FORTUNE

Full-length Comedy

by Deborah Zoe Laufer

Maude, a lonely, surly, storefront psychic has accepted that love is not in the cards for her. She can see the future and
knows this to be true. But when Jeremy, a despondent love-hungry accountant threatens to end it all if she sees no
love for him, she must wrestle with fate, and in changing his destiny, change her own.

“FORTUNE carries all of the elements that Laufer’s expanding corps of
devotees love her for: blunt, beautiful, funny dialogue; an empathic
insight into the aches, conflicts and dreams that make us human; a knack
for revealing the hidden significance of our most trivial and foolhardy
impulses; and a bold, death-defying willingness to face the awful truth
and still wrap things up on a note of sweetness and hope.”
—Metro Active Sonoma

“...What really drives this play home is its honesty. It’s a story about two
people who carry virtual ‘no trespass’ signs around their personal lives yet
yearn for one last chance at happiness.”
—Democrat & Chronicle

 Cast of Characters
(1W, 1M)

MAUDE — A fortune teller from Brooklyn. She can see the future.
She really can. She hates her life, she hates her job, but believes that
she’s powerless to change it. She’s learned everything she knows of the
world from her clients and from movies of the 40s, 50s, 60s. She dons
a “fortune-teller’s voice” and costume when she working. The turban
includes a veil that obscures her mouth and chin. She wears other
disguises in the rare times she steps outside — no one ever sees her as
she really is.

JEREMY — An accountant from Brooklyn Heights. Desperate for
love, Jeremy drives everyone away. He’s remarkably naive and a very
sweet and decent human being.

Place: The action takes place in Maude’s parlor and on the
Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, NY.
Time: Some time ago

Author

Deborah Zoe Laufer

Deb’s plays have been produced at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Cleveland Playhouse, Geva, The Humana Festival, Everyman, Primary Stages, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and hundreds of other theaters around the world. Plays include Be Here Now, End Days, Rooted, Informed Consent (NYTimes critic’s pick), Leveling Up, Out of Sterno, The Last Schwartz, Sirens, Meta, The Three Sisters of Weehawken, Fortune, dozens of short plays, and the musicals, Window Treatment, and By Any Other Name, written with composer, Daniel Green.
Deb is a recipient of the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, the Lilly Award, The ATCA Steinberg citation, and grants and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Edgerton Foundation, The National New Play Network, and the Lincoln Center Foundation. Her work has been developed by The Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Theatre Lab, PlayPenn, The Cherry Lane Alternative, The Missoula Colony...[FULL BIO]