SCREENPLAYS
Wake Up (short)
Written by Linda Manning and Vincent Liota
Directed by Vincent Liota
Currently being developed into a web series.
Directed by Vincent Liota
Currently being developed into a web series.
- Finalist - Best Dark Comedy - 2019 Los Angeles Int'l Indie Short Fest
- Official Selection - 2019 New Haven Int'l Film Festival
- Produced for the 2018 48 Hour Film Project - New Haven
- Winner - Best Actress - Linda Manning
Opal has been staring at half a picture her a whole life; but who is the stranger staring back? Skate has been living in the same place his whole life. When Opal returns to confront her past, she and Skate reconnect, and then an undone shoelace unravels everything.
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Ghost Ride (short)
Written by Linda Manning and Kevin Smyth
Directed by Kevin Smyth
An alienated New York City cab driver picks up a desperate fare who takes him on a ride of reawakening.
Directed by Kevin Smyth
- Official Selection - Manhattan Film Festival - 2017
- Official Selection - New York Short Film Festival - 2016
An alienated New York City cab driver picks up a desperate fare who takes him on a ride of reawakening.
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Learning to Drive (feature)
- Grand Prize Winner - StoryPros Awards Screenplay Contest 2013
- Quarter Finalist - PAGE Int'l. Screenwriting Awards 2013
- Poster designed by The Black List for Featured Script May 2015
An introverted teenage girl tries to escape her abusive home when she lies about her age and gets a summer job at a local golf course where she falls into a secret love affair with a thirty year old disgraced golf pro.
"Breathtaking, poignant, and lovely, LEARNING TO DRIVE should be a strong contender for the industry's attention and interest... A spiritual and chronological successor to nostalgic feature masterpieces like THE VIRGIN SUICIDES and ALMOST FAMOUS, LEARNING TO DRIVE is an accomplished, market-ready script .... There is a growing awareness of the fact that women comprise the majority of filmgoers; a script such as LEARNING TO DRIVE reflects so many facets of the female experiences of innocence, abuse, sexuality, and self-discovery that it would make a savvy pick for any studio looking to court this important audience."
The Black List
Divine Food (feature)
A forty year old former rock singer, having buried her artistic life to devote herself to her husband and children, falls in love with the alcoholic butcher at her grocery store who was once a great musician and risks everything in order to regain her voice.
"The sexual frankness and sense of female gaze in this script is a really strong and refreshing element. In a way, this script feels like a much darker take on a musical romance like Once. The use of limited locations in this New York-set script is a smart choice in terms of making the budget manageable. This script brings a fresh perspective to some familiar story beats"
The Black List
"Divine Food is a taunt and erotic drama about Helen, a train-wreck of a person, grasping for a better life. Helen is a great character. Damaged, lonely, and striving to feel anything after her life doesn't feel fulfilling. She's definitely an antihero because we're certainly not rooting for her but we empathize with her choices and that's because the screenwriter puts so much time and attention into crafting her. She'll definitely be attractive for actresses who want a strong female with a wide range of emotions."
The Black List
"The sexual frankness and sense of female gaze in this script is a really strong and refreshing element. In a way, this script feels like a much darker take on a musical romance like Once. The use of limited locations in this New York-set script is a smart choice in terms of making the budget manageable. This script brings a fresh perspective to some familiar story beats"
The Black List
"Divine Food is a taunt and erotic drama about Helen, a train-wreck of a person, grasping for a better life. Helen is a great character. Damaged, lonely, and striving to feel anything after her life doesn't feel fulfilling. She's definitely an antihero because we're certainly not rooting for her but we empathize with her choices and that's because the screenwriter puts so much time and attention into crafting her. She'll definitely be attractive for actresses who want a strong female with a wide range of emotions."
The Black List
Charlotte (feature)
- Creative World Awards Preliminary Finalist 2019
- Second Round of Competition for the 2016 Sundance Screenwriters Lab
Charlotte Bronte, brilliant, paralyzingly shy, and desperate to break away from her restricted, provincial life publishes her writing under a male pseudonym and then must fight to claim her identity on her own terms.
STAGE PLAYS
Perfect Love (solo show)
- Cherry Lane Theatre - April/May 2020
- Presented by Poor Mouth Theatre Co. - November 2019
- Presented by Dixon Place - April 2019
- Official Selection - United Solo Festival in NYC 2018
Directed by Obie, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award winner Gretchen Cryer
Linda tells the story of her past -- her flamboyant absent father, her predatory stepfather -– and, in the wreckage, her search for perfect love. Hilarious and poignant, this is the story of the havoc this search wreaks on her adult life as she struggles to let the past go and set herself free.
“Nothing is off limits here as she explores love, lust, desire, betrayal, and brutality. She relishes in the telling of her tale. Her words are courageous and her performance is revelatory and joyous to watch..”
TheatreReview.NYC
"This world is full with brave and honest performances, but not quite like this, It was the sheer force of her work, her truth-telling, her deep dive into the known and not knowing how she might resurface that made us feel all the things we needed to feel."
Director Maureen Payne-Hahner
There is No You and Me (full length)
- Finalist - New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest - 2017
- Staged Reading - 2018 Produced by The Drawing Board
- Originally developed at the Bronx Playwrights Workshop
A married woman walks into a bar...
to reclaim a piece of her past.
Can she put an old lover to rest
and reinvent herself, or is this a
ghost story destined to be repeated?
"Such an unusual play. Very skillfully crafted.... Beautifully written sexual encounter. The writer bore her soul. She knows the grasp that love can have. Like being possessed by a mysterious, exciting energy of the other." New Works of Merit
Bite the Apple (full length)
- Finalist - Kentucky Women Writers Prize - 2019
- Revised version - staged reading Theater Lab NYC 2016
- Produced as part of the NY Int'l Fringe Festival 2012
Cinderella, in the middle of a full blown mid-life crisis, has a panic attack and is thrust into the stories of Red Riding Hood, Snow White, and Rapunzel exposing their emotionally treacherous stories of sexual abuse, abandonment, and betrayal, and unearthing her own past she tried to forget.
"The ensemble of actresses are remarkable, particularly the evocative and nuanced performance by Manning. Bite the Apple is a smart script with intricate dialogue and beautiful language...."
Joseph Samuel Wright
Theatre Is Easy, New York, NY
GUY (full length)
- Finalist - Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference 2007
- Workshop reading June 2015 at The Drawing Board NYC
- originally developed through a Ledig House International Writer's Colony Fellowship
Guy, a successful truck salesman in his mid-sixties, is dying. When his estranged, middle-aged daughter shows up at his door full of self doubt having followed in his footsteps and become a wandering, rootless Cowboy herself, Guy must face the real world consequences of his actions. Will he be able to save her before it’s too late?
DO SOMETHING WITH YOURSELF! The Life of Charlotte Brontë
(full length)
- Produced by The Invisible Theatre in NYC
- Third Prize, Center Theatre International Playwrighting Contest, Chicago, IL
- Third Prize, Great Platte River Playwrights' Festival, Univ. of Nebraska
- Finalist, Robert J. Pickering Award for Playwriting Excellence, Coldwater, MI
- Finalist, South Carolina Playwrights' Festival, Trustus Theatre, Columbia, SC
"Writer-performer Linda Manning gives us a fiercely intelligent and sexual Charlotte Brontë.... The writing delicately renders the conflict between family responsibility and the artist's calling, between romantic yearning and the realities of married love."
The Village Voice. New York, NY
Purchase a copy from
Smith & Kraus Publishers
The Fall of the House of Usher (full length)
Produced by The Invisible Theatre in NYC
"The Invisible Theatre Company’s adaptation of the classic tale is strikingly fresh, thanks to playwright Linda Manning’s bold vision.... Manning had a dynamic presence .... Deftly handling the madness that lies at the heart of Poe’s tale, Manning oscillated from a petulant little girl, to a proper young lady, to a disturbing sexual force.... The amount of humor that Manning has incorporated into the script, without compromising its horror, is one of its greatest accomplishments.”
The Off-Off-Broadway Review, New York, NY
"The Invisible Theatre Company’s adaptation of the classic tale is strikingly fresh, thanks to playwright Linda Manning’s bold vision.... Manning had a dynamic presence .... Deftly handling the madness that lies at the heart of Poe’s tale, Manning oscillated from a petulant little girl, to a proper young lady, to a disturbing sexual force.... The amount of humor that Manning has incorporated into the script, without compromising its horror, is one of its greatest accomplishments.”
The Off-Off-Broadway Review, New York, NY