L.C. Bernadine is a Chicago playwright and lyricist whose work includes an original adaptation (with co-writer Spencer Huffman) of the legendary 1902 western THE VIRGINIAN commissioned by City Lit Theatre in Chicago (2022); BORDERLANDS (Underscore Theatre 2015); WILL THE CIRCLE (Chicago Musical Theatre Festival 2016, and Kansas City Fringe 2017); and other plays. Her short play LEMONS for PEOPLE was selected for the Empathy Festival and the Indie Boots Festival, 2017. 

She is currently at work with Erik Olsen and Nik Whitcomb on a new musical called IS YOU IS about The Field Museum’s 1933 exhibit, ‘The Races of Mankind.” In 2023, it was selected for the pilot Studio Theatre Residency sponsored by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, and it is the recipient of a Sloan grant for new play development.

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Other plays include WELCOME J-1 STUDENTS, set within a questionable State Department program for foreign students, and recently selected for the New Voices Festival at the University of Alabama; and STYLE, which was part of the New Play Lab at the William Inge Theater Festival 2016 and workshopped with a panel including David Henry Hwang. Her play REASONABLE ACCOMMODATIONS was workshopped with New Colony Theater in Chicago.

She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, and has been involved over the years with the Young Chicago Playwrights competition and other initiatives.

LC is also co-founder with dramaturg Foss Baldwin of Broken Bell Reads, a table read and support service designed to help local playwrights develop works in progress.

WELCOME J-1 STUDENTS

Full Length Play
(Cast: 3W / 4M)

Bo Han is about to begin her second summer as a so-called J-1 worker at a Wisconsin resort, where she'll join thousands of other foreign students in cheery uniforms, scooping ice cream and learning about the darker side of U.S. vacationland.

Lured by promises of cultural exchange but imported on 4-month 'J-1' visas as cheap summer labor, Bo's starry-eyed fellow students have no idea what they're in for-- not just from the resort community, but from Bo herself, who is sick of being at the bottom of the barrel, and determined to kick the barrel over. Doing so, however, involves applying what she's learned a little too adeptly, and turning Ahmet, a desperate fellow student, into her into her own personal housekeeper, room cleaner, and cook.

Will The Circle

Full Length Musical
(Cast: 2W / 3M)

When violence simmers at the edge of every day, what better way to combat the stress than by getting to know your neighbors, one home invasion at a time? Set at an urban block party where “Texas Toast” is that year’s party theme, WILL THE CIRCLE follows a group of anxious young apartment dwellers lost in a sea of homeowners, each struggling to create the circle that may or may not ever end up including them. Featuring music by the great roots/Americana songwriter Kevin Welch.

Borderlands

Full Length Musical
(Cast: 3W / 4M)

Chicago Critic: Highly Recommended

How do you change your story? Do you catch a different train? Or just throw yourself headlong into the life you think you want?  BORDERLANDS follows the ups and downs of a group of musicians and songwriters gathered to trade tales in a beat-up bar, and to toast the return of a friend. Connected in more ways than they can count, they do their best to shore each other up and cheer each other on --- while taking care not to reveal too many secrets as they stumble to find their own “three chords and the truth."

BORDERLANDS is a musical adaptation of five different stories from the collection "A Guitar and a Pen: Stories by Country Music's Greatest Songwriters,” exploring  the borderlands between what we see as success and what we think of as failure, whether romantic, artistic, or personal . Music and additional lyrics by Seattle-based composer Erik Olsen.

Lemons For The People

Ten minute play
(Cast: 2 any gender)

Preparing for the future is not what it used to be, especially not for a teenager (Casey) who believes that the 'safety net' is dead.  Dropped off at a movie theatre, Casey is panicked at her inability to find the aunt who came there with her, or so it appears to the usher (Wagner)  who tries to help her.  A new employee who wants to look good in front of his manager, Wagner is not quite sure how to handle this unpredictable patron disrupting his station. He does his best to put into practice what he’s learned in his first few days of training, but Casey is working on a training of her own: practicing for what she believes is the abandonment that could very well be the net step in her chaotic life.

Style

One-act play
(Cast: 2W)

The choices made by whoever raised us affect us in different ways, and part of our own lives ends up being about how we deal with their choices, not only our own. Patrice was raised by "hippie" parents and their ever-evolving band of friends, largely ignored.  Now she finds herself responsible for her mother, and somehow the tenacity she was forced to develop as a child serves her well, despite the fact that it was never her choice.  What helps her most, however, is the whispered advice she receives from old friends at the community Women's Center that her mother used to visit...  those friends, however, are the donated clothes in the clothing room.

THE VIRGINIAN

by L.C. Bernadine & Spencer Huffman

full-length play
(Cast: 4W / 8M / )

A fresh new adaptation of this granddaddy of all Westerns, the 1902 novel THE VIRGINIAN created the genre of the literary Western and the archetype of the cowboy hero. Never named, rough-hewn but silver-tongued, living on the frontier between nature and civilization, the Virginian pursues his own singular code of honor while falling in love with the fiercely independent Molly Wood, and battling the forces at work against him.

Commissioned by City Lit Theater, Chicago. Remained in "Top Five" Highly Recommended plays in Chicago throughout its 2022 run.