Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

award-winning playwright, screenwriter, poet, fiction writer

works

Full-Length Plays

  • Marcy – As three siblings fight over their inheritance on the Upper Saranac Lake, a deadly childhood secret is peeled back, skin-by-skin.
  • The Judge and His Daughter – Conservative Supreme Court Justice and his environmental-radicalist teen need to survive together in the Adirondack wilderness. Can they set aside their ideology for the sake of family?
  • The Widow – Her memory slipping away, Cece tries to find a husband while she still has wits and looks. When she ends up with a violent abuser, a little cyanide helps her solve the problem.
  • The Incels – Stuck in online echo-chambers and YouTube channels, Tom and Derrick grow lonely and desperate. Can Pat convince them to put down their guns and meet IRL?
  • The Fencers – Maddie gives up her son to his deadbeat dad so she can train for the World Championships, but gets knocked out by a transgender woman.
  • The Caregivers – Frances decides to withhold food and water from her dying mother, but locks horns with the 24/7 aide from Trinidad.
  • The Mischief Maker – Recalcitrant teenager Jo seduces a 20-year-old in the woods to spite her over-protective mother. Until mom shows up with an iron car jack.
  • The Suspects: A Sustainability Murder Mystery – (Musical Comedy) When a freak snowstorm traps the Green Party campaigners, can Frank, the town traffic cop, discover who killed the mayoral candidate?
  • The Amy Coney Barrett Babies – Ten women nine months pregnant refuse to let their pregnancies interfere with their dreams.
  • The Heiress and the Dancer – At 80, Dorothea is jolted back into life by a charming young dancer. Until her estranged son shows up and banishes him from her life.
  • The Wives (in progress) – Two rape victims. One reports it, the other hides it. See how their lives turn out.
  • The Matriarchs (in prgress) – If you had a chance to create a world without men, why wouldn’t you? The Matriarchs explores this question in a futuristic utopian setting where women hold the power.

Screenplays

  • Helene: Hitler’s Jewish Athlete (in progress) – Helene Mayer, one of the best women athletes of the 20th century, was stripped of her citizenship when the Nazis rose to power and discovered she was half Jewish. When Germany asked her to fence for them in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, despite outcry from Jewish groups, Helene, eager to win back the gold she won in Amsterdam in 1928, said yes. Her brother, who ended up in a labor camp, never let her live it down.
  • Oseetah (in progress) – 1970s. After knocking her brother unconscious with a softball bat, a girl from the New York ghetto is sent to live in the Adirondacks for a summer. She befriends the son of an Iroquois leader who teaches her the sanctity of life and nature.
  • The Opiate (in progress) – Short horror film about a woman who buys a portrait and her whole life starts falling apart, until she meets its morbid subject.
  • Baby Teeth (in progress) – Short paranormal film about a woman who finds a vial of old baby teeth in a drawer, opening up bitter memories.

Short Plays

  • The Financiers – Six Wall Street guys from the 80s discuss their psychological problems while getting their portrait taken.
  • And Their Wives (in progress) – The six wives of the financiers meet at a health salon to soak in arsenic and help Janine decide whether to ask for a divorce.
  • The Mitochondria – Saxophonist ChiChi is up for the gig of her life, but her boyfriend, Buzz, spits his pizza all over the music director.
  • Eleanor Roosevelt’s Pudding – The ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt returns from the dead to do a YouTube cooking demo.
  • Baby’s First Madness – Honoria is in the middle of labor, but also in the middle of a multi-million-dollar real estate deal.
  • Phil Rizzuto Gives Parenting Advice – When Vinny gets hit in the head by a fly ball at a Yankees game, the ghost of Phil Rizzuto tells him how to patch things up with his daughter.
  • Mother and Daughter – A mother gives up and lets her kid eat whatever she wants.
  • Young Men on a Train – Waiting for Godot meets New Jersey Transit.
  • Counterpane – After inadvertently poisoning their parents, three children have been living for decades in their parents’ bedroom upstairs.
  • Sorry Creature – A wee kitchen creature falls in love with a chunk of cheese that has fallen on the floor, way on the other side of the kitchen. But he can’t get across!
  • The Lovers – Betrayal but with lesbian cellists.
  • SMD – A grandpa helps his grandson appreciate the legacy behind his awkward family initials.
  • The Trad Wife (in progress) – A trad wife is protesting the erection of a statue of the Seven Tenets of Satan in a public park, until a Satanist shows up and invites her to actually read them.

For my haiku, check out my Instagram.

For my short fiction, check out my Substack.