Quantumly Entangled
A New 2-Act Play From Pamela Hill Nettleton
“A Rom-Com for the Woodstock Generation”
Romance isn’t only for the unwrinkled. For 68-year-old rock legend Zee, her ex-bass player Mitch, and her old high school boyfriend Griff, passion and heartbreak is as befuddling and audacious today as when they were in their twenties. Music legend Zee left the public eye in the 1970s, when Griff married another woman and Mitch abandoned her. Since then, she’s lived a happy though cloistered single life making music for herself, licensing her name to designer jeans, and hanging out with her charming teenage grandson Sam and her longtime manager Annie. Chastely, confusingly, and unconventionally, Zee and still-married Griff continue their friendship. Griff takes Sam fishing and helps Zee around the house, neither openly acknowledging their deep and continuing affection for each other—except for writing one love letter every other year on their anniversary.
When 40-year-old music journalist Huck interviews Zee for a New York Times Magazine article on has-been rock stars who aren’t dead yet, he sparks a tumultuous reunion between long-separated Zee and Mitch that disrupts everyone’s lives—and fuels Huck’s own attraction to Zee, despite their age difference. While Annie encourages Zee to rekindle her long-ago success, Zee must choose between her past and future. As a sort of Greek chorus, a physicist in his lab explains quantum entanglement as attachment on the cellular level that transcends time and space—a kind of universal magic. They all explore the mysteries of attraction and how love, in its many forms, may be pre-ordained, inescapable, and literally written in the stars.
Equity Reading June 2, 2025, produced by Prime Productions
ZEE played by Suzanne Egli
ANNIE played by Sue Scott
MITCH played by Mark Benninghofen
GRIFF played by Bill McCallum
HUCK played by Toussaint Morrison
SAM played by Quinlan Nettleton
PHYSICIST played by James Detmar
STAGE DIRECTIONS by Mark Bergren
Nutcracker: The Untold Story
Awards
Parent’s Choice Gold Award – 1998, Video Script
National Parenting Publications (NAPPA) Gold Award – 1998, Video Script
The Dove Foundation Family Approved Seal – 1998, Video Script
Parenting Magazine’s Video Magic Award – 1998, Video Script
Child Magazine’s Top Videos of the Year – 1998, Video Script
Crayola Kids Holiday Videos –1998, Video Script
Sesame Street Parents Best Videos – 1998, Video Script
Kid’s First! Coalition for Quality Children’s Media Award – 1997, Video Script
Reviews
“An entertainingly multi-layered program made up of an imaginative mix of theatre, storytelling, poetry, narration, music, ballet, and animation. This is a delightful program which works on a variety of levels to entertain and inform a wide range of audiences.”
—Emergency Library, Vol. 25, Iss. 4, March/April 1998: 60
“This spectacular production of the Nutcracker story centers on the magic spell that turned the handsome prince into the Nutcracker doll… Dramatized through the deft interweaving of live footage of the Minnesota Orchestra playing the Tchaikovsky music, performances by members of the James Sewell Ballet Company, and animation of illustrations by Maurice Sendak, the video is pure excitement. The script by Pamela Hill Nettleton is tight…As a “grand experiment,” this video certainly succeeds.”
—Parents’ Choice 1998 Gold Award
The Underwear Opera
Libretto by Pamela Hill Nettleton
Named “Best Classic Music Idea of 1997” by USA Today, 1997
Included in Glamour Magazine
Reviews
“[An NHL] hockey player couldn’t help but see the words ‘garter belt’ and ‘seamed stockings’ on a piece of paper Nettleton was holding during a flight from Minneapolis to Las Vegas. ‘These guys are drinking and talking about, I don’t know—hat tricks,” she said, when “one of them leans across the aisle. You writing a letter to your boyfriend? I’m not ashamed to admit I’m reading it.” Nettleton…passed lyrics over the seats for their perusal. Mr. Curious Hockey Player remarked that he could picture the duet between the leads, a tenor and a soprano. “She’s listing all of the things women wear: teddies, garter belts, push-up bras and peignoirs, baby dolls,” said Nettleton. “He keeps singing T-shirts, boxers, and briefs.” Nettleton got off the plane and [called the composer]. “I’ve had a focus group and a market test, and it works with a clientele you would not believe would come to opera.”
—C.J., Star Tribune
The Labor Room
A One-Act Play by Pamela Hill Nettleton
Productions
McKnight Theater, Ordway Theater, Minneapolis, 1988
Mankato State University, Mankato, Minnesota, 1987
Stage One: Collaboration, St. Paul, 1986
Reviews
“Nettleton’s play is a first-rate entertainment…Playwright Nettleton has a talent for writing comedy. At several points, she will set up a joke, hit the punch line squarely, neatly top it off with something even funnier and then add a third or fourth laugh line…A fine, funny evening.”
—David Hawley, St. Paul Pioneer Press
“Pre-opening ticket sales have been brisk…Friday’s performance was sold out several weeks ago.”
—St. Paul Pioneer Press
“Pamela Nettleton’s often hilarious, promising new play…reveals its author as a frequently deft purveyor of Simonesque one-line humor and a promising creator of distinct stage personalities. It certainly brought laughter on opening night.”
—Peter Vaughan, Star Tribune
A Child’s Garden of Monsters: Dracula’s Blues
Libretto by Pamela Hill Nettleton
Composed by Libby Larsen
Productions
Woodwind Orchestra conducted by Marlene Pauley, 2014
The Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, February 2015
A Young Person’s Guide to t he Orchestra
Script by Pamela Hill Nettleton
Productions
The Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, February 2015
A Carnival of Animals
Script by Pamela Hill Nettleton
Productions
The Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, February 6, 2011
The Animals Speak
Script by Pamela Hill Nettleton
Productions
Katrina Benefit, Fitzgerald Theatre, St. Paul, 2005
The Junk Drawer
Script by Pamela Hill Nettleton
Productions
Katrina Benefit, Fitzgerald Theatre, St. Paul, 2005
Alma Mahler
Script by Pamela Hill Nettleton
Productions
The Minnesota Orchestra, 2002
Shostakovich
Script by Pamela Hill Nettleton
Shostakovich played by Stephen Yoakam
Productions
The Minnesota Orchestra, February 28, 2001
I Don’t, I Don’t
Script by Pamela Hill Nettleton
Productions
Equity Reading at The Playwright Center, Minneapolis, 1988