Theatre that knows it's theatre.

Full-Length Stage Plays and Musicals

Bread and Roses
In 1912 Lawrence, Massachusetts, Ellen, a textile mill worker, plans to marry Joseph, a mill manager from a prestigious Boston family. When Joseph implements pay cuts due to state-mandated working hour limits, the overworked employees stage a massive strike. The situation escalates as accusations of arson and infidelity arise, leading Ellen and her co-workers to make difficult choices, ultimately forcing Ellen to find her inner strength to determine which battles are worth fighting.

Winner, New Play Award from Portland Civic Theatre Guild, Portland, Oregon, 2024

Reading, Linestorm Playwrights, Fertile Ground Festival of New Works, Portland, Oregon, 2024

Closet Prayers
On a sleepless night in Minneapolis, one plagued by oppressive summer heat and uncertainty, Mark must summon immense courage to reveal to his best friend and his girlfriend a long-held secret: he is gay. With the assistance of a stranger who identifies himself as an angel, Mark confronts his deepest fears and highest hopes. Ultimately, he finds a realistic compromise and closure, recognizing that there may not be a miracle or wish fulfilled, but his prayer is answered, and he is finally able to move on with his life.

Staged reading, Third Eye Theatre Pride Festival, Portland, Oregon, 2025

Nothing is Nothing is Nothing
In a chaotic castle where all the men are gay and the women are straight, the King's death triggers a scramble for the throne, leading the Queen to organize a Farewell Cotillion while eyeing the Publican as her next spouse. The Knight and the Maiden pursue forbidden love, the Cook loses her prized fish, a Jester plays tricks, and an androgynous Bishop seeks the inheritance for the church. As they search for the King's will and face suspicion of murder, the King surprisingly reappears.

Reunion
This tragic Civil War tale (based on the legend of "The Lady in Black") revolves around Confederate soldier Samuel Lanier and his new wife, Melanie. Samuel is a prisoner in a Boston Harbor island fortress, and Melanie becomes entangled with a Union commander in her quest to free him. Their escape attempt goes awry when Melanie accidentally kills Samuel while trying to save him, leaving the commander torn between love and duty as he must decide Melanie's fate.

Staged reading, Playwrights' Platform Festival of New Plays, Boston, Massachusetts, 1995

Rally 'Round Sally
When Sally inherits a modest fortune, her whirlwind journey through 1920s New York, France, and London unfolds with humor and romance in this stage adaptation of P.G. Wodehouse's captivating novel, "The Adventures of Sally".

Staged reading, Fertile Ground Festival of New Works, Portland, Oregon, 2025

Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil: A Vaudeville Jukebox Musical
Heavenly voices lead to hellish choices when Frank, a vaudeville producer, strikes a Faustian deal to save his theater by casting Helen, a fallen angel seeking a comeback, and three aspiring performers, Harry, Jack, and Will. However, Helen's manipulative ways and selfish desires lead the whole gang straight to Hades to confront dark truths and moral dilemmas. Ambition, betrayal, and the consequences of choices resonate in a surreal harmony of comedy, drama, and fantasy.

Concert reading, PDX Playwrights, Fertile Ground Festival of New Works, Portland, Oregon, 2024

Boom Crash Love: A Jazz Age Jukebox Musical
Opposites seem to attract when Daniel, a slick broker, meets Evelynn, a quirky artist, but their relationship stumbles just as the stock market crashes, and only Greta, a sparkling nightclub singer, and Nick, her loyal accompanist, can keep everyone from falling head over heels into a Great Depression. In the end, who will pair with whom at a time when the only thing more unpredictable than the stock market is the heart?

Workshop 2025

Adacicy Ad God
On the desolate Minnesota prairie of the 1860s, three couples wrestle with the supernatural influence of Alexander, a mysterious figure from the past, leading to a tragic unraveling of lives and a desperate pursuit of release. (full-length drama)

One-Act Stage Plays

Now Are You Afraid of Me?
A biographer obsessed with the life of a notorious felon tracks down the ex-convict, only to find that the criminal is more interested in interrogating him.
(about 30 minutes)

Workshop production, Fertile Ground Festival of New Works, Portland, Oregon, 2025

Reading, PDX Playwrights, Portland, Oregon, 2024

Toasting the New Year
A cryptic message from a toaster threatens to keep the New Year from arriving until a young cynic makes a wish come true.
(about 20 minutes)

10-Minute Stage Plays

A Density of Thought
A quirky artist gives an unusual TED talk explaining why he makes invisible paintings.

Staged reading, Genesius Theater, Reading, Pennsylvania, 2025

Production, Chapel Theatre Co. Play Festival, Milwaukie, Oregon, 2025

Production, NW10 "Buckle Up!" Festival at Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Eugene, Oregon, 2023

Yes, Indeed!
Four intrepid explorers exhibit the value of imagination and the joy of discovery.

Production Indy West Christian School, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2024

Production, Independent School of Winchester, Virginia, 2024

Production, Nakusp Secondary School, Nakusp, British Columbia, Canada, 2023

Publication, Drama Notebook, 2023

Let's Get It Over With
Even though his wife just passed away, Bernardo is already thinking about getting rid of her stuff and his own. He's not trying to forget their life together, but he's always been someone who likes to get things done.

Production, Spark Plug Theatre Collective, Fertile Ground Festival of New Works, Beaverton, Oregon, 2025

Publication, Journal of the Pirandello Society of America, 2025

The Multiplier Effect
Does a "pay it forward" chain at Starbucks really have a positive effect? Two trainees with master's degrees debate the implications.

Production, UpStage Napa Valley PlayFest, St. Helena, California, 2024

Salmon Pink
Reality blurs during an unexpected midseason replacement of a Truman-like TV star.

Production, PDX Playwrights' "Epic Shorts: Sea Change" festival at CoHo Theatre, Portland, Oregon, 2023

Validate. Replicate. Repeat.
A simple carrot quickly derails a human subject research experiment in absurd ways.

Reading, PDX Playwrights, Portland, Oregon, 2023

No Offense
A rant about the rules of a local playwrighting competition ironically fulfills the brief.

Reading, Marshall Area Stage Company 7th Biennial Short Play Festival, Marshall, Minnesota, 2024

To Find Back
A young man experiences bittersweet hope when he reunites with his mother in a dream.

Reading, PDX Playwrights, Portland, Oregon, 2023

Detours: Dough Nuts
When a doughnut brand ambassador attempts to replace a university's traditional, wet-and-wild dunking ritual with a safe, digital challenge, a philosophy student rallies against him to defend authenticity and ban corporate branding from campus life.

Production, Northwest Theatre Workshop at Theatre 33 Summer Festival, Salem, Oregon 2025

Into Thin Air
All is not as it seems, and reality becomes such that when love’s magic disappears, so may one’s love.

Reading, PDX Playwrights, Portland, Oregon, 2023

Today the World Stops
When a godman demands attention, he realizes social media influencers have all the real power.

Reading, PDX Playwrights, Portland, Oregon, 2023

Basilisk Day
The lines between Shakespearean drama and real-life ambition are blurred when a seasoned actor is threatened by his understudy.

Alma Strikes a Chord
After suggestions from friends and colleagues, a romantic musician finally writes the perfect love song for her boyfriend.

Menagerie à Trois
Actors struggle with distractions, forgotten lines, and personal conflicts in a dysfunctional community theater rehearsal of "The Glass Menagerie."

We All Have the Right
No matter the diversion, the longest wait is always the queue for the restroom, where there's always one person in front of you.

Fragile Bonds
Breaking a box of heirloom china plates leads estranged brothers Alex and Ben to piece together their broken relationship after the death of their parents.

Audio Scripts

A Big Break
An overzealous New York cabbie and an understudy newbie scamper about the city as they make their way to Broadway. (1-2 minutes)

Publication, Mini Plays Review, 2025

Broadcast, Yeppoon Little Theatre, KeppelFM91.3, Yeppoon, Queensland, Australia, 2023

Seeing It Through
A blind date becomes an eye-opening experience for a gender-queer Kelly and judgmental Scott as they learn of each other's priorities.
(15-20 minutes)

The Magic Shop
A young boy and his father stumble upon a mysterious shop filled with unusual things, but soon find themselves entangled in a world where reality blurs and magic may be more than just an illusion. Adapted from the short story by H.G. Wells. (25-30 minutes)

About Face
A comedian is promoting a new TV project called "Missed Deceptions", but it's revealed the whole thing may have been a publicity stunt.
(50-55 minutes)

Works in Progress

Dave Kenton and the Sirens of Space
When starships vanish due to the agonizing song of the Space Sirens, Captain Dave Kenton of the Star Patrol investigates but is captured by the sirens and must find a way to escape their palace on Mimas and stop their reign of terror. A genre mash-up based on the Avon Comics original. (45-minute experimental musical)

Timber and Shadow
In the frozen heart of the northern woods, 1895, the lumber camp at Shadow Creek churns through winter beneath towering pines and a sky heavy with snow. Life here is brutal—ax by day, whiskey by night, and a silence that presses in from the trees. Into this grim world comes Elias Brandt, a quiet, principled foreman with hopes of saving enough to buy a small farm and leave the woods behind. But hope is a fragile thing in a place like this. Featuring traditional music from lumber camps and American folk songs. (full-length chamber musical)

It All Comes Out in the Wash
Shakespeare once wrote that "apparel oft proclaims the man," but in the spin cycle of life, identities can easily unravel in the laundry room of fate. (10-minute musical)

Oh, Pisa! Pisa!
When a man decides to straighten the Leaning Tower of Pisa, he learns that true beauty is not found in perfection. (full-length farce)

Biography

Timothy Krause began his professional theater career in the production department of North Shore Music Theatre near Boston. While there, he also directed shows at Salem State University (“The Lesson” and “On the Verge”) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (“Trial By Jury”), and his Civil War drama “Re-Union” was presented at the Playwrights’ Platform Festival of New Plays in Boston. He then shifted roles to theater administration and served as marketing and development director for Maine Shakespeare Festival and Penobscot Theatre Company in Bangor, where he also designed scenery for “Wait Until Dark”. Moving to Portland, Tim wrote about theater for Just Out newspaper; reviewed hundreds of shows for the Drammy committee and Followspot blog; and served for seven seasons as the marketing director for Miracle Theatre Group (Milagro). During this time, Tim received a Leslie O. Fulton Fellowship from the Portland Civic Theatre Guild to attend an international theatre festival in Santiago, Chile, as well as an “Unsung Hero” award from the Drammy Committee for his work in organizing the Portland Theatre Marketers Roundtable. Tim originally received a bachelor’s degree in theater from Southwest Minnesota State University, which included a summer internship in stage management at The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. At Portland State University, Tim earned a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and later a master's degree in Teaching English for Speakers for Other Languages, and he has been teaching at Portland Community College since 2015. Writing a novel for his students led Tim to return to playwriting in 2022, and some of his new work has been produced by the NW10 Festival in Eugene (“A Density of Thought”) and PDX Playwrights Epic Shorts Festival in Portland (“Salmon Pink”). Another short play (“Yes, Indeed!”) was published by Drama Notebook and presented by schools in Canada and the U.S., while a one-minute radio script (“A Big Break”) aired on KeppelFM91.3 community radio by Yeppoon Little Theatre in Australia. His historical drama "Bread and Roses" won the 2024 New Play Award by the Portland Civic Theatre Guild and was presented as a staged reading by Linestorm Playwrights during the 2024 Fertile Ground Festival of New Works in Portland. At the same time, PDX Playwrights presented a concert reading of his vaudeville jukebox musical "Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil." More recently, his ten-minute comedy "The Multiplier Effect" was produced in UpStage Napa Valley's 2024 PlayFest, and his short stage adaptation of "Let's Get It Over With" has been accepted for publication in the 2025 Journal of the Pirandello Society of America. Three of Tim's new works were presented in the 2025 Fertile Ground Festival of New Work: "Rally 'Round Sally", "Now Are You Afraid of Me?" and "Let's Get It Over With."

A brief analysis

A recurring theme or motif in Timothy Krause's plays appears to be a *blurring of reality* and *exploration of perception*. Many of his works involve characters grappling with the boundaries between what is real and what is imagined or manipulated. This could suggest a deeper exploration of *subjective reality* and how different characters perceive and interact with the world around them, often influenced by external forces or unexpected events. For example, *"Salmon Pink"* blurs reality within a TV show, *"A Density of Thought"* involves invisible paintings, and *"Into Thin Air"* suggests reality shifts when love's magic disappears. There’s also a sense of playfulness with absurdity, imagination, and illusion in works like *"Validate. Replicate. Repeat."* and *"Menagerie à Trois."* Other plays, like *"Yes, Indeed!"* and *"The Magic Shop"*, highlight the power of imagination and discovery, reinforcing this exploration of subjective experiences. Though there are underlying currents of satire, fantasy, and dramatic relationships (as seen in *"Bread and Roses"* and *"Closet Prayers"*), the dominant theme in Krause’s body of work seems to question *the nature of reality and perception*, often revealing unexpected truths or outcomes.

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