night in a hotel room with a clown while her husband undergoes surgery that could leave him paralyzed for life. Or worse. It’s her birthday.  

Ellen Makes Friends 

When Ellen gets the call from the lawyer for the raccoons in her bedroom—as her husband is taking money and leaving her—she realizes she needs new friends. 

Exemption Directive, 2126 

When their mother Nora Mai, an artificial life form, is about to be shut down by the government, Thena and her brother Mats are drawn into a tense stand-off with Foundling Sanctuary Services. They learn Mom knows more than she’s letting on. 

Felis Catus, Superhero   

Plan B and the spider that kills people but not cats. It happened at the Corporate Retreat. 

Mind the Magic Forest  

It takes a forest to clear a mind. Deb considers a life lonely but never shunned. 

Voices 

In a forest inside a mind. When a mind falls in the forest and no one’s around to hear it.  

Nobody’s Dummies  

A friend and a surveillance reindeer stage an intervention to help a dummy turn his life around. But what if the dummy isn’t really? 

Raccoon 

Raccoons are domesticating. Getting cuter is part of the plan. 

Break Time

In the quest for great coffee, a reindeer stands between them and the knowledge they seek. 

Father for Jordan  

A ghost and his brother come up with a plan to give an orphan a father. A ghost story in one act.  

Cat Operating Officer 

The fur flies when the boss’ pet gets a promotion. A one-act play about the cat, the boss and the cat lady from HR. 

Girls can hunt

A ghost story set against the backdrop of a seminal moment in Canadian nation-building: a steam locomotive of the Grand Trunk Railway makes it all the way from Montreal to Toronto in a single day in 1856. Four years later, in Belleville the ghosts have gathered to consider what it means for the future of their family. And whether they can give an orphan baby a father.

Before Clare

A baby born in a fishing village in Newfoundland and another baby born years later in Toronto survive the tidal wave that Canada forgot. This story is inspired by true events.