Bless Cricket, Crest Toothpaste, and Tommy Tune

Play script. Cricket, a young teenage girl, struggles to come to terms with her older brother Tom who has Down syndrome. Contemporary settings. 6-9 roles (3M, 2F, 1 Either with doubling/ OR 5M, 3F, 1 Either.)

Tom is obsessed with the legendary movie tap dancers and his own cherished tap shoes. Cricket's embarrassment and frustration evolve into an appreciation of her brother's special gifts and an understanding that his unique world, as sometimes revealed in the person of a mysterious tap-dancing stranger, is a joyous place to live.

Ms. Daugherty's plays have been produced at the Dallas Children's Theater, The Kennedy Center, Stage One, The Louisville Children's Theatre, Baltimore's Children's Theater Association, Atlanta's Alliance Theatre, Kansas City's Theatre for Young America, Richmond's Theatre IV, and in community theaters, colleges and schools throughout the United States. National touring productions of her plays have been presented in more than 150 cities in 38 states. Over twenty of Ms. Daugherty's plays have premiered at the Dallas Children's Theater, one of the country's premier children's theaters. Her play, Bless Cricket, Crest Toothpaste, & Tommy Tune, is the latest winner of the Bonderman/Indiana University/Purdue University/Indiana Repertory Theatre Playwriting Competition and the Dallas-Ft. Worth Theater Critics Forum Award for New Plays. In addition, Bless Cricket... is excerpted in Dramatic Publishing Company's book, Scenes and Monologues for Young Actors, and featured in the April, 2000, issue of American Theatre. Ms. Daugherty has received the Southwest Theater Association's Playwright of the Year Award and Best New Children's Play Award and two Dallas Theater League nominations for Outstanding New Play. She has dramatized three books by celebrated children's book author and illustrator, Steven Kellogg. Ms. Daugherty has served as a consultant to the San Antonio Independent School District's Learning About Learning creative arts program and as Education Director of the Dallas Children's Theater where she is currently Playwright in Residence. As an actress, she has appeared on Broadway, at Manhattan Theater Club, and in regional theaters including the Ivanhoe Theater in Chicago (where she received a Jefferson Award nomination), Seattle Repertory Theater, Dallas Theater Center, Indiana Repertory Theater, Casa Manana Theater in Ft. Worth, and the Dallas Children's Theater.