Life is full of angst in the basement quick change room of a long-running Broadway show that may be on its last legs, and the women of the chorus are at war with the wardrobe department. Will the new dresser, with her own sad past and uncertain future, be able to navigate this...
ALLIGATOR MOUTH, TADPOLE ASS
by C. Julian Jiménez
Drama, Full-length
ALLIGATOR MOUTH, TADPOLE ASS is a twistedly queer memory play about a troubled man in 1986 looking for answers at Miss Chelley's Fortune Shop in NYC. Instead of the answers he craves, he connects with a young man working there whose memory is constantly triggered by their incredibly intense connection. They cruise and dance their way through the past leading them to a dangerous night of improper role play.
AMERICA IN ONE ROOM
by Jason Odell Williams
Comedy-Drama, Full-length
When eight strangers receive an invitation to the America in One Room event in 2019, promising robust discussions on a wide range of social and political topics, sparks fly, tempers flare, and comedy abounds. At a time when everyone thinks they’re right, it will take more than political debate to find common ground. Inspired by the real-life convention of the same name, AMERICA IN ONE ROOM is a comedy-drama that tackles our...
AMERICAN PROM
by Idris Goodwin
Set in a small-town middle American town called Principal, this is the story of teenage best friends Jimmy T. and Kia B. Jimmy wants to take Kia to prom, but it’s complicated. Jimmy is white and Kia is black, and Principal has been holding racially segregated proms for de- cades. In this contemporary coming of age story, filled with music and magic, rhymes and beats, Jimmy and Kia work to hold fast to their friendship. With a little help from a musical superstar, they both fight to envision a...
Two actors, who were “America’s Sexiest Couple” on a popular ‘90s sitcom reunite for the first time in 25 years. They face a lifetime of unresolved issues, longings, resentments, and regrets. Plus, the network wants to reboot the show. Career and personal aspirations collide. Professionally and personally, where do they go from here?
A cross-country pilgrimage on bicycles from Venice, CA to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA. ANOTHER AMERICA is a free-wheeling portrait of the country itself as well as a journey of self discovery for two brothers and their best friend.
ANTEBELLUM
by Robert O'Hara
Drama, Full-length
This haunting, provocative play sheds light on the similarities between racism and homophobia in Nazi Germany and the American South when a black, gay, transgender prisoner escapes Germany only to find themselves embroiled in the racially-charged hotbed of 1939 Atlanta, Georgia.
In the opening scene of this comedy, a writer meets the ghost of Franz Kafka, which sets off an existential chain of events forcing the cast to confront the meaning of life. Through a series of hilarious random encounters, the play questions whether we can understand our existence or is life just one long Zoom meeting interrupted by Amazon and Doordash...
BABEL is a dark comedy set in the near future. Two couples are having trouble getting pregnant and the lengths they go to in order to have a baby raises the specter of eugenics, explores the societal value of a baby, and asks us what we are willing to risk for love.
If you like Booker’s “Black Mirror,” Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go,” or Haley’s “The Nether,” then this play is for you.
Original songs by Ifa Bayeza.
The Ballad of Emmett Till dramatizes the final days of Emmett Till, a Chicago teenager who takes a fateful trip to Mississippi in the summer of 1955. It is the story of a quest, Emmett’s pursuit of happiness, of liberty and ultimately of life.
Barbecue centers on around the O'Mallerys, a dysfunctional group of siblings who come together for a park barbeque in order to stage an emergency intervention for their sister Barbara, whose drug habit has gotten out of hand. However, there are in fact two O'Mallery families, one white and one black. Each appear in different, yet similar scenes that juxtapose to create a dialogue about racial and family politics.
BENEVOLENCE
by Ifa Bayeza
BENEVOLENCE is the third play in The Till Trilogy, exploring the epic saga of Civil Rights icon Emmett Louis Till, the Chicago teenager whose fateful trip to Mississippi in the summer of 1955 is believed by many to mark the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement.
BENEVOLENCE explores the transformation in the Mississippi Delta in the wake of Emmett’s death, the toll of the legacy of enslavement on...
BERTA, BERTA
by Angelica Chéri
90 Minute One Act
Sabrina Jackson cannot cope with the death of herson by a White cop. Rather than herald the Black Lives Matter movement, Sabrina retreats inward, living out a comic book superhero fantasy. Will Sabrina stay in this dream world or return to reality and mourn her loss?
BLESSINGS FROM THE PANDEMIC, a theater piece in five movements, is a mosaic of poetic reflections exploring our journeys in response to the events of the pandemic: the big, the small, the humorous, the challenging, and even the inspiring.
At a church-sponsored halfway house in Western North Carolina, the arrival of a charismatic high-school English teacher shakes up the household dynamic, leading to new friendships, routines, and intrigues. As romantic rivalries and racial tensions escalate, the house’s residents and two founders—a taciturn, broad-minded minister and an idealistic social worker—must confront their own failings and the limits of their mission.
Are you ready for some laughs? Soak up the good life in Boca Raton, a city that offers the fountain of youth. In this Garden of Eden, the sun always shines, the lawns are always manicured, and the weather holds steady at a perfect 75, just like Boca’s well-maintained seniors. Boca is a series of short intertwining comedies that follow a group of retirees in a fictional retirement community, the Boca Oasis, who, between rounds of golf, bridge and botox, discover the...
TRAGICOMEDY
An aging ruler, an oppressive police state, a restless polarized people seething with paranoia: it’s a dangerous time for poets. Two of them—the great Kit Marlowe and up-and-comer Will Shakespeare—meet in the back room of a pub to collaborate on a history play cycle, navigate the perils of art under a totalitarian regime, and flirt like young men...
Inspired by the early life and influ- ences of Seattle native and musical icon Jimi Hendrix. The early era of rock ‘n’ roll music sets the stage as a young Black boy conjures his creativity as a budding guitarist. Guided by the spirit of music itself, the boy learns to find...
by Liz Duffy Adams
COMI-TRAGIC FANTASIA
In this climate-chaos comic-tragedy, a burnt-out coder has become a hermit in the wilderness, nursing a broken arm and making lists from memory—of endangered species, moments of Lost Time, Incorrect States of Mind—in company with her only friend, a gray fox with a bad attitude. When wildfires approach, they flee through the wilderness to the sea, pursued by...
by C. Julian Jiménez
Bruise and Thorn are Nuyorican, queer, and tired af of their jobs at a busted up laundromat in Jamaica, Queens. But not for long: Bruise is saving up to become a chef (like on Chopped!), and Thorn spits bars on street corners, one America’s Got Talent audition away from becoming the Boricua Nikki Minaj. When the laundromat’s basement turns out to be an illegal...
by Matt Schatz
Adult siblings Mordy and Jane have a problem. Their dreadful, centenarian grandfather is an emotional and financial tax on the family, and he just won’t die. Scheming almost entirely via text messages, the siblings hatch an outrageous plan to relieve themselves of their family's burdens and their own.
BY THE NUMBERS is a fun, inventive, and diverse collection of eight short plays inspired by mathematical theorems.
It’s Carmela’s birthday, and she’s finally old enough to accompany her big brother on his errands. On their way to the laundromat, past fields of what her Mamí calls “flores de cempazuchitl”, Carmela finds a puffy white dandelion to...
by Paul Schmidt
Madame Ranevskaya, who has spent five years in Paris to escape grief over her young son’s death, returns to her home in Russia ridden with debt. She is obliged to decide how to dispose of her family’s estate, with its beautiful and famous cherry orchard. The coarse but wealthy merchant Ermolai Lopakhin suggests that Mme Ranevskaya develop the land on which the orchard sits. Eventually Lopakhin purchases the estate and proceeds...
Adapted from the novella by Charles Dickens by Rob Melrose
Inspired by the original novella, Melrose captures Dickens’ witty wording and evocative style to surprise audiences with parts of the familiar story they didn’t know were there! A Christmas Carol tells the beloved story of Scrooge and his miraculous transformation. This new production of a holiday tradition is the perfect way for families to recapture the nostalgia of Christmases past and to create memories for many Christmases to come...
This new take on an old classic tells the forgotten stories hidden in the fairy tale we all know so well. Hilarious, imaginative, and powerful, this play is specifically designed to be performed by young performers and may be adapted to a virtual or in-person performance venue.
A techno-thriller that begins when a young woman is raped at a fraternity and ends in a future where corporations promise a new body with the swipe of a screen, CLICK follows a hacktivist named Fresh who turns industrial espionage into high art. As this virtual Banksy takes over the global imagination, the man who stole her life develops a technology that sends the two of them on a collision course at the heart of...
A young man armed with a secret that can land him in terrible trouble boards the Coast Starlight, the long-distance train that runs from Los Angeles to Seattle. With the help of his fellow travelers, all of whom are reckoning with their own choices, he has roughly one thousand miles to figure out a way forward. THE COAST STARLIGHT is a smart, funny, and compassionate story about our capacity for invention and re-invention when life goes off the rails.
The Puzzlemaker is holding a workshop to teach you to make a crossword puzzle! As the Puzzlemaker embarks on their creation, they reveal the tricks of the trade, but also something unexpected: there is power in puzzles. Will the Puzzlemaker use their powers for good--or evil? And which choice means making a puzzle that will solve their life?
CYRANO DE BERGERAC is brand new adaptation in verse of the famous crowd-pleasing tale of love, honor, and panache, by way of a warrior-poet with a huge nose and a huge complex about it.
Daniel and Mitchell are the perfect couple. Perfect house,perfect friends—even a mother who wants them married. They’d have the perfect wedding, too, except that Mitchell doesn’t believe in gay marriage. A turn of events puts their perfect life in jeopardy, and Mitchell is thrust into a future where even his love may not prove to be enough. “Daniel’s Husband” is a bold reflection of love, commitment, and family in our perilous new world.
Nora, a lovelorn musicologist with a drinking problem, schemes to steal the husband of a former Miss Idaho (runner-up). When the extramarital hijinks go brutally awry, Nora flees to the Rocky Mountains, tracks down her estranged mother’s partner, and weasels her way into their wholesome domestic existence. But in her bid for help, Nora risks losing the only family she’s ever had—this time, forever.
THE DING DONGS
Comedy-Thriller
When a sweet-faced couple shows up on a suburban doorstep, an unsuspecting homeowner finds himself the victim of a surreal home invasion. Using wit and wordplay to mask a more sinister threat, the couple wages a battle over indigenous rights from the living room, and we are asked to examine the brutality that fuels our system of private property.
A group of high school seniors face their final year learning online with a beloved teacher as a pandemic rages outside. Together they face social isolation, missed milestones, the loss of friends and family, places in the world and what the birth of a new social justice movement means for them.
In this new adaptation of Dracula from Kate Hamill, the playwright-actor confronts the sexism in Bram Stoker's original work, turning it into a feminist revenge fantasy.
On the Korean island of Man-Jae, three elderly haenyeos—sea women—spend their dying days diving into the ocean to harvest seafood. They have no heirs to their millennia-old way of life. Across the globe on the island of Manhattan, a Korean-Canadian playwright, twice an immigrant, spends her days wrestling with the expectation that...
In EIGHT TALES OF PEDRO, two sets of storytellers, some now and some in 17th century Mexico, cross a country - risking everything for a new life. As they tell their tales, their lives and plots combine and intertwine into the same conclusion.
Mark St. Germain brings to life Eleanor Roosevelt, the most influential First Lady the world has ever seen. From her “Ugly Duckling” upbringing to her unorthodox marriage to Franklin, Eleanor puts her controversial life, loves and passions on the stage.
An Eloquent Fugitive Slave Flees to Ireland imagines Frederick Douglass’s meditations on freedom and bondage during his historic visit to Ireland. His encounters with white women are particularly complex as they compare how their two nations oppress or empower them.
Emma Woodhouse prides herself on being a matchmaker with an impeccable track record, much to the chagrin of her dear friend Mr. Knightley. Her latest scheme revolves around the sweet Harriet Smith, whom Emma advises to reject a perfectly good marriage proposal in favor of another eligible...
What happens when those woodland fairies aren’t busy with the business of A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Why, it seems they all have jobs in some of our favorite fairy tales and have very sad love lives—that is, until Puck finds the famous flower touched by Cupid’s arrow. It’s all about love and kindness and accepting change. And it’s funny.
An intimate epic that follows an unlikely family’s journey from rural Taishan to the wild west of California in the wake of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Juliet is losing her marriage. Her mother Pam is losing her memory. And there’s a mysterious forest growing in and around their living room. Is it any wonder Juliet starts sleeping with one of her high school students? A play about weird love and what to do when there aren’t any right answers.
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.
Based on the diaries of teenagers sharing accounts of life during the Holocaust and genocides in Armenia, Cambodia, and Sarajevo, FOUR CHILDREN reminds us that, without vigilance, tragedies like the ones they experienced can happen again anywhere, anytime...
In the near future, a robot named Laura has joined a high school to see if it can learn as humans do. Two girls, Ruth and Teri, decide that the superiority of computers would make Laura the perfect class president. When Laura helps Madison, the school bully, with her math homework, she adopts Laura as her...
FRANKENSTEIN; or, the Modern Prometheus
by Robert Lewis Vaughan
Full-length Drama
Mary Shelly's masterpiece novel is now fully realized in a faithful stage adaptation from the brilliant story-teller, Robert Lewis Vaughan,
With horror, humor and masterful dramatic adaptation, this Frankenstein is an adventure that will thrill and entrance your audiences with a truly engaging and revealing look at the beautiful and horrible monsters we create all around us...
FRANKLINLAND
by Lloyd Suh
One Act
The story of growing up as the only son of Benjamin Franklin: the greatest scientific mind in the world, inventor of the lightning rod and the urinary catheter and the glass harmonica and bifocal glasses and, oh yeah, in his spare time the United States of America.
Beauty never showed up. After centuries under the curse, the Beast and his remaining magical servant (a hopelessly optimistic lamp) move into a shabby Chicago apartment, hoping for a lower cost of living and better luck with girls. In the threatening, impossible, completely ordinary world of paying rent and taking public transportation, is a happy ending even possible? A romantic tragicomedy about facing the witch in your head, and finding the wish in your heart.
After getting banned from all school activities for her hairstyle, Florence decides how to make her stand at a small Catholic School in 2017. At the turn of the century, inventor Annie Malone’s hair products revolutionized mobility for Black Women; but her biggest supporter and critic, Sarah Breedlove, believes they are only scratching the surface of success. In a fantasy universe, a struggling leader decides to make a deal with a demon, forcing the...
Grace is a teenage Spoken Word champion, but can’t seem to complete a simple poetry homework assignment. Accompanied by her piano playing, hip hop dancing and visual artist girlfriends, she designs a virtual land of her own, Grace’s Land 2.0, where they’re free of fixed identities, of the pandemic, of micromanaging parents, and the need to fit into the boxes assigned by others.
Veralynn Jackson knows hair, she knows her neighborhood, and she also knows that the invention of the Jheri Curl marks the end of the world. When she takes a job in Mr. Kim’s Korean-owned Black beauty supply store and the posters start talking to her, Veralynn might finally come to know her true calling.
Married couple Larry and Jinx embark on a luxury cruise and encounter a glamorous celebrity couple. A frivolous agreement leads to sex, comic complications, and Larry and Jinx having to resort to infidelity to save their marriage. Guilty Pleasures is a modern version of a sophisticated throwback Noel Coward-type screwball comedy.
Drama, Full-length
A popular online political & social commentator is forced to examine her own legitimacy when agoraphobia prevents her from physically engaging in the very activism she boasts about on the internet. When a boots-on-the-ground community organizer invades her space, they must both deal with manifestations of fear arising from existing in America while Black. Is it just in their heads, or has racism come to their doorstep?
H*TLER'S TASTERS
by Michelle Kholos Brooks
Dark Comedy
Three times a day, every day, a group of young women have the opportunity to die for their country. They are Adolf Hitler's food tasters. And what do girls discuss as they wait to see if they will live through another meal? Like all girls, throughout time, they gossip and dream, they question and dance. They want to love, laugh, and above all, they want to survive.
In 1965, the heart of the civil rights struggle in the US was the conflict between Dr. Martin Luther King and President Lyndon Johnson. Both brilliant leaders at the peak of their powers, their personal battle— like the one on the streets of Selma, Alabama—is ultimately decided by King’s greater moral courage. Also central is King’s relationship with his wife Coretta. Her fight for equality in...
HOOK'S TALE
by John Pielmeier
Family Adventure, Full- length
Captain James Hook (née Cook), badly maligned by a certain play and despised by generations of Peter Pan fans, finally gets to clear his name. The good Captain, with the aid of his friend Smee, tells his life-story in this family-friendly play, recounting his friendship with and ultimate betrayal by Peter Pan, his romance with Tiger Lily, his familial relationship with the Darling family, and his adoption of a lovable crocodile...
Women in bodacious shorts! This sparkling and raucous comedy offers
fast-paced tales about—and starring—strong and sassy females. Women who
are intelligent, eccentric, mysterious, baffling, bullheaded and
brilliant. As these short plays unfold, you’ll meet Vivacia, a Southern
social media star, on a quest to elevate the mediocre standard of
American funeral foods. Drop by a Christmas shop where the overworked
proprietress unravels as she attempts to...
The world premiere of Ibsen’s controversial play Ghosts took place in Chicago, performed by a group of Scandinavian immigrants: a little known fact. Grimm’s play spins a yarn based on this ‘great reckoning in a little room’ and explores the immigrant experience and opportunities for self re-invention against the backdrop of...
by Robert Lewis Vaughan
Ten years after a vicious, and ultimately tragic, high school football hazing in the small Texas Panhandle town of Calhoun, a social media frenzy rips open old wounds, pitting brother against brother and pulling those involved back together, whether they like it or not. When truths are exposed, things finally begin to make sense, allowing some to...
Meet the Berrys, a multi-generational Black family living under one roof in the 1970s. Their lives orbit around Rose, a strong-willed matriarch whose superstitions and secrets drive her relatives nuts. Through pointed wit and playful sarcasm, the family elders share fantastical stories about...
JABARI DREAMS OF FREEDOM is a 45 minute dream, a piece for ages 8 and up, using rap, freedom songs, hip hop dance, history, and humor to tell the story of a young Black boy from the South Side of Chicago who is afraid to leave the house, but learns to dream of freedom.
Inspired by Jack and the Beanstalk and designed and developed for children, Jacked! fuses storytelling and poetry with hip-hop and break-beat music to encourage a dialogue about substance abuse and the overwhelming effects the opioid epidemic is having in our communities.
Adapted from the novel by Charlotte Brontë
A Gothic story of resilience, in which a penniless orphan is determined to craft a fulfilling life for herself, against all odds. When Jane is hired as a governess at Thornfield Hall, she falls passionately in love with her brooding employer, only to discover that he—and his home—are surrounded by dark secrets. When the secrets are revealed, how will Jane preserve her chances for happiness?
It is the morning after the brutal murder of Julio Rivera, a gay Puerto Rican man in Jackson Heights, Queens. The murder became the first gay hate crime tried in New York State during the 1990s. In Julio Ain’t Goin’ Down Like That, the community reacts and is taken on a journey of self-discovery by a fabulously...
Lina and Roberto’s lives intersect and parallel as three alternate realities unfold. The play renders the near hits and near misses that are the realities of this worn-out waitress and immigrant dishwasher as well as the mystical ways the universe conspires to bring us all together.
In the nursery rhyme criminal justice system, citizens are represented by two separate yet equally ridiculous groups: the nursery rhyme police who investigate nursery rhyme crime, and the nursery rhyme district attorneys who prosecute the nursery rhyme offenders. These are their stories.
Set in the legendary Parisian café Les Deux Magots in 1953, LES DEUX NOIRS reimagines the meeting between Native Son author Richard Wright and essayist/activist James Baldwin. It explores the tension between Baldwin's searing critiques of Native Son and Wright's unbridled indignation in...
LICKETY SPLIT
by Jones Hope Wooten
Women and men in outrageous shorts! This fast-paced, rollicking collection of short plays combines
some of the best scenes from BUDDY BRO BUBBA DUDE and HONEY SUGAR LADY DOLL
into
a laugh-out-loud adventure for all. You’ll encounter women who are
brilliant, baffling and know a conscience is what hurts when other parts
feel sooo good. And you’ll find men who are confident, strong and who
are so brave they dare to drink water... just to surprise their livers.
A writer agrees to help an incarcerated man with his parole statement and embarks on an unexpected journey confronting her own grief....
When struggling actor Tom Braddle discovers that his former fiancé has written a new play with a part for him. his hopes for reuniting are dashed by a realization that the play is all too autobiographical. Did Adam have a hand in the tragic death of his wife and child? A dizzying constellation of competing stories and interests swirl around the company and then - Adam disappears...
When a freshman is unexpectedly given the coveted role of Lady Macbeth, a few upperclassmen actresses invite her over to “celebrate” her casting and reassert their positions at the top of the theatre department’s hierarchy. As the Fireball and Svedka flow, the girls interrogate their own sense of ambition as well as the...
The magician Prospero and his daughter Miranda dazzle their audiences until the day Miranda quits. This funny, bittersweet play dives deep into the ups and downs of a father-daughter relationship. Viewer discretion advised if you have a father or a daughter (or know anyone who does).
Mark and Jason were keeping things casual until Jason got pregnant. But however unplanned the pregnancy was, nothing could be less expected than the chain of events it would set in motion. Robert O’Hara’s audacious, hilarious allegory envisions an uncannily familiar future—one long after women have gone extinct from centuries of mistreatment—where man’s capacity to...
Mary and Joseph...and Company tells the story of Mary and Joseph as they journey toward Bethlehem to be counted in the census, and their amusing encounterswith characters the whole family will recognize. This fresh (and slightly irreverent) reimagining of Mary and Joseph draws on the comedic styles of Don Knotts, Steve Carell, John Cleese, and Kristen Wiig and provides warmth and laughter during the holiday season!
The play follows Buddy, a recently returned veteran from the war in Afghanistan, who comes to work in his father’s bar while he nurses wounds both physical and psychic. When father and son become entangled in a local tragedy, they are forced to confront the ghosts of their past, and reckon with the cruelties they have taken part in, both at home and abroad.
Based on the work of award-winning children’s author Lois Ehlert, THE MOLE HILL STORIES takes you on a journey with Mole as she discovers, with the help of her friends, that there is more to life than one can see at first glance and that our dreams are within reach if we believe.
Hilarious and heart-warming, this unconventional new comedy tackles love, loss, and coming to terms with growing old. After hooking up at a funeral, Angus and Abigail find themselves waking up the next morning wrapped in sheets on Angus’ sofa. Strangers just the day before, Abigail thinks she may finally be ready to take another chance on love, but Angus has a few issues to work through first. Enter neighbor Ollie, formerly a baseball player for the...
At 54 years old, Terry Parker finds himself at a crossroads in his life. After the loss of his partner of 30 years, he finds himself suddenly single and unable to adjust to a world that has moved on without him. After a night of heavy drinking, he wakes up with a 28-year-old bartender-slash-Uber-driver. These two very different people begin a tentative relationship, and what starts out as a one-night stand becomes a....
When two old flames run into each other on the evening commute, different views of the same past threaten to derail their connection. A new play about forgiving, forgetting, and the healing power of a good delay.
A woman walks into a bar. Her name is Porto. She’s a regular. She likes this bar: serious food, serious wine, serious bartender–a staple in a gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood (perhaps Bushwick?). Her friends, her wine, and her artisanal snacks are there; her doubts about being a Modern Woman are...
PROMAPOCALYPSE!
by Michael Griffo
A neurotic amateur actress leads her local community class of off-kilter, terrified adults to compete in their county’s First Annual Public Speaking Competition.
A high-energy hip-hop play with music that explores the challenges of new parenting, mixed heritage, and the factors that shape a child’s Latinx identity. Thirtysomething Danny visits a charming local playground with his adorable baby. As he engages in witty banter and deep discussions on a park bench with another parent, the conversation becomes...
What kind of future will you have living in these here United States? Remember when you were eleven years old and you had a bike, one that made you dream about a world bigger than the one in which you live? This is that memory. Except it is now. This is the first play in the AMERICAN PSALM seven-play cycle.
After a personal tragedy, Jonathan has withdrawn from the world, with little social life beyond the men he meets online. When charming, flighty Claire moves into the apartment upstairs, she tries to coax him out of his shell. They forge a tenuous connection, but the past reverberates into the present, threatening what happiness they’ve found.
THE REVOLTING TEENS OF SHERWOOD
by John Maclay and Joe Foust
75-minute Play, Comedy
A funny, frolicking, fresh look at the timeless tale of the legendary hero Robin Hood. When Robin, LittleJohn and Friar Tuck are captured, it falls to Marianand the Merry Men-in-training to come to the rescue.Full of swashbuckling adventure, breathtaking daring-do,and laughs aplenty, this new take on a classic tale is suitable for the entire family.
Stan Zimmerman (The Golden Girls, Roseanne, Gilmore Girls) brings to life the last words written in letters by individuals lost to suicide — including celebrities, veterans, kids that were bullied, LGBTQ, and the clinically depressed — and those who have survived suicide attempts. The play has traveled across the country, raising awareness and offering hope for suicide prevention.
A small midwestern college decides to stage Shakespeare’s classic tale of young star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet with an all female cast. Add in a mysterious guest director with dubious credentials and a bizarre show concept, and anything might happen. Can the students rescue the bard from being hijacked? A smart, hilarious, thoroughly contemporary...
THE SALONNIÈRES
In pre-Revolutionary Paris, a young girl fresh from the convent is promised in marriage to an older nobleman to pay off her father’s debts. She flees to the literary salon of her late mother’s friends, aristocratic women who conceal radical politics within reinvented folk tales. But which of them is her fairy godmother, and which the cruel stepmother? Is the duke a Prince Charming or...
SANCTUARY CITY
by Martyna Majok
Drama, Full Length
In post-9/11 Newark, NJ, two teenagers who were brought to America as children become one another’s sanctuaries from harsh circumstances. When G becomes naturalized, she and B hatch a plan to marry so that he may legally remain in the country and pursue the future he imagines for his life. But as time hurtles on and complications mount, the young friends find that this act challenges and fractures the closest relationship either has ever had.
SCAB
Full-length Drama
Gilda is a middle-aged American worker and life-long union member. After her factory moves to Mexico, she is tasked with training her replacement, a young Mexican man named Eduardo. The union stands firmly against this retraining butit is the only way Gilda can receive her small, but necessary,payout. Scab is a story of two mismatched workers struggling for survival in modern industrial America.
THE SEAGULL
by Anton Chekhov
Translation by Paul Schmidt
The main characters, all artists, are guests at a country estate. They are Mme Arkadina, a middle-aged actress; her lover, Trigorin, a successful writer; her son Konstantin, a writer; and Nina, a young aspiring actress whom Konstantin loves. Mme Arkadina, jealous of Nina’s youth and promising career, acts cruelly and hatefully toward Konstantin, belittling his new play and...
SELLING KABUL
by Sylvia Khoury
Drama, Full Length
Taroon once served as an interpreter for the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Now it is 2013, and the Americans — and their promises of safety — have begun to withdraw. Taroon spends his days in hiding, a target of the increasingly powerful Taliban. On the eve of his son’s birth, he must remain in his sister’s apartment, or risk his life to see his child. With shattering precision, Sylvia Khoury’s tense drama traces the human cost of U.S. immigration policy and the legacy of our longest war.
SENIOR LIVING
by Tor Hyams and Lisa St. Lou
Comedy
SENIOR LIVING is a play with music about people dying to live.
At Riverdale Manor, a retirement community in the Bronx, seniors contemplate the possibility of dying from a broken heart, if divorce is even worth it at a certain age, and when is the right time to have sex again. A talent show, with the promise of cake for dessert, sets the scene for a series of life-changing vignettes that debate what to do with the time we have left.
The Men’s Peer Education group at Watson College is dedicated to unpacking and exposing male privilege. These “sensitive guys” believe that through increased self-awareness they can end sexual violence on campus; but when a shocking rumor surfaces, the group is shaken to the core. Sensitive Guys features a cast of women and gender nonconforming...
SEPARATE ROOMS
by Joe Calarco
Full-length Comedy
In this funny, moving and wistfully haunting play, a deceased man guides us through his past and present, as his apartment fills to the brim with family, friends, friends of friends, and even total strangers. As the guests grapple, both with his loss and with each other, the action weaves from room to room, jumping through time by minutes and years. Separate Rooms is a stunning meditation on loss, friendship, and the traces of ourselves we leave behind. A Big Chill for the 21st Century.
THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS
By Carlo Goldoni
In a New Translation by Rob Melrose
Identities are mistaken, engagements are broken, and lovers are reunited in this world premiere adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s commedia dell’arte masterpiece. Set in Venice, mayhem erupts when the wily—and chronically hungry—servant Truffaldino hatches a zany scheme to double his wages (and his meals) by serving two masters at once.
17 MINUTES is the length of time Sheriff’s Deputy Andy Rubens stood outside of a school while a shooter was inside. The play 17 Minutes explores the communal and residual effects of a shooting through Andy, a man who struggles with his own complicity in the tragedy, and who seeks meaning in the wake of the shooting.
Shakespeare Young@Part®: Some Comedies, introduces the audience to six of Shakespeare’s comedies. The shortened comedies that are included are Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and The Taming of the Shrew.
SHAKESPEARE'S DEAD DAMES
by David Overton
20-40 minute, comedy
6F, 1M
After their in-performance deaths, six female Shakespearean characters find themselves in a holding area until the play they are a character in gets revived by another Shakespeare company so that they can (re)live their tragedy over (and over) again. It’s a comic romp that evokes Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit” meets Luigi Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author” meets “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”
SHAKESPEARE'S DEAD DUDES
by David Overton
(7 Actors) Flexible, non-gender specific casting.
After their in-performance deaths, six Shakespearean characters find themselves in a holding area until the play they are a character in gets revived by another Shakespeare company so that they can (re)live their tragedy over (andover) again. It’s a comic romp that evokes Jean-Paul Sartre’s“No Exit” meets Luigi Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author” meets “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”
The notorious and as-yet undiscovered genius, Vincent Van Gogh, presents Sherlock Holmes with a most unusual case. Aided by his partner Dr. Watson and his paramour Irene Adler, the trio embark on a rousing adventure and find themselves confronting the evil daughter of Professor Moriarty. With a helping hand from Oscar Wilde, the world's greatest detective attempts to solve one of the most audacious crimes of the Victorian era and uncover a Post-Impressionist conspiracy.
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE ADVENTURE OF THE FALLEN SOUFFLÉ
It’s the day before Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, and her son, the playboy Prince of Wales, arrives at 221B Baker Street pursued by Anarchist assassins. The greatest chef in the world, Auguste Escoffier, also arrives, his career about to be shattered by blackmail and scandal. This action-filled tale of royal debauchery, priceless gems, and gourmet food will provide Dr. Watson with the material for Sherlock Holmes’ most bizarre and tastiest case.
London: November, 1905. England and the world are changing. As civilization edges towards the horrors of World War I, every day brings new tensions in Europe and technological advances that make Victorian England feel like a distant dream. Into the rooms of Sherlock Holmes come Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison—with new inventions that will alter the course of human history—only both inventions have gone missing. Can Holmes, Watson, and Irene Adler somehow unravel the...
Inspired by Gen Silent, a 2010 documentary about LGBT seniors, Silver Foxes is described as a gay version of "The Golden Girls." Benny and Chuck, two older gay men, rescue their dear friend Cecil from a homophobic senior living facility and bring him to live with them in Palm Springs. From the comic-writing duo Stan Zimmerman and...
A South Carolina army widow angles for romance with an Oklahoma fundamentalist at a dating convention for farmers.
Kareem, a Black teen, waits for the bus, at night, in a suburban White neighborhood. He is approached by O’Donald, a White police officer. They struggle. A shot rings out. Kareem is dead. O’Donald says he feared for his life. The Police Union’s representative defends the shooting as self-defense. Kareem’s Aunt Janice protests her nephew’s death as racial profiling. There are no witnesses, but the truth will...
SMALL ENCHANTMENTS
by Lila Rose Kaplan
Dark Comedy
60-70 minutes
12 Princesses sneak out to a Ball every night. Or so they say. You see, their father locks them in the palace. Some say he’s overprotective, others say he’s evil. Either way, 12 young women are trapped. And where is their Mother, you might wonder? Oh, their Mother is a dying tree and their aunt a moody river. But these are 12 most unusual young women. These are fierce Princesses unlike...
The lives of two couples are thrown into upheaval when a brushfire threatens their upscale Southern California homes. They must confront what’s really important to them — Material items? Careers? Relationships? SMOKE GETS IN YOUR HOUSE treats the natural disaster seriously while still finding enough absurdity to make this play a genuine dark comedy.
by Ronán Noone
Tim Finnegan is an Irish immigrant trying to make it as a writer on Amity, an affluent summer colony in Massachusetts, where tensions flare between the migrant and local communities after a fatal car crash. When he loses his job as a bartender, Tim gets drawn into the dark underbelly of the island. The play examines how far one man will go to restore his self-respect and asks, “What does it mean to be an American citizen?” Winner of the Best Playwright Award at Origin Theatre’s 1st Irish Festival.
by Matthew López
It’s 1959 and the new musical West Side Story is a smash hit on Broadway. In their tiny family apartment in the San Juan Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, the young Candelaria siblings dream of glamorous careers in show business. When the opportunity arises for this talented Puerto Rican family to audition for roles in the film version of West Side Story itself, all their dreams seem poised to come true – until a neighborhood-wide eviction abruptly threatens everything they have worked for.
Set as an enormous political tide is turning throughout Europe, Tales from Red Vienna explores the effects of war on women, the circumstances that control their lives, and the dreams that set them free.
by Molière
Freely Adapted by Charles Edward Pogue
This free but faithful adaptation of Molière’s classic comedy TARTUFFE follows the original plot of a theological flimflammer insinuating himself into a life of comfort and ease at the expense of his gullible benefactor’s family. It is both funny and resonant, addressing many of the issues of our day – religious, political, and human hypocrisy as well as the extremism in which our frequently fractured society can find itself entrenched and how we often willingly conspire in our own duping.
Four tenderly crafted stories of ache and longing examine the most ordinary and disparate of characters in high- stakes moments of self-doubt: some life-threatening, some bordering on life-ending, all life-affirming.
THAT SUMMER IN SUMNER
Full-length Drama
by Ifa Bayeza
THAT SUMMER IN SUMNER is the middle drama in The Till Trilogy, a three-play cycle exploring the epic saga of Emmett Till. While the first play, The Ballad of Emmett Till, is the story of the boy, That Summer in Sumner explores the 1955 trial of his killers. While drawing upon trial transcripts, contemporaneous news accounts, and the...
THIRST
Full-length Drama
by Ronán Noone
THIRST is a witty Irish drama wrapped in humanity. Set during Eugene O’Neill’s classic Long Day’s Journey Into Night, failure, denial, and passion roil as two Irish servants and an American chauffeur pass the day in the kitchen of the Tyrone family’s residence in 1912. As tensions rise and the past rears its head, a search for love and belonging becomes the search for “home.”
Three Sisters is set in a small, remote town dominated by an army base. The action takes place in the Prozorov family home over a span of several years.
Born and bred in a thriving metropolis, the Prozorovs came to this small town when their father was made commander of the local army brigade. Now, the Prozorov...
The Three Sisters Brontë
Full-length Drama
On the Yorkshire moors of the 1840s, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë struggle with the harsh realities of male-dominated society. The sisters live in the rich worlds of their imaginations, dreaming of life in London, until they are forced to take their destinies into their own hands. As their brother descends...
Thrice Upon a Midnight Clear gives audiences a peek into the unlikely—but hilarious—conversations of The Three Wise Men, The Three Wise Women, and The Three Not-So-Wise Shepherds in this traveling triptych as they follow the Star of Bethlehem contemplating its wonder, its mystery…and a good game of golf!
Full-length Drama
In this play with broken songs, Shakespeare’s Ophelia rises out of the water dreaming of reclaiming her life. She finds herself in a neo-Elizabethan Appalachian setting where Gertrude runs a brothel, Hamlet is a Rude Boy and nothing is what it seems. In this mirrored world of word-scraps and cold sex, Ophelia cuts a new path for herself.
Emma Phelps is a paleoclimatologist, focusing on ice in Greenland. In drilling and studying ice core samples, she sees first hand the symptoms of our changing planet, which makes the need to act all the more crucial and urgent. In addition, Emma, as a recent widow, experiences grief that compounds itself with each passing month. Now she's been asked to testify in Washington D.C. in a senate committee regarding climate change legislation, and in this intersection of...
TRW is pleased to publish this sparkling new collection of ten short plays - comedies and dramas, absurdist and naturalistic - from a wide-ranging group of exciting playwrights.
TRW is pleased to publish this sparkling new collection of ten short plays - comedies and dramas, absurdist and naturalistic - from a wide-ranging group of exciting playwrights.
Diana and Max meet at 9 years old, the day their parents start having an affair. In the ensuing decades, they see each other through highs and lows, trying not to make the same mistakes their parents did. A play about trying not to fall in love with your best friend so you end up hating them.
UNCLE VANYA
Chekhov Adaptation
by Paul Schmidt
UNCLE VANYA portrays the visit of an elderly professor and his glamorous, much younger second wife, Yelena, to the rural estate that supports their urban lifestyle. Two friends—Vanya, brother of the professor's late first wife, who has long managed the estate, and Astrov, the local doctor—both fall under Yelena's spell, while...
In this intimate ghost story, Mary Jane Kelly has a problem. She’s a pound forty behind in her rent, her window is broken, she has lost her key, and her boyfriend just moved out. And it’s 1888—not a good time to be poor and “unfortunate” on the streets of London. Somewhere out there in the foggy shadows, Jack the Ripper, one of the world’s most notorious criminals is at work. Mary only has two ways to secure her own...
Mona Mansour, award-winning playwright and alumna of The Public’s Emerging Writers Group, delves into the Palestinian struggle for home and identity in THE VAGRANT TRILOGY, a single epic story told in three parts. In 1967, Adham, a Palestinian Wordsworth scholar, goes to London with his new wife to deliver a lecture. When war breaks out at home, he must decide in an instant what to do—a choice that will affect...
72 year-old Krystyna fights for life in a hospital as four peo- ple wait—and reveal the reasons why her survival is vital to them. Rachel is a driven young doctor whose brother Jona- than died in the Trade Center; financier David is Rachel’s adoring ex-fiance, rejected in the fall-out from Jonathan’s death; Nicolas is the truck-driver who, distracted, wrecked Krystyna’s car; and Klaus is a...
Catherine, a wealthy young woman, was raised by father dead to love. Surrounded by a society and family who perceive her as plain and soft-spoken, Catherine remains optimistic. When a mysterious suitor makes a bid for her heart, she’s torn between her instincts and the warnings of her cruel father. Set in a fashionable New York of the late 19th century...
WELL MET BY MOONLIGHT
An adaptation of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
By Joe Calarco
This eight-person adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream places
us at Hermia’s wedding rehearsal dinner, where she is trapped into
marrying Demetrius, threatening to tear her away from her true love
Lysander. When dressmaker Bottom fits her into her wedding gown, Hermia
faints and awakens in a magical landscape—part frolic, part dream, part
nightmare. In her Wizard of Oz-like
hallucination her parents transform into...
WET or, Isabella the Pirate Queen Enters the Horse Latitudes
By Liz Duffy Adams
Four survivors of a storm-sunken pirate ship—the legendary Isabella, Neptune’s bastard daughter; pirates Jenny (a runaway whore) and Sally (an electrified girl); and the Viscountess Marlene (a drag queen)—seize a half-wrecked ship crewed only by Captain Joppa and two sailors, young Jack and ex-slave Horatio. Joppa is determined to get back to the war. Isabella has other...
WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU
By James Hindman
A witty, contemporary comedy that follows one man’s journey through a heart attack, a gay marriage, an obsession with Cher, and a trip to a concentration camp. So, yes, it’s a comedy!
The year is 2015 and Jeff and Judy are right where they’re supposed to be: waiting outside the stage door of If/Then to get an autograph from the star. But the experience they have while they wait will change the course of their decades-long friendship forever.
WITCH HUNT or, a Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World
By Liz Duffy Adams
Mitch wants to be a carpenter. Heather wants to be a woodcarver. The wolf wants to be an intellectual. Ruby wants to escape the wolf. The woodcutter wants to escape the narrator. A fable-inspired play about love and wood and finding your purpose.
Four former Jeopardy! champions meet for a weekend to prepare for the Tournament of Champions. When the front-runner is murdered, it becomes a game of cat and mouse between three brainiacs and a wily detective. Comedy, clues, and surprises await.
The story of two older women navigating the perils of aging in suburban Detroit.
Virginia Campbell was a longtime housekeeper for Denise Miller and her family, helping Denise raise her children during a difficult divorce. But when she shows up for work, Denise is very confused. Especially since she thought she had let her go several months ago. When an accident in the kitchen keeps Virginia from being able to walk, Denise offers to care...
by Matthew Lopez
Saying “I do” was the easy part – this hilarious commentary on commitment is every bride’s worst nightmare. Disaster after disaster follows her down the aisle, from brutally honest boozy speeches to a totally incompetent wedding planner and friends too preoccupied to help with the wreckage around them. A wildly funny play about love, relationship, expectations, and the courage it takes to find what truly makes us happy.
The Future. The United States is in crisis: The East Coast has Flooded, the Capital has moved to Mount Rushmore, Cotton XP has been found in the hills of the West, Civil War is upon us again, African Peacekeepers are here to insure our Presidential Elections, and there are Zombies in the Basement.