Spring/Summer 2017
SAMUEL FRENCH
CONTENTS
Journal of Plays and Musicals Spring/Summer 2017
Recent Acquisitions
Once again, we’re delighted to share this selection of some of the best plays and musicals in our catalog. This edition includes new aquisitions, work by the leading writers of contemporary comedy and drama, Broadway musicals new and old, and a few of our most popular titles. You’ll also find articles from Breaking Character Magazine accompanying the listings. Last year was a busy and rewarding time for us, with nearly 20,000 licensed productions of our plays and musicals. In 2017, we’re building off that success: acquiring dozens of new titles; seeing the shows we represent in productions on Broadway, throughout the country, and around the world; and finding opportunites to contribute to the current conversations happening in our theatre community.
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Plays 12 Musicals 62 Resources 96 Index 98 Contact Us
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FEATURES A Couple of Notes: Behind the Scenes with Samuel French’s Music Supervisor
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by Lawrence Haynes
Title Spotlight: Joe Orton’s Loot
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Writer’s Room: Topher Payne
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by David Kimple
Most importantly, we’re continuing our work to support and celebrate those who make theatre happen. We’re creating new ways to communicate with you, our producing partners, and to help you find the perfect show for your theater. You’ll be able to see the fruits of our labor later this year.
The Waverly Gallery 55 Kenneth Lonergan’s Most Personal Work
In the meantime, if you find this journal to be a useful tool either when making decisions about your season or discovering new titles, please let us know. You can tell your Licensing Representative, or leave a comment along with your licensing request.
Why Produce Heathers 73 or We Gotta Do Something to Stop Bad Behavior and Violence Everywhere
We look forward to working with you throughout the year. — Samuel French, Inc.
Front Cover: Jennifer Ikeda and Raymond Lee in Vietgone by Qui Nguyen, Manhattan Theatre Club (Carol Rosegg). Back Cover: The cast of The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe, The Playwrights Realm (Daniel J. Vasquez).
by Ben Coleman
by Nick Newell
by Jeremy Quinn
The Secret Garden 82 A Musical Classic Gets a Bold New Staging in San Antonio by Kurt Gardner
Shining The Light: How One Teacher Brought The Ghostlight Project To His High School by Philip Goodchild
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A COUPLE OF NOTES: Behind the Scenes with Samuel French’s Music Supervisor Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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Y
ou license a musical. You receive your cast’s scripts, your piano/conductor score, and your orchestrations. But before all of that, there is a months-long (or even years-long) process to creating the score for your show — and we’re not just talking about when the composer creates the music. Lawrence HayneS, our Musicals Marketing Associate, sat down to chat with Zachary Orts, Samuel French’s Music Supervisor, to learn more about this process, from prepping materials to redeveloping scores that were once handwritten (or never written down!). Lawrence Haynes: Hey Zach! So, what does a Music Supervisor at Samuel French do? Zachary Orts: My job at Samuel French consists of three main goals. First, I take our new acquisitions’ materials and move them from the realm of the rehearsal period — replete with notations, cuts, and chickenscratch — to where the materials are ready to be printed for theaters across the country. Second, I focus on the back catalog. Here at Samuel French, we have a little over 600 musicals, all in various states. I select musicals, or “target titles,” that are to be improved and go through the detailed process of updating all music materials. The third major component of my job is preparing sheet music for sale, be it vocal selections or physical downloads from our website. Lawrence: Let’s talk about the process of preparing materials from a new acquisition. When we first acquire a musical, what is your jumping-off point? Zach: Ideally, the best place for me to start is by seeing the show, if we are lucky enough to acquire a show while it is still running. Seeing
the show is really important in order to understand how many instruments there are, whether there are onstage musicians, whether the instruments are played by the actors, or whether there is any electronica or sound effects that we have to account for.
The major difference is in our recopying. It is extremely detailoriented… We reach out to professional productions to work with them, and will often attend the sitzprobe, computer inhand, to make changes on the fly and ensure their rehearsals continue to run smoothly. Following this, we make contact with the composer or their agent. We will receive whatever music materials they used for rehearsal, including the full orchestration and, ideally, there will be a piano/ conductor score. It will often be utilized by the music director to play in rehearsals and will contain all information needed to fit the music within the action, including cues, vamps and incidental music. However, piano/conductor scores don’t always exist if a show is baton-conducted like, for example, Tuck Everlasting. That show was baton-conducted on Broadway, so they had no need for a score. In this instance, we worked with the composers and the music associate on the Broadway show to create one for our licensed pack. The next point in the process is careful revision. We will do several passes on the music to make sure that it looks and sounds great! We will go about cleaning up
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collisions, wrong notes, and will standardize the formatting within parts. We find this to be the most important step in the process. We don’t want any confusion for our licensees, so we work closely with the composer to line up the music with how it is performed on Broadway and try to offer as much guidance to music directors as possible. Lawrence: How long is the process of revising music to be ready for licensees? Zach: Depending on the acquisition, we can wait from a couple of days to years for the materials to make it to us — often it takes longer if the show is running on Broadway and we have no option to license it. After we receive the materials, our goal is to publish that script and score within four months. Lawrence: Some musicals in our catalog are decades old. Some are even handwritten. What is the process of recopying these shows, especially when you can’t go to Broadway and watch them? Zach: Older scores undergo very much the same process as new ones. We pull from absolutely any resources we can. The three biggest resources with older scores are the composers, cast albums, and visits to the Lincoln Center Library with our revised scores to make sure that everything happening on the screen is happening on paper. We did this most recently for Kander and Ebb’s Kiss of the Spider Woman. The major difference is in our recopying. It is extremely detail-oriented, and we often face technological bugs and, of course, user error. We reach out to professional productions to work with them, and will often attend the sitzprobe, computer in-hand,
to make changes on the fly and ensure their rehearsals continue to run smoothly. We need to make sure that we get the transposition right for each instrument. Obviously, if we get it wrong, it’s going to sound terrible! Lawrence: Has that ever happened? Zach: Not yet! (Knocks on wood.) If it does, we always bring our iPads, make the changes, and have musicians work from the iPad while they continue to rehearse so we can reprint the parts. Time is, of course, important. For largescale union houses, musicians are being paid union time, and we have to make sure they can rehearse within the time they have. Mistakes happen and we want to make sure that issues are corrected as quickly as possible. We do print the materials for shows on-demand. In the cases of a recently-revised score, we will ask for the scores back and take note of all important markings
Other Vocal Selection publishers often make distinct decisions to create either an easypiano version or integrate the vocal line into the accompaniment. We made a conscious decision to not do this and, instead, adhere to the original arrangements as much as possible. that were made. Sometimes it’s wrong notes, sometimes it’s improved page-turns. After we make these changes, we re-upload it and it’s done! Lawrence: This process seems uniquely challenging for each show. Have you experienced any challenges of note? Zach: Each show does provide individual challenges, but I
Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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would say that Return to the Forbidden Planet was the most unique. The show was originally conceived to have actors playing the instruments, and the score we had for a long time catered to this, with just the full orchestration. This no longer makes sense for how contemporary theaters perform musicals, so we had to reconceptualize how the score was laid out, as well as creating a piano/conductor score where there previously wasn’t one, all while maintaining the improvisational “feel” that the original had. Lawrence: What score are you most proud of? Zach: The score I am most proud of is always the one that is most recent. As the music team continues to refine the process and how the music looks, it gets better every time. I am exceptionally proud of our recent transcription of Kiss of the Spider Woman. It is was spearheaded by John Atorino, our Music Associate, and he did a fantastic job. It looks so good.
Obviously, having two sets of eyes greatly reduces the chance for errors! Ask me again in six months and I will be equally proud of whatever project we have just completed. Lawrence: Speaking of upcoming projects, what’s next? Zach: We are currently completing work on Leader of the Pack. We finished typesetting the script today and will start the evaluation and redrafting process shortly, then we will find a test theater. Lawrence: Let’s talk briefly about Vocal Selections. They’re new to Samuel French and obviously a different process from orchestrations. Zach: They were new to me as well! Vocal Selections are a completely different beast. Unlike piano/conductor scores, Vocal Selections have a unique layout. They fit all the pages, top to bottom. The visual aesthetics are incredibly important. One of
the things I value highly are my visual aesthetics: I group my staves in terms of musical ideas. For example, If you have a standard 32-bar song, I want to fit two to four bars per line. I never want a double bar to occur in the middle of a line, nor a musical idea in the middle of a line. The theory behind this is that when you’re playing music, you’ll play the first beat of every four bars with additional emphasis than the first beat of the other three bars— a technique of all good musicians. It also makes the music a lot easier to sightread. Lawrence: As a professional pianist, how do you determine the difficulty of a Vocal Selection book? Zach: Other Vocal Selection publishers often make distinct decisions to create either an easypiano version or integrate the vocal line into the accompaniment. We made a conscious decision to not do this and, instead, adhere to the original arrangements as much as possible. This makes our Vocal
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Selection arrangements perfect for cabarets and auditions, and so the piano arrangement reflects what you’d hear in the show. We don’t simplify things, but they are all absolutely playable, even sight-readable. It is all part of our mission to serve the composer. I think we’ve achieved that!
Photos: Page 2: Samuel French’s Music Supervisor Zach Orts and Music Associate John Atorino (Lawrence Haynes). Opposite Page: Leader of the Pack: The Ellie Greenwich Musical (courtesy of Atlanta Lyric Theatre). Below: Recent musicals with newly typeset orchestrations, Really Rosie, Bucks County Playhouse (Mandee Kuenzle), and The Secret Garden, Theatreworks Silicon Valley (Mark Kitaoka). This article originally appeared on Breaking Character Magazine in March, 2017.
RECENT ACQUISITIONS We’re acquiring new plays and musicals all the time. Here are a few of our latest titles. You’ll find more throughout the journal. Some of these are so new, they may be restricted or not yet available. Contact your Licensing Representative if you have questions about a specific title.
The Harvest by Samuel D. Hunter
Nice Fish by Mark Rylance and Louis Jenkins
“Engrossing and suspenseful… The Harvest takes place in a jammed intersection of religion, family, sexuality and poverty, which the playwright maps out in evocative detail.” — Time Out New York
“Mr. Jenkins’s seemingly modest writing, attuned to close observation of everyday experience, contains, beneath its homely surfaces, larger meanings that glide softly into your mind and heart, like those elusive fish swimming beneath the ice.” — The New York Times
In the basement of a small evangelical church in Southeastern Idaho, a group of young missionaries is preparing to go to the Middle East. One of them — a young man who has recently lost his father — has bought a one-way ticket. But, his plans are complicated when his estranged sister returns home and makes it her mission to keep him there.
On a frozen Minnesota lake, the ice is beginning to creak and groan. It’s the end of the fishing season, and two old friends are out on the ice, angling for something big; something down there that is pure need. Something that might just swallow them whole.
4m, 3f | 105 minutes | Drama
4m, 1f | 90 minutes | Drama/Experimental
The Play About My Dad by Boo Killebrew
Mala Hierba by Tanya Saracho “[A] compelling character study, which pits human yearnings against the power of culturally predetermined obligations.” — TheaterMania
“Memory, storytelling, playwriting and time travel intersect with a lovely kind of epic intimacy… Don’t be surprised if, by the end, your own emotional floodgates have been tested.” — Time Out New York
Liliana has a sparkle few can deny and fewer still can resist. The trophy wife of a border magnate living in Texas, she’s seemingly impeccable. But beneath that polished exterior lies a fierce determination to survive at any cost. When Liliana’s true desires break the surface, she’ll have to decide between the value of obligation and the price of freedom.
A look at Larry Killebrew through the eyes of his playwright daughter, Boo. His words, his family, his job as an emergency room surgeon, his community of Gulfport, Mississippi — and Hurricane Katrina, which almost turned Gulfport into a coral reef. As Larry tries acting, and Boo adds new scenes, they discover how hard it is to tell the story the true way.
4f | 90 minutes | Drama
4m, 4f, 1b | 90 minutes | Drama, Biography
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
Summerland by Arlitia Jones
Future Thinking by Eliza Clark
“An engaging and cerebral thriller. But why leave it at that? Allow yourself to get caught up in some of its deeper reflections and you’ll find a tale about the pursuit of faith and truth, about our willingness to accept senses that reach beyond science and logic.” — Cincinnati Enquirer
“What begins as a play about how people’s fantasies can get in the way of their reality turns into a play in which people’s reality can also screw up their fantasies.” — OCweekly.com
In 1869, William H. Mumler, a spirit photographer famous for capturing haunting images of the dead from the world beyond, was at the height of his game. Now Mumbler is being investigated by Chief Marshall Joseph Tooker for fraud, and Tooker is uncovering much more than he bargained for in his search for truth.
Middle-aged super fan Peter finds himself in a makeshift interrogation room at the mercy of Comic Con security. Meanwhile, spoiled starlet Chiara is holed up in a hotel suite with her stage mom and bodyguard. And Peter is determined to fulfill his destiny: to deliver an important and mysterious message. Everyone has a fantasy, and soon they’ll collide with each other, and with reality.
2m, 1f | 120 minutes | Drama
3m, 3f | 120 minutes | Comedy
Friend Art by Sofia Alvarez
Kingdom Come by Jenny Rachel Weiner
“You won’t struggle to find complimentary things to say about this very funny, almost painfully astute play.” — The New York Times
“Funny, affecting and sensitively drawn, with surprising twists… This unconventional romantic comedy is a testament to playwright Jenny Rachel Weiner’s inventiveness.” — The Hollywood Reporter
Molly and Kevin are engaged, they have “normal” jobs. Kevin and Nate have known each other since they were kids. Nate just broke up with Lil, who does performance art, and she used to work with Molly, who wanted to be an actress a long time ago. These relationships come to a head when Kevin decides he no longer wants the regular life he convinced Molly to live with him.
Samantha is lonely and confined to bed. Layne is shy and too afraid of the world to journey out. But when these two thirty-somethings connect through an online dating site, they fall for each other fast and hard. What could go wrong? Considering that they’re both pretending to be someone else: everything. The new, digital world is upended in this blisteringly funny play.
2m, 2f | 90 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
Muckrakers by Zayd Dohrn
1m, 4f | 105 minutes | Comedy
Amelia by Alex Webb
“A fervent and attention-getting play…ultra relevant… acute, absorbing, topically vital theater.” — Talkin’ Broadway
“Alex Webb has crafted an ingenious tale… The narrative is historical yet relevantly feminist, emotionally brutal yet romantic, and constantly upsetting yet amusing.” — Backstage
A young female activist brings an older man — a famous political hacker/journalist — home to her Brooklyn apartment to spend the night. But as they start to expose each other’s secrets, personal and political desires collide, testing the limits of privacy in the modern world.
A heroic Civil War tale of one woman’s search for her husband across the battlefields of America. The story culminates at the gates of the notorious Andersonville Prison Camp. In its two-hander form, this vivid docudrama celebrates the inherent theatricality of two bodies on stage creating an epic and vast world.
1m, 1f | 75 minutes | Drama
1m, 1f | 90 minutes | Historical Drama Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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Recent Acquisitions
The Layover by Leslye Headland
The Tomb of King Tot by Olivia Dufault
“Leslye Headland’s new play careens between terrific meet-cute humor and the darkest romantic obsessions.” — The Wrap
“Sweet and spiky new tragicomedy…this production makes a case for whimsy as a filter both for shutting out and eventually coming to terms with an unforgiving world and one’s unforgivable self.” — The New York Times
Shellie and Dex meet on a plane during a layover in Chicago. After a quick seduction, each stranger playing a version of themselves, they have a playful yet passionate one-night stand. In the following months, their lives with their respective partners remain the same but the impact of their liaison invades their psychological landscapes. Their personal dramas unfurl simultaneously until romantic obsession and intense loneliness drive them toward an inevitable and tragic reunion.
Jane Haley is the punny voice of the comic strip King Tot, a three-panel strip about a nine-year-old pharaoh in ancient Egypt. All seems to be going well until bleak news strikes in the Haley household. As Jane tries to hide her coping by working extensively on her comics, her art suffers as her main character tries to find their way through the Land of the Dead to find her “mummy.”
3m, 2f, 1g | 90 minutes | Drama
2m, 3f | 75 minutes | Dark Comedy
Bellwether by Steve Yockey
The Gulf by Audrey Cefaly
“Bellwether is a compelling concoction of mystery, horror, surrealism and tragedy, with a dash of laughter.” — Marinscope
WINNER! 2016 Edgerton New American Play Award The divide between Kendra and Betty mimics the very world that devours them: a vast and polarizing abyss. On a quiet summer evening down in the Alabama Delta, Kendra and Betty troll the flats looking for red fish. After Betty begins diagnosing Kendra’s dead-end life with career picks from What Color is Your Parachute, their routine fishing excursion takes a violent turn. The fulllength version of the 2015 OOB selected short play.
Bellwether was a nice, safe place to live. Bad things didn’t happen there. That was until six-year-old Amy Draft went missing. As the investigation progresses, speculation in the media and the neighborhood turns on Amy’s parents, Alan and Jackie Draft. But the young girl’s disappearance is not what it seems, and it is only a glimpse of what lurks below the community’s perfection.
2f | 90 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
3m, 7f | 105 minutes | Drama
Native Son by Nambi E. Kelley adapted from the novel by Richard Wright
Mama’s Boy by Rob Urbinati
“[Mama’s Boy] finds in the past that which is human and timeless. The result is a moving and compassionate portrait of lives regularly flattened out and simplified by history’s narrative.” — New Jersey Star Ledger
“Stirring…strong, serious stuff, just as it should be.” — Wall Street Journal
The story of Lee Harvey Oswald and his complicated relationship with his overbearing, media-obsessed mother. Told through her eyes, the story follows Oswald’s life from his exit from the U.S. military, through the assassination of Kennedy, to his own assassination. A study of maternal devotion in times of tragedy.
Suffocating in rat-infested poverty on the South Side of Chicago in the 1930s, 20-year-old Bigger Thomas struggles to find a place for himself in a world whose prejudice has shut him out. After taking a job in a wealthy white man’s house, Bigger unwittingly unleashes a series of events that violently and irrevocably seal his fate.
2m, 1f | 120 minutes | Drama
5m, 4f | 90 minutes | Drama
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
The Behavior of Broadus
Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea by Nathan Alan Davis
by Carolyn Almos, Matt Almos, Jon Beauregard, Albert Dayan, and Brendan Millburn
CRITIC’S CHOICE “A mesmerizing blend of magical realism and poetic social comment…” — Los Angeles Times Eighteen-year-old Dontrell Jones III decides that it is his duty and destiny to venture into the Atlantic Ocean in search of an ancestor lost during the Middle Passage. But his family is not at all ready to abandon its prized son to the waters of a mysterious and haunting past. Blending poetry, humor, wordplay, and ritual, Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea is a present-day hero’s quest exploring the lengths and depths we must go to redeem history’s wrongs.
“As delightfully self-assured as it is comically selfreferential, made up of equal parts whimsy, wacky, profane and profound, this cracked experiment in satirical musical development is A WICKEDLY ENTERTAINING WATERSHED.” — Los Angeles Times
3m, 4f | 90 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
The incredible sort-of-true story of John Broadus Watson, father of Behaviorism and modern advertising. He has the power to control your brain. Indeed, we suspect he’s making you read this right now. This Mad Men-esque dark comedy puts the origins of our pop-culture consumerist society under a satirical magnifying glass.
El Nogalar by Tanya Saracho
7m, 3f, Flexible Casting | More than 120 minutes | Satire Medium Orchestra | Easy Vocals | Classic Broadway
“El Nogalar lives both in Chekhov’s world and Saracho’s world where class pressure and social turmoil threatens traditional families’ land and lifestyle in contemporary Mexico.” — Chicago Critic
This Much
Set in modern day Northern Mexico, the Galvan family, led by Matriarch Maite, have come back to their pecan orchard to reclaim their land after Maite has squandered away their money. In the time they’ve been away, however, the Mexico they once knew has slowly been taken over by a drug war. Will these women choose to adapt to the world around them or get left behind?
(or An Act of Violence Towards the Institution of Marriage)
by John Fitzpatrick
1m, 4f | 105 minutes | Drama
“A probing piece comfortable in the ambiguities it raises.” — Fest
The Second Coming of Joan of Arc by Carolyn Gage
Gar can’t decide between the man who plays games and the man on one knee with a ring. In fact, Gar can’t decide on anything because every choice seems like a compromise. Everyone wants answers but nothing lives up to the image he has in his head. Facades start crumbling as his world implodes around him but Gar just wants to dance with his friends.
WINNER! 2015 DC Fringe Festival Favorite Favorite Solo Show, Favorite Solo Performance
3m, 3m or f | 75 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
1f | 90 minutes | Drama, Biography
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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Recent Acquisitions
Marie and Rosetta by George Brant “A spectacular show. It takes us into the evolution of a musical collaboration and friendship that is part of rock and roll legend!” — Newsday A huge influence on Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jimi Hendrix, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was a legend in her time, bringing fierce guitar playing and swing to gospel music. Tharpe was the queen of “race records” in the 30s and 40s, performing mornings at churches and evenings at the Cotton Club. This celebratory and thoughtful new play imagines her first rehearsal with young protégée Marie Knight, as they prepare to embark on a tour that would establish them as one of the great duet teams in musical history. 2f | 90 minutes | Historical Drama, Play with Music
Nat Turner in Jerusalem by Nathan Alan Davis “The most interesting part of the creative exercise is not the activity inside Turner’s cell, but the breadth of its implications about our relationship with history as a whole — whether 200 years past or flooding your Twitter feeds as we speak.” — TheaterMania A timely new play that imagines Nat Turner’s final night in a jail cell in Jerusalem, Virginia, as he reckons with his past and what the dawn will bring. Woven with vivid imagery and indelible lyricism, this is a powerful examination of an individual’s resolute convictions and their seismic reverberations through time. 2m | 90 minutes | Historical Drama
Among the Dead by Hansol Jung
Maytag Virgin by Audrey Cefaly
CRITIC’S PICK “With this outraged, deeply compassionate play, Ms. Jung is kicking, and expanding our understanding.” — The New York Times
“Maytag Virgin is a witty and earnest meditation on how people connect even when they feel they’re not ready, and what it is to move on while honoring and remembering the things, and people, who came before.” — DC Theatre Scene
Ana is a Korean American who travels to Seoul in 1975 to retrieve her deceased father’s ashes. Luke is a young American soldier fighting in the jungles of Myanmar in 1944. Number Four is the name of a Korean comfort woman camping out on a bridge in Seoul in 1950, waiting for the return of the young American soldier who fathered her daughter. Three separate time periods collide in a small hotel room in Korea. A dark comedy about a family finding each other through SPAM, journals, and Jesus.
Alabama school teacher Lizzy Nash and her new neighbor Jack Key come together over the year following the tragic death of Lizzy’s husband. An exploration of inertia, selfenlightenment, and the bridge between the two. 1m, 1f | 120 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
1m, 2f, 1m or f | 90 minutes | Drama
Long Way Go Down by Zayd Dohrn “Dohrn creates fully formed characters and sustains powerful tension between them as alliances shift depending on the moment.” — Chicago Tribune A young Mexican couple is trapped at a way station when they can’t pay off their debts to American coyotes who smuggled them across the border. 3m, 1f | 90 minutes | Drama, Thriller
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Yen by Anna Jordan “A terrific, breakneck new play…young, buzzy, smart, violent.” — New York Magazine Hench is 16, Bobbie is 13. They live alone with their dog Taliban, playing Playstation, watching porn, surviving. Sometimes their chaotic mum Maggie visits, occasionally she passes out on the front lawn. But when Jenny knocks on the door the boys discover a world far beyond what they know, a world full of love, possibility, and danger. 2m, 2f | 120 minutes | Drama
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
A Life Colossal by Andrew Hinderaker by Adam Bock “It truly is colossal … an exciting 65 minutes of innovative theatre.” — Talkin’ Broadway
“Exquisite in detail and throws a jaw-dropping curveball.” — Time Out New York
The beauty and brutality of football seduce Mike to stray from the path his father had mapped out for him, but when a snap decision results in a career-ending injury, Mike must tackle the past and make peace with the man he dreamed he would be. Played in four quarters with a half-time show, dance company, and a drumline, Colossal’s explosive theatrical storytelling and full-contact physicality carries this unmissable summer event all the way to the end zone.
Nate Martin is hopelessly single. When his most recent breakup, another in a lifelong string of ill-fated matches, casts him into a funk, he turns to the only source of wisdom he trusts: the stars. In this disarming new play, the answer he receives, when it comes, is shockingly obvious —and totally unpredictable.
15m, Flexible Casting | 75 minutes | Drama
Pluto by Steve Yockey
2m, 3f | 85 minutes | Dark Comedy
The Substance of Bliss by Tony Glazer “A sympathetic study of suburban despair…” — The New York Times Paul and Donna wait during the late night for their troubled 15-year-old son to come home. As they wait for him, they keep their minds occupied by cleaning and discussing potential renovations to the house, and the conversation slowly veers toward their decision to marry and have a child that is causing them so much angst.
“Pluto’s style attacks the audience with a fierce combination of kitchen realism and Jean Cocteau’s off-the-wall conflation of dream and daily life.” — MD Theatre Guide In the wake of a local tragedy involving gun violence at a community college, single mother Elizabeth Miller and her withdrawn son Bailey try to jump-start their relationship across the breakfast table. But with berserk appliances, shifting astronomy, and the talkative new family dog’s interruptions, Elizabeth might not be able to really “see” the person she needs to see most. 2m, 3f | 90 minutes | Dark Comedy
1m, 1f | 90 minutes | Drama
Homos, or Everyone in America by Jordan Seavey
Pink Mist by Owen Sheers
“A remarkable experience… This ground-breaking piece of theatre is not one to be missed.” — The Fix Magazine
The story of three young Bristol men deployed to Afghanistan. Within a short space of time all three return to the women in their lives, all of whom must now share the psychological and physical aftershocks of their service. Drawing upon interviews with soldiers and their families, Pink Mist illuminates the timeless human cost of war and it’s all too often devastating effect upon the young lives pulled into its orbit.
“A daringly frank, funny and affecting new play […] Mr. Seavey’s portrait of young gay New Yorkers negotiating the sometimes thorny nature of love and intimacy has an arresting, even bruising honesty.” — The New York Times “Love is love” — but is navigating it any less complicated today? Told through interweaving glimpses into the life of an everyday couple unexpectedly confronted by a vicious crime, this is a fearless, funny, heart-on-its-sleeve examination of the moments that can bring two people together — or pull them apart.
3m, 3f | 120 minutes | Drama
3m, 1f | 105 minutes | Drama
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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Recent Acquisitions
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
PLAYS
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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Raymond Lee and Paco Tolson in Vietgone, South Coast Repertory (Deborah Robinson).
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
VIETGONE
“An unlikely intermingling of family play, history play, sex farce, action flick, and cultural critique. It is overtly rollicking and sneakily moving.”
by Qui Nguyen
—
The Guardian
An all-American love story about two very new Americans. It’s 1975. Saigon has fallen. He lost his wife. She lost her fiancé. Now in a new land, they just might find each other. Using his unique style that The New York Times calls “culturally savvy comedy”— and skipping back and forth from the dramatic evacuation of Saigon to the here and now— playwright Qui Nguyen gets up close and personal to tell the story that led to the creation of…Qui Nguyen.
3m, 2f, Flexible Casting More than 120 minutes | Comedy
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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Plays
Dot by Colman Domingo “A thoroughly entertaining comedy-drama! … An impressive advance for Colman Domingo.” — The New York Times The holidays are always a wild family affair at the Shealy house. This year, Dotty and her three grown children gather with more than exchanging presents on their minds. As Dotty struggles to hold on to her memory, her children must fight to balance care for their mother and care for themselves. This twisted and hilarious new play grapples unflinchingly with aging parents, midlife crises, and the heart of a West Philly neighborhood. 4m, 3f | 120 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
The Healing by Samuel D. Hunter “A moving, beautifully acted new drama… Mr. Hunter writes with lively humor and grace.” — The New York Times 25 years ago, a group of kids met at a summer camp where the head counselor taught them that their disabilities could be “cured” through the power of prayer. Today, the old friends gather to mourn the untimely passing of one of their circle. Over the course of the night, old wounds are uncovered, friendships tested, and a troubling truth about their late friend becomes clear. The Healing features a cast of mostly differently abled actors. 2m, 5f | 90 minutes | Drama
Ugly Lies the Bone by Lindsey Ferrentino “A bracing drama that confronts an achingly topical issue with hardheaded honesty and admirable compassion. A brave playwright and a writer of dauntless conviction.” — The New York Times Newly discharged soldier Jess has finally returned to her Florida hometown. She brings with her not only vivid memories of Afghanistan, but painful burns that have left her physically and emotionally scarred. Jess soon realizes that things at home have changed even more than she has. Through the use of virtual reality video game therapy, she builds a breathtaking new world where she can escape her pain. As Jess advances further in the game, she begins to restore her relationships, her life, and slowly, herself.
The City of Conversation by Anthony Giardina “A savvy depiction of social skill as political art, in a city that’s defined by political science.” — The Washington Post In this play spanning 30 years and eight presidential administrations, Hester Ferris throws Georgetown dinner parties that can change the course of Washington politics. When her son turns up with an ambitious Reaganite girlfriend and a new conservative worldview, Hester must choose between preserving her family and defending the causes she’s spent her whole life fighting for. 4m, 4f, 1b,Flexible Casting | More than 120 minutes | Drama
Charles Busch’s The Tribute Artist CRITIC’S PICK “Sheer joy!” — The New York Times When his elderly landlady dies in her sleep, an out-ofwork female impersonator takes on her identity in order to hang onto her valuable Greenwich Village townhouse. This “perfect” scheme goes awry and leads to a wild path of twists and reversals plotted by an eccentric rogues’ gallery of outrageous schemers. 2m, 4f | 120 minutes | Comedy, Farce
Maria/Stuart by Jason Grote “Grote has made a name for himself in recent years with scripts that explode the boundaries between the ordinary and the chimerical, the political and the aesthetic, the intimate and the dizzyingly cosmic.” — Washington Post Up-and-coming cartoonist Stuart fights to keep the lid on his mother’s and aunts’ simmering angst. But the family’s secrets channel themselves into a bizarre shapeshifter that guzzles soda, communicates by fax, and spouts old German verse. Friedrich Schiller’s classic tale of warring queens inspires this gothic romp through the weirder side of suburban America. 1m, 5f | Full Length Play | Comedy
2m, 3f | 90 minutes | Drama Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
Important Hats of the Twentieth Century by Nick Jones “Part sci-fi parody, part Ayn Rand spoof and 100% screwball comedy, Important Hats…leaves no punchline unpunched.” — The Wall Street Journal
ANNE WASHBURN
Sam Greevy is the toast of 1920s women’s apparel, until the maverick fashion designer Sam Roms springs his radical creations on the world: The Sweatshirt, The Track Suit, and Skater Pants. The clothes he comes up with are as if from another dimension, and maybe they are. As Greevy tries to adapt to rapidly changing fashions, a parallel drama unfolds in Albany, circa 1998: a teenage stoner keeps losing articles of clothing, and a man keeps bursting out of his closet and taking them.
Antlia Pneumatica
8m, 1f, Flexible Casting | 120 minutes | Comedy
In a ranch house deep in Texas Hill Country, a once tight-knit group of friends reunites to bury one of their own. When they look backward through their lives, it becomes clear they’ve lost more than just an old pal. In this haunting play, the boundaries between then and now grow disarmingly blurry as these friends must confront a slippery past.
The Old Neighborhood by David Mamet “This is Mamet unplugged. What we have, in essence, are three dialogues. And Mamet is, of course, a virtuoso of dialogue.” — New York Daily News
2m, 4f | 105 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
In these three short plays, middle-aged Bobby Gould returns to the old neighborhood in a series of encounters with his past that, however briefly, open windows on his present: Bobby and an old buddy fantasize about finding themselves in a nostalgic shtetl paradise; Bobby’s sister Jolly unscrolls a list of childhood grievances that is at once painful and hilarious; and old girlfriend Deeny finds herself obsessively free-associating on gardening, sex, and subatomic particles.
10 Out of 12
An entertaining, eye-opening look into the daunting process of tech rehearsals. The audience is placed amongst sound designers who mix cues, stage managers who gossip about actors, and one director who struggles to pull it all together. A glimpse into life on the other side of the footlights.
3m, 2f | Full Length Play | Drama
8m, 6f | More than 120 minutes | Comedy/Experimental
Middletown by Will Eno
Mr. Burns
a post-electric play
“Delicate, moving, piercing, tart, funny, gorgeous. Mr. Eno’s gift may be unmatched among writers of his generation. Glimmers from start to finish.” — The New York Times As a friendship develops between longtime resident John Dodge and new arrival Mary Swanson, the lives of the inhabitants of Middletown intersect in strange and poignant ways in a journey that takes them from the local library to outer space and points between.
After the collapse of civilization, a group of survivors share a campfire and begin to piece together the plot of The Simpsons episode “Cape Feare,” entirely from memory. Seven years later, this and other snippets of pop culture have become the live entertainment of a post-apocalyptic society trying to hold on to its past. 75 years later, these are the myths and legends from which new forms of performance are created. 3m, 5f, Flexible Casting | More than 120 minutes Dark Comedy, Experimental
6m, 6f, Flexible Casting | 120 minutes | Dramatic Comedy Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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Plays
Ken Ludwig’s Somewhere Fun Baskerville: A Sherlock by Jenny Schwartz Holmes Mystery “A madcap send up of what you might hold dear about that Doyle classic, done up in the style of The 39 Steps.” — D.C. Theatre Scene The male heirs of the Baskerville line are being dispatched one by one. To find their ingenious killer, Holmes and Watson must brave the desolate moors before a family curse dooms its newest heir. Watch as our intrepid investigators try to escape a dizzying web of clues, silly accents, disguises, and deceit as five actors deftly portray more than 40 characters. Join the fun and see how far from elementary the truth can be. Don your deerstalker cap! The play’s afoot! 4m, 1f, Flexible Casting | 120 minutes | Comedy, Farce
Smart People by Lydia R. Diamond “…a sexy, serious and very, very funny modern-day comedy of manners.” — Variety It is the eve of Obama’s first election. Four of Harvard University’s brightest — a surgeon, an actress, a psychologist, and a neuro-psychiatrist are all interested in different aspects of the brain, particularly how it responds to race. But like all smart people, they are also searching for love, success, and identity in their own lives. Lydia Diamond brings these characters together in this sharp, witty play about social and sexual politics.
“Imperiously funny, talented and excellent! Ms. Schwartz pours forth dizzying streams of language that often delight with their quirky poetry and looping humor.” — The New York Times Rosemary and Evelyn met “a hundred thousand years ago” in Central Park when their children were barely born. Somewhere Fun reunites the two women 35 years later. With their children now grown and the world changing rapidly before (what’s left of ) their eyes, each finds herself face to face with the terrors, joys, and surprises of life and time. 2m, 5f, 1b, 1g | 120 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
Passion Play by Sarah Ruhl “Let’s just get the superlatives out of the way. Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play is the most exciting, stimulating, and thrilling piece of theater to hit New York since Angels in America.” — Backstage A community of players rehearses its annual Easter Passion play in three different eras: 1575 England, just before Queen Elizabeth outlaws the ritual; 1934 Oberammergau, Bavaria, as Hitler rises to power; and Spearfish, South Dakota, from the time of Vietnam through the Reagan Era. At each time, the players grapple with the transformative nature of art, while politics are never far in the background. 8m, 3f, Flexible Casting | More than 120 minutes Dramatic Comedy, Experimental
2m, 2f | More than 120 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
Poor Behavior by Theresa Rebeck “A weekend getaway… provided your idea of a getaway is Napoleon’s retreat from Russia.” — The New York Times A weekend in the country spins out of control when jealous wife Maureen makes a reckless accusation about her husband, Ian, and their old friend Ella. Ella’s husband, Peter, tries and fails to stop the domestic carnage in this fierce and funny story about the unexpected ease of betrayal and the fragility of marriage. 2m, 2f | 120 minutes | Comedy
Dusty and the Big Bad World by Cusi Cram “Dusty raises passionate and polarizing questions about the role of public TV in the education of our children. That’s a battle for both hearts and minds.” — Denver Post Based on an actual incident that happened in 2005, Dusty and the Big Bad World is a very funny, noholds-barred yet even-handed look at PBS, government bias, gay marriage, the right to privacy, children’s allergies, and the ability to survive in a small-minded world. 1m, 3f, 1g | 120 minutes | Comedy
Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
FADE by Tanya Saracho
“Saracho’s writing is so sharp, full lives take shape with an economy of words… A powerful piece with a fresh voice and a bright future.” — Denver Post When Lucia, a Mexican-born novelist, gets her first TV writing job, she feels a bit out of place on the white male-dominated set. Lucia quickly becomes friends with the only other Latino around, a janitor named Abel. As Abel shares his stories with Lucia, similar plots begin to find their way into the TV scripts that Lucia writes. Fade is a play about class and race within the Latino community, as well as at large, and how status does not change who you are at your core. 1m, 1f | 90 minutes | Dramatic Comedy Eddie Martinez in Fade, Primary Stages at Cherry Lane Theatre (James Leynse).
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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JOE ORTON 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the tragic and unusual death of iconoclast Joe Orton. His work provides a subversive and often scathing look at the hypocrisies of the British middle class. Clever and bawdy, Orton’s plays are as provocative now as they were when originally produced. Orton Collection at the University of Leicester, © Orton Estate
What the Butler Saw Dr. Prentice interviews (and seduces) an attractive would-be secretary, Geraldine. Unwittingly surprised by his wife, he hides the girl. Meanwhile Mrs. Prentice, being seduced and blackmailed by young bellhop Nicholas, has promised him the secretarial post. When a government inspector arrives, chaos, underpants, and cross-dressing lead the charge. 4m, 2f | Full Length Play | Comedy
Entertaining Mr. Sloane
Blowsy landlady Kath and her sexually repressed brother Ed rent Sloane a room and proceed to “entertain” him by seducing the seemingly hapless young man. But when their old Pa recognizes Sloane for what he is, a feckless murderer, he too is killed by the ruthless hustler. 3m, 1f | Full Length Play | Comedy
Loot
Dennis works for an undertaker. Hal’s old Mum has just died. They rob the bank next door to the funeral parlor and find just the right place to hide the loot: Mum’s coffin. Now there’s no place for Mum, whose body keeps re-appearing at the most inopportune times. When Inspector Truscott turns up, the already thickened plot goes topsy-turvy. 5m, 1f | Full Length Play | Dark Comedy
The Good and Faithful Servant
A savage study of the disintegration of an old man when he retires after 50 sterile years in the service of a factory. His search for happiness and meaning in his life lurches from moments of hilarity to moments of extreme pathos. 3m, 3f | Short Play | Comedy
Funeral Games
Cult leader, preacher, and con artist Pringle hires the thuggish criminal Caulfield to investigate an anonymous report that his wife, Tess, is having an affair with a defrocked Catholic priest. 4m, 1f | Short Play | Dark Comedy
Find more Joe Orton’s titles at samuelfrench.com. Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
Title Spotlight: LOOT
by David Kimple
T
he past few years have illuminated a din of hotbutton political and social issues and we, as theatre producers and creators, are clamoring for ways to shed light on them. We want our productions to speak to these issues, to contribute to the conversations happening, and perhaps, to provide some new perspective to our audiences. But, a potential barrier to entry is that, outwardly, political theatre doesn’t always break records at the box office. We’ve got to keep the lights on and often rely on commercial, well-known works to sell tickets.
So where do we turn? Perhaps now is a good moment to look again at Loot by Joe Orton. Like most of Orton’s work, Loot is steeped in the traditions of classic British farce, guaranteeing wide audience appeal. But thematically, it goes deeper. Relentlessly funny and of “revival-age,” Loot might also be able to speak to the social issues of today. Loot received major premieres in 1965 at The Arts Theatre in London and in 1968 at the Biltmore in New York and it has lived on in hundreds of productions since its premiere. Orton’s entire body of work is studied in colleges and universities all over the world. Now, more than 50 years later, the show is a perfect fit for that “contemporary classic” or “revival” slot in any season because the author’s reputation and the title’s notoriety precede any new production in development.
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If you’re not familiar with the comedic happenings of the play, Loot begins when a bank is robbed right next door to a funeral parlor. A funeral parlor where Hal’s mother is being prepared for her memorial service. Hal also happens to be one of the bank robbers. With Dennis the other bank robber, and his mother’s nurse Fay, he concocts a plan to hide the stolen cash in his mother’s coffin, moving her corpse into a cabinet.
Loot is funny enough to recommend as a commercial comedy and is socially considerate enough to recommend as political theatre for today’s American producer. When an inspector, Truscott, comes looking around, keeping secrets is next to impossible. The foundation for a truly hilarious sequence of events is set when the dead body and the stolen money exchange places over and over as Hal and Dennis try to cover their tracks to avoid getting caught. Every beat leads the audience closer and closer to hilarious absurdity. Between the laughter, Inspector Truscott’s abusive actions take this story to yet another level. Truscott enters the scene posing as an inspector from the Water Board but he questions and pries into the family’s affairs like a
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detective on the hunt. Almost without resistance or question, Truscott is given access to look around. Later, when Hal gives a sarcastic response during a line of questioning, Truscott begins to physically and verbally abuse him. In this moment, Truscott’s actions mirror horrific examples of police brutality and Loot takes on value as political commentary. Orton’s dramatization of this unendurably frustrating issue is masterful. It leaves us questioning our ability to confront authority as well as the origin of authority in the first place. Loot is funny enough to recommend as a commercial comedy and is socially considerate enough to recommend as political theatre for today’s American producer. It is well-known, hilarious, full of depth, and a bit of a unicorn in the way that it can satisfy these different needs in our season programming.
August Wilson’s HOW I LEARNED WHAT I LEARNED co-conceived by Todd Kreidler
“Wilson’s pride, humor, eloquence, anger, storytelling gifts, and general eagerness to soak up experience: It’s all there.” — The Boston Globe From Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson comes a one-man show that chronicles his life as a black artist in the Hill District of Pittsburgh. From stories about first jobs and first loves to his experiences with racism, Wilson recants his life from his roots to the completion of the American Century Cycle. How I Learned What I Learned gives an inside look into one of the most celebrated playwriting voices of the 20th century. 1m | 90 minutes | Dramatic Comedy, Biography Eugene Lee in How I Learned What I Learned, Pittsburgh Public Theater (Michael Henninger).
Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
The Grown-Up by Jordan Harrison
The Open House by Will Eno
“Charming, exciting and full of childlike wonder, Harrison’s play is a magical, breathtaking trip.” — Chicago Theatre Review
“Will Eno’s work combines studied banality, sneaky weirdness and formal ingenuity.” — Time Out New York
10-year-old Kai is given a magical crystal doorknob by his grandfather that enables him to travel through space and time to see future events in his life. The further along he goes, the less he feels like he’s seeing into his future, and more that he is living life as most people do; all too quickly. 4m, 2f | 75 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
People have been born into families since people started getting born at all. Playwrights have been trying to write Family Plays for a long time, too. And typically these plays try to answer endlessly complicated questions of blood and duty and inheritance and responsibility. They try to answer the question, “Can things really change?” People have been trying nobly for years and years to have plays solve in two hours what hasn’t been solved in many lifetimes. This has to stop.
Harriet Jacobs by Lydia R. Diamond inspired by Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
3m, 2f | 90 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
“…Diamond mobilizes her gifted pen and her powers of empathy to tell the story of one extraordinary woman.” — Boston.com
When Suzanne Alexander — a fictional African American writer — enters Ohio State University in 1949, little does she know what the supposed safe haven of academia holds in store. Years later, Suzanne is invited to return to the university to talk about the violence in her writing. A dark mystery unravels.
Ohio State Murders by Adrienne Kennedy “Much of the pleasure of the play derives from Ms. Kennedy’s elliptical narrative form, which generates a good share of old-fashioned, nail-biting suspense.” — The New York Times
In her book, Harriet Jacobs describes the brutal hardships she endures under slavery. To survive, she escapes into her imagination, and through writing, discovers hope for a better life. Accompanied by the rich musical traditions of slave spirituals, this is an inspiring look at a young woman’s fascinating journey from slavery to freedom.
2m, 4f | 75 minutes | Drama, Thriller
Grand Concourse by Heidi Schreck
4m, 4f, 1b, 1g | Full Length Play | Historical Drama
The Mnemonist of Dutchess County by Josh Koenigsberg
“Heidi Schreck’s beautiful tragicomedy of life…reminds you of why you go to the theater in the first place.” — Chicago Sun Times
“A funny and touching new play.” — Broadway.com Meet Milo Mazowski, a campus security guard whose determination to woo a lovely local bar owner is only hampered by one thing: his unlimited memory, which makes him spout out pretty much every unromantic thing he’s ever heard in his life. A bittersweet comedy about learning how to forget.
Having dedicated her life to religious service, Shelley runs a Bronx soup kitchen with unsentimental efficiency, but lately her heart’s not quite in it. Her brisk nature masks an unsettling fear that her efforts are meaningless. When Emma, an idealistic but confused college dropout, arrives to volunteer, her reckless mix of generosity and selfinvolvement pushes Shelley to the breaking point. 2m, 2f | 90 minutes | Drama
4m, 2f | 120 minutes | Romantic Comedy
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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Plays
Familiar by Danai Gurira
Fish Eye by Lucas Kavner
“Ms. Gurira weaves issues of cultural identity and displacement, generational frictions, and other meaty matters into dialogue that flows utterly naturally.” — The New York Times
“A keen observer of human behavior… his dialogue is so true to life, it’s like eavesdropping on real people.” — New York Daily News
A heartfelt and poignant look at the struggle to balance tradition and modernity. In the middle of a Minnesota winter, a Zimbabwean American family prepares for the wedding of their eldest daughter. When the bride invites her aunt to perform a traditional African marriage ritual, the family’s delicate balance of Zimbabwean culture and American lifestyle is put to the test.
At a bar across from a falafel place, Max and Anna meet again, or is it for the first time? A funny and emotionally raw portrait of a couple struggling to hold on to one another without losing themselves, Fish Eye explodes the traditional chronology of romance and offers a modern take on the exhilaration of love: when nothing means everything and everything means nothing, and the entire world can shrink down to a single moment.
3m, 5f | More than 120 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
2m, 2f | 90 minutes | Romantic Comedy
Pocatello by Samuel D. Hunter
Masked by Ilan Hatsor translated by Michael Taub
“Hunter evokes a world in which identity itself has come to seem confusingly mass-produced.” — The New York Times Eddie manages an Italian chain restaurant in Pocatello — a small, unexceptional American city that is slowly being paved over with strip malls and franchises. But he can’t serve enough Soup, Salad & Breadstick Specials to make his hometown feel like home. Against the harsh backdrop of Samuel D. Hunter’s Idaho, this heartbreaking comedy is a cry for connection in a lonely American landscape. 5m, 5f | 90 minutes | Drama
“Provocative drama. An articulate calculus of loyalty and betrayal.” — The New Yorker An explosive Israeli play about three Palestinian brothers. Set during the Intifada with the Israeli-Arab struggle as its backdrop, Masked depicts the tragedy of one family torn between duty, kinship, principles and survival. 3m | 90 minutes | Drama
Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End by Allison Engel and Margaret Engel “Allison and Margaret Engel’s script is beautifully structured…a loving tribute.” — DC Theatre Scene From the writers of Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins comes a comic look at one of our country’s most beloved voices, who captured the frustrations of her generation by asking, “If life is a bowl of cherries, what am I doing in the pits?” Discover the story of the humorist who championed women’s lives with wit that sprang from the most unexpected place of all: the truth. 1f | 90 minutes | Comedy, Biography Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
House Rules by A. Rey Pamatmat “Mr. Pamatmat has compelling ideas about human psychology and dramatic structure… flashes of surprising truth, particularly in the sibling interactions.” — The New York Times Rod thinks the game is fixed. Momo’s still learning the rules. Twee doesn’t think winning is enough. JJ hates his hand. And why the hell is Henry still playing? Two families (and some guy named Henry) panic with hilarious and heartbreaking results when they realize their parents won’t be around forever. Can anybody prepare for the inevitable moment when they’re the ones left holding all the cards? 4m, 3f | 105 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE based on the screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard adapted for the stage by Lee Hall
“Funny, often genuinely moving, and generates a glow you could warm your hands by.” — Daily Telegraph “An absolute joy from beginning to end!” — Daily Express Young Will Shakespeare has writer’s block. The deadline for his new play is fast approaching. He’s in desperate need of inspiration. And then he finds his muse, Viola. This beautiful young woman is Will’s greatest admirer and will stop at nothing — including breaking the law — to appear in his next play. Against a bustling background of mistaken identity, ruthless scheming, and backstage theatrics, Will’s love for Viola quickly blossoms and inspires him to write his greatest masterpiece.
18m, 6f, Flexible Casting More than 120 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
Original West End cast, Shakespeare In Love (Johan Persson).
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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“Ruhl delicately explores, through nothing more than the letters and her own theatrical imagination, the solitude of the artist, the exactitude of the writer’s craft, the balance between confession and privacy, and in the end, why poetry matters.” — Variety
DEAR ELIZABETH by Sarah Ruhl
Based on the compiled letters between poets Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, Sarah Ruhl expresses the beauty in simple correspondence. Brought to life by reading Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, Ruhl maps the relationship of the two poets from first meeting to an abbreviated affair, and the turmoil of their lives in between.
1m, 1f, 1m or f | 105 minutes | Drama
Laura Latreille in Dear Elizabeth, The Lyric Stage Company of Boston (Mark S. Howard).
Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
Shoot/Get Treasure/ Repeat by Mark Ravenhill
John by Annie Baker
“Ravenhill writes tales that hold a gun to your heart and shoot you in the soul, but leave you alive so you can feel every last drop of pain.” — The Austin Chronicle
The week after Thanksgiving. A bed & breakfast in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A cheerful innkeeper. A young couple struggling to stay together. Thousands of inanimate objects, watching. In this quiet tale, Annie Baker’s hyperrealism meets the eerily supernatural, and actors and audiences alike delve into ideas of self, mortality, and the solitude of human experience.
“So good on so many levels that it casts a unique and brilliant light.” — The New Yorker
An epic cycle of 16 short plays examining the personal and political effect of war on modern life. A child talks to a headless man; a woman is afflicted with mysterious intestinal pain; a couple talks about their garden bench; a soldier demands love from a woman whose country he has liberated. Each new play is a fragment of suffering, and a fierce, sardonic attack on the war on terror. Though lightly connected, the scenes can be performed in any combination or order.
1m, 3f | 120 minutes | Drama
Romance Novels for Dummies by Boo Killebrew
Flexible Casting | Sketches | Satire
Edward Albee’s Occupant
“Irreverent sense of humor spiked with a dollop of Southern sass.” — The Boston Globe
“Occupant bows its head in awe and gratitude before the mysterious force of will that allows great artists to be.” — The New York Sun The public accomplishments and private conflicts of flamboyant sculptor Louise Nevelson are thoroughly examined by an unnamed interviewer who questions the posthumous artist with unabashed scrutiny. From her unique vantage point beyond the grave, Nevelson answers queries with a clarity born of the distance provided by death. A touching, humorous tribute to a woman who was a pioneer for free-thinking females everywhere. 1m, 1f | 75 minutes | Dramatic Comedy, Biography
The Roommate by Jen Silverman
Southern sisters Bernie and Liz are different in a number of ways. Liz is a stay-at-home mother, while her sister, Bernie, enjoys every bit of life and vice of New York City. When Liz’s husband dies, she goes to live with Bernie and adjusts accordingly. After going on a series of internet dates, Bernie challenges what makes Liz’s idea of the perfect life perfect. 2m, 3f, 1g | 105 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
A Lifetime Burning by Cusi Cram “The dialogue crackles with snappy sarcasms.” — The New York Times If you had the power to revise your past, what would you change? Who would you be? Trust fund darling Emma imagines what her life would have been like had she come from a less privileged background. Trouble is, she chronicles her alternate life in a new tell-all “memoir,” sold for a hefty advance. When Emma is exposed, will her sister, Tess, stand by her? Or will Emma’s deceit destroy their already fractured relationship?
“Tugs at the heartstrings as much as it tickles the funny bone.” — Louisville.com Sharon, in her mid-50s, is newly divorced and needs a roommate to share her Iowa home. Robyn, also in her mid-50s, needs a place to hide and a chance to start over. But as Sharon begins to uncover Robyn’s secrets, they encourage her own deep-seated desire to transform her life. A dark comedy about what it takes to re-route your life and what happens when the wheels come off.
1m, 3f | 90 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
2f | 105 minutes | Dark Comedy Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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Plays
The Royale by Marco Ramirez
Betrayed by George Packer
“A well-constructed drama that captures both the beautiful frenzy of boxing and the (sadly still relevant) volatile state of race relations in America.” — The Telegraph
“…Betrayed takes a story you think you already know and, by embodying it in flesh and blood, makes it memorably immediate.” — San Francisco Chronicle
Jay “The Sport” Jackson dreams of being the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. But it’s 1905, and in the racially segregated world of boxing, his chances are as good as knocked out. Loosely based on real events, this is an explosive look at the sights and sounds of the early twentieth century boxing circuit, and the ultimate fight for a place in history.
Millions of Iraqis welcomed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In January 2007, George Packer met two Iraqi men in the lobby of the Palestine Hotel to hear their story and those of other Iraqis working as key personnel for the U.S. military and occupation authorities. Instead of respect and gratitude, those who chose to help bridge the gap between the occupiers and the occupied were met with suspicion and hostility.
4m, 1f | 90 Minutes | Drama
5m, 1f, Flexible Casting | 105 Minutes | Drama
Shakespeare’s Sister by Emma Whipday “It’s an excellent play, entertaining, well informed, thought-provoking and moving all at once.” — Professor Helen Hackett, Professor of Shakespeare, UCL Judith Shakespeare has one ambition: to be a playwright. When her debt-ridden father forces her into an engagement, she runs away with the help of dashing actor Ned Alleyn, hoping to join her brother in London. But when Judith arrives in the plague-stricken capital, she finds her brother gone, Ned engaged to another, and her play refused. 7m, 35f, 1b, 1g, Flexible Casting | 90 minutes | Drama
Taking Care of Baby by Dennis Kelly “A crafty little play… [Mr. Kelly] deftly scrambles both our sympathies for, and our trust in, this play’s characters.” — The New York Times This tale of a mother accused and convicted of the deaths of her two young babies is horrific yet powerful. By adopting a form commonly associated with verbatim theatre, the subject is imbued with a clarity that is at once both unrelenting and utterly engaging, as it slowly emerges that these events are not truth at all. What unfolds is a bleak yet tender exploration of grief, exploitation, and the innate hypocrisies of reportage. 7m, 6f, Flexible Casting | Full Length Play | Drama
Stage Kiss by Sarah Ruhl “Sarah Ruhl frothily whips together romantic comedy and backstage farce in this lively comedy.” — The New York Times Art imitates Life. Life imitates Art. When two actors with a history are thrown together as romantic leads in a forgotten 1930s melodrama, they quickly lose touch with reality as the story onstage follows them offstage. A charming tale about what happens when lovers share a stage kiss, or when actors share a real one. 4m, 3f | 120 minutes | Romantic Comedy
The Judas Kiss by David Hare “The dialogue is urbane, stylish and frequently imbued with Oscar-like flashes of humor and purplish poetic resonance. But the main thrust is for character and situation: a mood portrait of a fall from grace.” — New York Post A compelling depiction of Oscar Wilde just before and after his imprisonment. Act One captures him in 1895 on the eve of his arrest. In Act Two, Wilde is in Naples more than two years later, after his release from Reading Gaol. In exile, he is drawn to a reunion with his unworthy lover and a final betrayal. 6m, 1f | More than 120 minutes | Historical Drama
Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
NOT ABOUT NIGHTINGALES by Tennessee Williams
“Changes our perception of a major writer and still packs a hefty political punch.”
— London Independent An early work by the revered playwright that caused a sensation in Houston, New York, and London. This is a raw, sprawling dramatization of real events at a Philadelphia prison in 1937. Convicts who led a hunger strike to protest conditions were locked in a scalding cell where four of them died. The sympathetic treatment of African Americans and homosexuals was revolutionary for the time of the premiere and may explain why the play remained unproduced for 60 years.
Nate Shelton, Kamau Mitchell, and Douglas Ruffin in Not About Nightingales at Howard University (Justin Knight). Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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9m, 3f, Flexible Casting | 120 minutes Drama
Mary Page Marlowe by Tracy Letts “Deeply moving. You feel an intense desire for more scenes, more time in your seat, a deeper dive into the life, times and fate of the protagonist you are watching.” — Chicago Tribune
OCTAVIO SOLIS
Mary Page Marlowe leads an unremarkable life. As an accountant in Ohio with two children, few would expect her life to be inordinately intricate or moving. However, it is choices, both mundane and gripping, and where those choices have taken her, that make her life so intimate and surprisingly complicated. A piece about the fragility of a moment and its effects on one’s identity. 6m, 11f, 1g | 90 Minutes | Drama
Santos & Santos
Drugs, gambling, and trafficking fuel the law office of Santos & Santos, and the brothers are quick to incorporate the younger brother after the death of their father. He questions his relationship to his heritage as he sees his brothers so eagerly trying to live the life of the “American.” 8m, 5f | More than 120 minutes | Drama
Se Llama Cristina
A man and woman awake from an apparent drugging night to find their baby missing. They relive their history in order to remember the way back to their child and to try and set things right. This haunting, poetic journey moves through time from past to present to future, and from darkness and doubt to a glimmer of light. 2m, 2f | 90 minutes | Drama
El Paso Blue
Al has to take the rap for his pal Duane’s botched robbery, but before he goes, he leaves his drunken ex-beauty queen wife, Sylvie, in the care of his father, Jefe. In the year he’s gone, Jefe and Sylvie fall in love, and when Al is granted early parole, he enlists Duane in a mad and murderous hunt for the fleeing lovers. 3m, 2f | 90 minutes | Drama
The General from America by Richard Nelson “Exploring the human complexity behind such a reductive term as ‘traitor,’ it exposes the puritanical hypocrisy and corruption that marched beside the heralded courage of our national beginnings.” — The Village Voice An iconoclastic portrait of America’s quintessential traitor, Benedict Arnold, the military hero who nearly gave his life for the cause of American freedom and ended up disclosing vital information to the British. Revealing some of the Founding Fathers’ less than heroic machinations, this is a unique look into American history. 11m, 3f, Flexible Casting | 120 minutes | Historical Drama
Everything You Touch by Sheila Callaghan “A brash, even commercial, elaboration of [Callaghan’s] universal themes in their most complex and daredevil manifestations yet.” — The Hollywood Reporter Victor is a ruthless fashion designer in the 1970s at the top of his game. Esme, his glamorous protégé and muse, is pushed aside when an ordinary Midwestern woman inspires Victor to make his artistry accessible to the masses. A generation later, a woman grappling with a healthy dose of self-loathing must wrestle her own family demons to find her way through the world of fashion that won’t give a woman her size a second look. 2m, 6f | 120 minutes | Dark Comedy
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. by Alice Birch
Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau
“A series of fragments that recall the form-bending virtuosity of Caryl Churchill…Ms. Birch’s work finds the theatrical exhilaration in civil disobedience.” — The New York Times
“Characters who don’t merely speak, they sing with the vernacular of their community. Rarely has dialogue ever felt so much like eavesdropping on an actual conversation.” — TheaterMania
A wildly experimental and inventive new play that does not behave. Playwright Alice Birch has put together a grouping of vignettes that ask how to revolutionize language, relationships, work, and life in general while bursting at the seams of conformity.
At the start of the Great Recession, one of the last auto stamping plants in Detroit is on shaky ground. Each of the workers has to make choices on how to move forward. Loyalties are tested and power dynamics shift as their manager, Reggie, is torn between doing right by his work family, and by the red tape in his office.
Flexible Casting | 75 minutes | Experimental
2m, 2f | 120 minutes | Drama
The Open Hand by Robert Caisley
Doris to Darlene by Jordan Harrison
“Caisley excels at placing evocatively drawn characters in situations of social and personal conflict, all the while mixing comedy with angst, then mining the dramatic results.” — Arts Knoxville
“Mr. Harrison’s play has an affectionate, music-loving heart.” — The New York Times In the 1960s, biracial schoolgirl Doris is molded into pop star Darlene by a whiz-kid record producer who culls a top-ten hit out of Richard Wagner’s “Liebestod.” Rewind to the 1860s, where Wagner is writing the melody that will become Darlene’s hit song. Fast-forward to the present, where a teenager obsesses over Darlene’s music — and his music teacher. Dissonant decades merge into an unlikely harmony in this time-jumping pop fairy tale.
Allison does not accept gifts. When she finds herself without her wallet, it is with great reluctance that she accepts the generosity of a total stranger. Determined to repay his kindness, Allison comes face-to-face with the dark secrets that drive her inability to accept even the simplest act of benevolence. 3m, 2f | Full Length Play | Dramatic Comedy
4m, 2f | 105 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
A Great Wilderness by Samuel D. Hunter
brownsville song
“[An] affecting drama that strengthens its hold on you bit by unpredictable bit.” — The Boston Globe
by Kimber Lee
(b-side for tray)
After decades as the gentle-natured leader of a Christian retreat that endeavors to “cure” gay teens, Walt is packing up and preparing for retirement. But when his final client quietly disappears into the remote Idaho wilderness, Walt discovers that his unwavering moral compass no longer points the way.
“Ms. Lee’s language is vivid and rhythmic…it argues persuasively against treating the next neighborhood death as just one more sad statistic.” — The New York Times Set in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, brownsville song (b-side for tray) is a powerful tale of resilience in the face of tragedy. Moving fluidly between past and present, this bold new play tells the story of Tray, a spirited African-American 18-year-old, and his family, who must hold on to hope when Tray’s life is cut short.
3m, 3f | 120 minutes | Drama
2m, 2f, 1g | 90 minutes | Drama
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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Plays
New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection.
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
NEIL SIMON In 2017, we celebrate Neil Simon’s 90th birthday. One of the most prolific writers in American popular culture, he’s authored over 30 plays and almost as many screenplays. The recipient of multiple Emmys, Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize in 1991, Mr. Simon has received more Tony and Oscar nominations than any other writer.
45 Seconds From Broadway
Brighton Beach Memoirs
From America’s master of Modern Broadway Comedy comes another revealing look behind the scenes in the entertainment world, this time near the heart of the theatre district. At the legendary “Polish Tea Room” on 47th Street, Broadway theatre personalities, washed-up and on-the-rise, gather to schmooze even as they lose. 6m, 6f | More than 120 minutes | Comedy
A portrait of the writer as a young teen in 1937 living with his family in a crowded, lower-middle-class Brooklyn walk-up. Dreaming of baseball and girls, Eugene Jerome must cope with the mundane existence of his family life in Brooklyn: formidable mother, overworked father, and his worldly older brother. Throw into the mix his widowed Aunt Blanche, her two young (but rapidly aging) daughters, and Grandpa the Socialist, and you have a recipe for hilarity, served up Simon-style. 3m, 4f | Full Length Play | Dramatic Comedy
The Odd Couple
This classic comedy opens as a group of the guys assemble for cards in the apartment of divorced Oscar Madison. If the mess is any indication, it’s no wonder that his wife left him. Late to arrive is Felix Unger, who has just been separated from his wife. Fastidious, depressed, and none too tense, Felix seems suicidal, but as the action unfolds, Oscar becomes the one with murder on his mind when the clean freak and the slob ultimately decide to room together, with hilarious results, as The Odd Couple is born. 6m, 2f | Full Length Play | Comedy
Lost in Yonkers
Bella is 35 years old, mentally challenged, and living at home with her mother, stern Grandma Kurnitz. As the play opens, ne’er-do-well son Eddie deposits his two young sons on the old lady’s doorstep. The boys are left to contend with Grandma, with Bella and her secret romance, and with their Uncle Louie, a small-time hoodlum in a strange new world called Yonkers. Winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. 4m, 3f | 120 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
An evening of three one-acts set in the Plaza Hotel. In Visitor from Mamaroneck, a middle-aged married couple tries to rekindle their dying spark. In Visitor from Hollywood, a film producer invites his childhood sweetheart to a hotel for sex. In Visitor from Forest Hills, a bride has locked herself in the bathroom on her wedding day, with her parents desperate to get her out. 7m, 5f | Full Length Play | Comedy
Laughter on the 23rd Floor
Inspired by the playwright’s youthful experience as a staff writer on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, with all the attendant comic drama as the harried writing staff frantically scrambles to top each other with gags while competing for the attention of star madman “Max Prince.” 7m, 2f / Full Length Play / Comedy
Rumors
Barefoot in the Park
The hit romantic comedy about newlyweds, in every sense of the word. Paul’s a straight-as-an-arrow lawyer. Corie’s a free spirit, looking for the latest kick. For their first home, they live in a tiny apartment on the top floor of a brownstone in New York City. During the course of four days, the couple learns to live together while facing the usual daily ups-and-downs, unusual neighbors, and in-laws. Corrie wants Paul to become more easy-going: for example, to run “barefoot in the park.” 4m, 2f | 120 minutes | Comedy
Find more Neil Simon titles at samuelfrench.com. Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
Plaza Suite
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At a large, tastefully-appointed Sneden’s Landing townhouse, the Deputy Mayor of New York has just shot himself. Though only a flesh wound, four couples are about to experience a severe attack of Farce. Gathering for their tenth wedding anniversary, the host lies bleeding in the other room, and his wife is nowhere in sight. His lawyer, Ken, and wife, Chris, must get “the story” straight before the other guests arrive. As the confusions and miscommunications mount, the evening spins off into classic farcical hilarity. 5m, 5f | Full Length Play | Comedy/Farce
George A. Romero’s
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD LIVE
written by Christopher Bond, Dale Boyer, and Trevor Martin created by Christopher Harrison and Phil Pattinson
“Spooky, sophisticated, and silly in equal measures…so recommended it hurts.” — Fangoria Magazine A comedic tribute to the historic 1968 film and the official authorized stage production of the film. The play lovingly examines the film, the period it was made in, and its undying influence on the horror genre. All the iconic moments from the film are hilariously re-visited, along with an entirely new journey for our beloved characters from the farmhouse. Packed with effects, music, and gore, Night of the Living Dead Live skirts the line between horrific and hysterical! 4m, 2f, Fleixble Casting | 120 minutes | Dark Comedy, Parody The cast of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead Live, Theatre Passe Muraille (Christos Kalohoridis Photography).
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
The Mystery of Love & Sex by Bathsheba Doran
Father Comes Home From The Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3)
“It is tender, funny, packed with humanity and brimming with surprising revelations. Bathsheba Doran has written a play with such compassion and wry wisdom.” — The New York Times Deep in the American South, Charlotte and Jonny have been best friends since they were nine. She’s Jewish, he’s Christian; he’s black, she’s white. Their differences intensify their connection until sexual desire complicates everything in surprising ways. An unexpected love story about souls meeting and the consequences of growing up.
by Suzan-Lori Parks FINALIST! 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama “The finest work from this gifted writer. At once an epic poem, a moving personal drama about one man’s soul struggle, and a seriocomic meditation on liberty, loyalty, and identity.” — The New York Time Offered his freedom if he joins his master in the ranks of the Confederacy, Hero, a slave, must choose to leave the woman and people he loves for what may be yet another empty promise. Filled with music, wit, and great lyricism, this is a dramatic exploration of the mess of war, the cost of freedom, and the heartbreak of love.
3m, 2f | More than 120 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
End of the Rainbow by Peter Quilter
8m, 2f | More than 120 minutes | Drama
“Sensational — in every sense of the word.” — The New York Times With a six week booking at London’s Talk of the Town, it looks like Judy Garland is set firmly on the comeback trail. At 46 and with new flame Mickey Deans at her side, she seems determined to carry it off and recapture her magic. But lasting happiness always eludes some people, and there was never any answer to the question with which Judy ended every show, “If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why, oh, why, can’t I?” 3m, 1f | 120 minutes | Drama, Biography, Play with Music
A Feminine Ending by Sarah Treem “Appealingly outlandish humor.” — The New York Times Having recently graduated from a major conservatory, and with a rocker boyfriend on the brink of stardom, Amanda Blue’s “extraordinary life” seems to be all mapped out. But when she’s called home to answer her mother’s distress call, Amanda’s grand plan starts to unravel. A bittersweet play about dreams deferred, loves lost, and learning to trust a woman’s voice in a man’s world. 3m, 2f | 90 minutes | Romantic Comedy
Samsara by Lauren Yee “There’s a throbbing play here with a bleeding heart and a laudable awareness of how we sometimes only get one shot at happiness or escape…” — Chicago Tribune Katie and Craig are having a baby…with a surrogate…who lives in India. A month before the baby’s due date, Craig reluctantly travels to the subcontinent, where he meets Suraiya, their young, less-than-thrilled surrogate. As all three “parents” anxiously wait for the baby to be born, flights of fancy attack them from all sides, in the form of an unctuous Frenchman and a smart-mouthed fetus. A whimsical take on modern-day colonialism.
Verité by Nick Jones “Mr. Jones deftly satirizes the mania for memoirs.” — The New York Times Struggling writer Jo has been given the opportunity to write her own memoir. Her publishers explicitly ask only that she write about her life truthfully and that it be as exciting as possible. Forced to re-examine her rather dull life, strange events begin to occur, and Jo has to decide if her life is worth writing about or worth living. 4m, 2f, 1b | 90 minutes | Dark Comedy
3m, 2f | 90 minutes | Comedy
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Plays
A Human Being Died That Night by Nicholas Wright “Quietly gripping…reveals in searing, sometimes heart-rending detail the atrocities committed by the South African police forces during the terrible years of apartheid.” — The New York Times Eugene de Kock was a paid white political assassin nicknamed “Prime Evil” for his crimes against antiapartheid activists. While serving his two life sentences, black psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela went to interview de Kock, huffinght hoping to seek humanity and forgiveness within the government-sanctioned monster. The thought-provoking interrogation moves from clinical to intimate in a cell where fear and compassion coexist. 1m, 1f | 90 minutes | Drama
Charles Busch’s Cleopatra “…always smartly campy, often over-the-top, occasionally very raunchy, and always hilarious — with an infinite all-you-can-eat buffet of priceless lines and situations running throughout.” — The Huffington Post The turbulent life of Cleopatra is told through a comic lens, evoking both 1930s Hollywood epics and the grand nineteenth century romantic theatre. This version of the Egyptian Queen’s life takes her from her teenage seduction of Julius Caesar through her volatile tragic romance with Mark Antony and her untimely death.
August Wilson’s Radio Golf “The final play in August Wilson’s magnificent cycle has crackling comedy, engaging snap, and theatrical zest. In Mr. Wilson’s world, the song, it seems, hasn’t ended after all.” — The New York Times Fast-paced, dynamic, and wonderfully funny work about the world today and the dreams we have for the future. Set in Pittsburgh in the late 1990s, it’s the story of a successful entrepreneur who aspires to become the city’s first black mayor. But when the past begins to catch up with him, secrets get revealed that could be his undoing. 4m, 1f | More than 120 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
How to Get Into Buildings by Trish Harnetiaux “Harnetiaux does some quite sophisticated structural work here, slipstreaming her events in space …and a constantly somersaulting timeline.” — Time Out New York Roger and Lucy meet at a convention. Daphne and Nick break down at a diner. Ethan continues to read compulsively from his new book, The Car Accident. It’s soon apparent that reality is slippery and time is shifting. We join our characters’ struggles with their own discoveries about love, opportunity, and a desire to pause with trepidation. 3m, 3f, Flexible Casting | 75 minutes | Dark Comed, Experimental
5m, 3f, Flexible Casting | 90 minutes | Comedy
The Moors by Jen Silverman
“Acerbic, funny…brilliant stuff. The Moors is first-rate entertainment.” — New Haven Review Two sisters and a dog live out their lives on the bleak English moors, and dream of love and power. The arrival of a hapless governess and a moor hen set all three on a strange and dangerous path. A dark comedy about love, desperation, and visibility. 1m, 5f | 105 minutes | Dark Comedy
Gnit by Will Eno “Gnit is wickedly funny, relentlessly intelligent and very well-executed.” — WFPL News Watch closely as Peter, a funny-enough but so-so specimen of humanity, makes a lifetime of bad decisions on the search for his True Self. A rollicking and very cautionary tale about, among other things, how the opposite of love is laziness. A faithful, unfaithful, and willfully American misreading of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, a nineteenth century Norwegian play which is famous for all the wrong reasons, written by someone who has never stepped foot in Norway. 3m, 3f, Flexible Casting | 120 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
SIGNIFICANT OTHER by Joshua Harmon
“A tenderly unromantic romantic comedy, as richly funny as it is ultimately heart-stirring.” — The New York Times A modern comedy that exquisitely captures the joys and anxieties of growing up, and the shifting grounds of friendship when marriage enters into the equation. Jordan is a single, gay man in his late-20s, and finding Mr. Right is easier said than done. When his three best girlfriends each get married, Jordan becomes increasingly aware of — and desperate about — being single. 3m, 4f | 120 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
Gideon Glick, Rebecca Naomi Jones, and Lindsay Mendez in Significant Other on Broadway (Joan Marcus).
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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John Hopkins and Richard Durden in Ben Hur, Tricycle Theatre, London (Tristram Kenton).
Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
BEN HUR
“Patrick Barlow’s small-scale take on this epic tale is a palpable hit.”
by Patrick Barlow
— Evening Standard
Based on one of the best-selling books of the nineteenth century and the Academy Awardwinning film of grand proportion, comes the stage adaptation with four actors. The story follows an amateur theatre troupe as they produce the massive tale of the fictional Jewish prince and merchant Judah BenHur. He falls to galley slave and rises to champion charioteer within Jerusalem during the life of Jesus Christ, while the actors struggle along through the piece as rivalries form and offstage romances interfere. Complete with chariot race, sea battle, and stage combat, Patrick Barlow weaves his compressed style popularized by The 39 Steps into one of the largest stories ever told.
3m, 1f, Flexible Casting | 105 minutes Comedy, Parody
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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Writer’s Room: TOPHER PAYNE Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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H
ere at Samuel French, we strive to find exciting voices in the playwright community, and bring them to a wider audience. This year, one of the new writers we welcomed to our catalog is the remarkable Topher Payne. For those of you unfamiliar with Topher’s plays, get ready. Topher is certainly a playwright who knows his way around a laugh line, but complex truths are often wrapped inside the crackling wit and slicing humor. Currently, Samuel French publishes and licenses Perfect Arrangement and Evelyn in Purgatory. Below, Literary Supervisor Ben Coleman sits down to chat with Topher and learn more about his upbringing, style, and life as a writer. Ben Coleman: Let’s start with some simple questions. Where are you from, originally? And where do you reside now? Topher Payne: I’m originally from Kosciusko, Mississippi. It’s about 90 minutes north of Jackson. Birthplace of Oprah Winfrey. I grew up just up the road from what eventually became Oprah Winfrey Road, and her talk show went national when I was in first grade, so she always served as this beacon of hope for me, ya know? I never questioned the possibility of finding and forging a connection with an audience, because I had this really amazing example from my hometown. Anyhoo, I moved to Atlanta when I was 19, and sure enough, I found my audience. Ben: What has your experience been as a playwright in a regional market? Topher: My firm belief as an Atlanta artist is that the only way you elevate your community is if the artists stay where they are. I think there is a misperception
that the only way the work itself is going to grow is if you’re working in one of the major markets. Well that’s just not true. While the resources for new play development in New York or Chicago are certainly more plentiful, all you really need is informed people who are committed to good stories, well told, and you can do that in New York, you can do that in Atlanta, you can do that in Mississippi.
I wrote my first play when I was 17. It was not very good. But the next one was slightly better. That’s all I can really do; continue to refine the skill, tell stories about things that matter to me, ask questions of my audience, hope to spark a discussion. And it never gets easier.
you and what energy is important to you in an artistic process. My agent represents my plays well but she also represents my values well. If you allow yourself to be picky about the person that is going to be joining you on your journey of trying to get your stories out in the world, then the payoff is exceptional. You don’t have to dance with every guy that asks you. Ben: When was the first moment you considered yourself a playwright?
Ben: So as an Atlanta-based playwright who has an agent, do you have any words of advice to emerging playwrights seeking representation?
Topher: I’ve always used writing as my means toward figuring out the world, considering another perspective. Part of that comes from being Southern, part of that comes from growing up in the Methodist church. Our history and our values are conveyed via parable. Whether it’s a story in Sunday School of the Good Samaritan, or your grandmother’s warnings of The Girl Who Got Knocked Up On Prom Night, if you want to land a good point, you tell a good story. And all I ever wanted to do was forge a connection with other people, figure out how things work and why. I chose playwriting as my medium because it’s the campfire tale writ large — there’s something uniquely powerful about breathing the same air as your audience.
Topher: If you’re a writer working in a regional market, you spend so long selling yourself, and tackling all aspects of promotion and contract negotiation by yourself. So, when somebody expresses an interest in you, it’s easy to think, “Oh my gosh, thank God you’re here!” But taking that step back is very necessary. Remind yourself: this person is going to be working for you and this person is going to be working for your plays. Find someone who is a representation of
I wrote my first play when I was 17. It was not very good. But the next one was slightly better. That’s all I can really do; continue to refine the skill, tell stories about things that matter to me, ask questions of my audience, hope to spark a discussion. And it never gets easier. That fervent desire to communicate, it is such an attendant demon. But then I turn around and see I’ve been at it for almost twenty years, so it must be what I’m supposed to be doing or
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surely someone who cares would have stopped me by now. Ben: What are you most interested in exploring through your playwriting right now? Topher: What the hell made everybody so fearful, and what we can do about it. It’s a throughline in my work that took me a good long while to observe. I write cautionary tales about what happens when decisions are driven by fear, or anger. There is no shortage of kindness in this world; there is an abundance of it. But making yourself open to kindness requires bravery. It requires a belief that people are fundamentally decent and fair, when given the opportunity. And I believe nearly every conflict arises from someone feeling they aren’t being heard. That’s where plays come in handy. We shine a light on a human experience, we breathe the same air as you, we tell your story. And in that, we say, “We see you. We acknowledge you. You are valued.” Ben: So, how would you describe your plays? Topher: My first three plays published by Sam French — notice I said first three, because I’m a man with big plans — each tell the story of marginalized people deciding when enough is enough. Everyone’s lives require a certain level of compromise, or in the extreme, subjugation. But at some point, a person reaches their breaking point. Each play explores the benefits and consequences of that. Ben: And where did you draw artistic inspiration from for your plays? Topher: I am an unapologetic eavesdropper and voracious reader. I only completed tenth grade, so my education after that
has been my own responsibility. When you take on the obligation of instructing yourself, you have to seek out mentors, stay curious, ask questions, and pursue wild goose chases of knowledge, or else you’ll turn out stupid. When I find something interesting, I write it down. When the thought won’t go away, I keep writing. And sometimes that becomes a thing worth sharing.
What I used to mistake as writer’s block, I now recognize as me trying to push the story in a direction that my characters do not want it to go. Ben: Do you ever feel writer’s block? Topher: What I used to mistake as writer’s block, I now recognize as me trying to push the story in a direction that my characters do not want it to go. And that is humbling, it’s a really humbling moment when you recognize that you are in service of a story that doesn’t belong to you. You’re merely the facilitator between your characters and your audience. If you write in service of that, I find those moments of blockage tend to be a lot less frequent than if you’re trying to impose your own will onto a story. It’s not your story.
good at their jobs. I was actually in Lauren’s first play, Parts They Call Deep. Suehyla El-Attar, Johnny Drago, Marki Shalloe, and Gabriel Jason Dean are writers y’all might not know about, but you really should. I’ll drop everything to go listen to their words whenever possible. Deborah Zoe Laufer. Peter Sinn Nachtrieb. Keith Bunin. Pearl Cleage. I could seriously do this all day. Ben: When you’re not wearing your playwright hat, how do you spend your time? Topher: I’ve got a fella and a dog and a cat, all of whom I neglect for weeks at a time. I’m amazed any of them put up with me, but it works so we won’t question it. We’re steadily taking on the cosmetic challenges of our 100-year-old house. So my downtime tends to involve masonry or caulking something. I fell down a well a few months ago. That’s how we found out we have a well. This is the charm of an old home. But I take slight issue with this question, because I am never not wearing that damn playwright hat. It is glued to my head until the day I drop dead. And when I do, I’ll probably be editing a draft that was due to the producer a week ago. My last words will be, “Hold on, I think I’m onto something.” Either that or I’ll fall down another well.
Ben: Do you have any favorite plays or playwrights? Topher: Oh gosh, too many to ever give a complete list. Beth Henley inspired me to write in the first place. Lauren Gunderson and Steve Yockey got started in Atlanta around the same time I did, so they’ll always have a special place in my heart. Plus they’re just damn
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This article originally appeared on Breaking Character Magazine in December, 2016.
PERFECT ARRANGEMENT by Topher Payne
“[A] clever canapé of a comedy…Mr. Payne is a deft and witty writer.”
— The New York Times
It’s 1950 and two State Department employees, Bob and Norma, have been tasked with identifying sexual deviants within their ranks. There’s just one problem: both are gay, and have married each other’s partners as a cover. Inspired by the earliest stirrings of the American gay rights movement, madcap classic sitcom-style laughs give way to provocative drama as two couples are forced to stare down the closet door. 3m, 4f | 120 minutes | Comedy
Perfect Arrangement at Primary Stages, Set Designer: Neil Patel, Costume Designer: Jennifer Caprio (James Leynse).
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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“With its staccato rhythms, short scenes, and farcical characters, unlike any you’ve ever seen before onstage, it’s hard to know how to characterize this play, except to say that it’s unexpectedly wonderful.”
PEERLESS by Jiehae Park
— The Arts Fuse
Asian American twins M & L have given up everything to get into The College. So when D, a 1/16th Native American classmate, gets “their” spot instead, they figure they’ve got only one option: kill. A deliciously dark and funny take on Shakespeare’s Macbeth exploring the very ambitious and the cut-throat world of high school during college admissions.
2m, 3f | 90 minutes | Dark Comedy
Teresa Avia Lim and Tiffany Villar in Peerless, Yale Rep (Joan Marcus).
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
Going to a Place The Oldest Boy: Where You Already Are A Play in Three Ceremonies by Bekah Brunstetter by Sarah Ruhl “Sweetly dramatized without being preachy either for or against the adherence to faith. Creates a safe space for love and goodness to thrive.” — Broadway World Is there a heaven? Joe says no. His wife, Roberta, has always claimed to agree. Lately, she’s beginning to wonder, especially when they find themselves in church a lot, having reached the age when funerals are more frequent than weddings. Meanwhile, their granddaughter Ellie doesn’t have time to ponder the afterlife. When mortality confronts them, her grandmother’s claim to have gone to heaven and back doesn’t sound so crazy after all.
“Among the most easily accessible [dramas] from this poetic, venturesome playwright…marked by inquisitive intelligence, clean-lined eloquence and spiky humor.” — The New York Times An American mother and a Tibetan father have a three-year-old son believed to be the reincarnation of a Buddhist lama. When a Tibetan lama and a monk come to their home unexpectedly, asking to take their child away for a life of spiritual training, the parents must make a life-altering choice and test their strength, their marriage, and their hearts.
3m, 2f | 75 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
4m, 1f | 120 minutes | Drama
Wonderful Tennessee by Brian Friel
Back Back Back by Itamar Moses
“This mythic journey into a world of ambiguous ritual, classical references and commonplace miseries has something of the magical, yes, almost wordless resonance of a Yeats poem.” — New York Post
“No one plays King of the Hill more craftily than Itamar Moses. Taut, beautifully modulated, and riveting, with the bewildering force of a curveball pitch.” — Time Out New York
A haunting play by this celebrated Irish writer finds three couples on a deserted pier in Ballybeg, Ireland. There to celebrate Terry’s birthday, they are waiting for a boat that will take them to a mystical island, rumored to be the site of sacrificial rituals, which Terry claims to have bought. Drunken hilarity gives way to reflection as the couples play games, tell stories, and sing songs to pass the time.
Before headlines blazed, before the Mitchell Report and ESPN lit up millions of television screens with the scandals, before congressional jaws dropped, comes the story of three guys making their way in the world of professional baseball — a world too competitive to rely solely on raw talent. What happens is a behind-theheadlines battle for their careers, their legacies, and the future of America’s favorite pastime.
3m, 3f | 120 minutes | Drama
3m | 90 minutes | Drama
Kindness by Adam Rapp “A well-crafted mini-thriller, which keeps you in suspense until the final blackout.” — New York Daily News An ailing mother and her teenaged son flee Illinois to the relative calm and safety of a Midtown Manhattan hotel. Mom holds tickets to a popular musical, but her son isn’t interested, so she takes a kindly cabdriver instead. Meanwhile, her son entertains a visitor from down the hall: an enigmatic, potentially dangerous, young woman. A play about the possibility for sympathy in a harsh world, and of mercy in the face of devastating circumstances. 2m, 2f | 120 minutes | Drama Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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Blood at the Root by Dominique Morisseau “Morisseau knows where the truth lies, and it is rarely on solid ground.” — The New York Times A striking new ensemble drama based on the Jena Six, six black students who were initially charged with attempted murder for a school fight after being provoked with nooses hanging from a tree on campus. 3m, 3f | 105 minutes | Drama
Plays
THE DEBATE SOCIETY Paul Thureen, Hannah Bos, and Oliver Butler Blood Play
Cape Disappointment
Buddy Cop 2
Jacuzzi
A tranquil suburban evening in the early 1950s: the kids are away on a Junior Cherokee camping trip, and a string of coincidences leads to a spontaneous grown-up party in the basement of a new ranch house. Exotic cocktails are imbibed, raucous games are played, and new friends are made, but much is happening that no one is talking about. And something is stirring underground. A darkly comic thriller of post-war verve and pre-adolescent disquiet. 3m, 3f | 75 minutes | Dark Comedy
In this comedic action/mystery of holiday nostalgia and athletic rigor, when a flood destroys the police station, the local cops set up shop in the nearby community center. Mysteries emerge. Criminals are chased. Racquetball is played. In this town, nothing is what it seems…or is it? 2m, 2f | 90 minutes | Dark Comedy
A decaying drive-in comes to life with stories of lighthouses, naughty little girls, and places you imagine remembering. Sit back, relax, refrain from loud talking, turn off your headlights, enjoy some tasty popcorn, put litter in its place, keep an eye on your children, think about how happy we could be, and remember that this country is full of dark, dark places along dark, dark roadways where dark, dark things can happen. 2m, 2f | Full Length Play | Dramatic Comedy
In the Marshall family’s peacefully remote Colorado ski chalet, Erik and Helene are making themselves very much at home. So at home, they just might stay for good. At the edge of civilization, the lifestyles of the rich collide with the lifestyles of the aimless in the bubbling waters of a hot tub…but beware what lurks beneath. 3m, 1f | 90 minutes | Dark Comedy/Thriller
Learn more about The Debate Society at samuelfrench.com. Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
“The Debate Society is a minor miracle: a small, scrappy theater company whose years of producing quiet gems go against the grain of a culture driven by hype, stars and spectacles. It has graduated from cramped downtown and Brooklyn spaces to Off Broadway theaters with nicely appointed lobbies and specializes in haunted and intricately detailed worlds.” — Jason Zinoman, The New York Times Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday by Sarah Ruhl “A warm, funny, and thoughtful play for our times.” — Arts-Louisville.com When Ann thinks of her father, she remembers him bringing her flowers after performing as Peter Pan in her hometown productions when she was young. As she and her siblings sit in his hospital room during his final moments, their conversational wake explores everything from arguments over politics to when each sibling realized that they grew up. A loving look at a family’s view of death, life, and the allure of never growing up.
The Captain’s Tiger by Athol Fugard “A sweetly autobiographical memory play… Probing into his past with illuminating insight, the playwright has crafted a reflective journey, laced with flights of fantasy, poetic imagery and a bracing touch of humor.” — Variety Onboard the SS Graigaur, a young sailor pens his first novel. Assisted by his muse, a portrait of his mother come to life, and supported by the illiterate ship’s mechanic, he struggles to balance romance and reality. This most personal of Athol Fugard’s works is strictly autobiographical; at 20 he abandoned his education, hitchhiked up Africa and ended up on a tramp steamer. 2m, 1f | 90 minutes | Drama, Biography
3m, 3f | 90 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
The Village Bike by Penelope Skinner “Skinner is addressing a difficult theme head on, often with wit and verbal authenticity.” — Vulture Becky is pregnant and friskier than ever. But she can’t seem to get the attention of her husband, who is more interested in the baby manual than her new underwear. As her husband prepares for the baby’s months-away arrival, Becky takes matters into her own hands. In the heat of the summer, she sets out on an adventure that starts with the purchase of a used bike from a man in town and takes her further than she ever expected. 3m, 3f | 120 minutes | Dark Comedy
Title and Deed by Will Eno “Leaves you happily word-drunk! Gorgeously and inventively wrought. Haunting and often fiercely funny.” — The New York Times Behold the newest nobody of the funniest century yet. He’s almost Christ-like, from a distance, in terms of height and weight. Listen closely or drift off uncontrollably, as he speaks to you directly about the notion of home, about the notion of the world. All of it delivered with the authority that is the special province of the unsure and the un-homed, which is a word he made up accidentally. A stunning monologue which is a haunting and often fiercely funny meditation on life as a state of permanent exile 1m | 75 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
My Mañana Comes by Elizabeth Irwin “Elizabeth Irwin’s involving, thoughtful My Mañana Comes…is character study with a political edge — honed nearly as sharp as the men’s paring knives.” — The New York Times Just beyond the elegant dining room of an Upper East Side restaurant, four busboys angle for shifts, pray for tips, and cling to dreams of life beyond their dingy backof-house grind. Expertly juggling delicate dishes, fussy customers, and beer-swilling line cooks, the young men face off with management and each other. As tensions reach a boiling point, how far will each of them go to see his own mañana come? 4m | 90 Minutes | Drama Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
The Happy Ones by Julie Marie Myatt WINNER! 2009 Ted Schmitt Award for the World Premiere of an Outstanding New Play Orange County, California, 1975. For Walter Wells, it’s the happiest place on earth, until fate strikes a devastating blow, leaving Walter with no reason to put the pieces of his life back together. He resists attempts to help, especially the unexpected — and unwanted adding offer from a Vietnamese refugee named Bao Ngo, who bears his own sadness. Then, across a cultural divide, Walter and Bao find a game to share, a song, a meal, and then a way back. 3m, 1f | 105 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
Ken Ludwig’s
A COMEDY OF TENORS
“From conception to execution, everything about A Comedy of Tenors hits on all comedic cylinders and, as advertised, is laugh-out-loud funny.” — The News-Herald One hotel suite, four tenors, two wives, three girlfriends, and a soccer stadium filled with screaming fans. What could possibly go wrong? It’s 1930s Paris and the stage is set for the concert of the century — as long as producer Henry Saunders can keep Italian superstar Tito Merelli and his hot-blooded wife, Maria, from causing runaway chaos. An uproarious ride, full of mistaken identities, blissful romance, and madcap delight! 4m, 3f | 120 minutes | Comedy, Farce Bobby Conte Thornton and Kristen Martin in Ken Ludwig’s A Comedy of Tenors at Cleveland Playhouse (Roger Mastroianni). Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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TOM STOPPARD (Matt Humphrey)
The Real Thing An intellectually and emotionally engaging backstage comedy about a romantically idealistic playwright whose second wife is trying to merge worthy causes with her art as an actress. She has netted a “political prisoner” who has written an inept play about how property is theft, how the state stifles the rights of the individual, etc., etc., etc. She hopes her husband can make the play work theatrically, a feat which requires much soul searching on his part and a test of their concepts of love, marriage, and fidelity. 4m, 3f | More than 120 minutes | Comedy
Arcadia In 1809, the grounds of the Coverly family’s elegant estate are being transformed from an Arcadian landscape into picturesque Gothic gardens. In the present, Coverly descendants and two competing scholars research a possible 1809 scandal at the estate involving Lord Byron. This brilliant play moves smoothly between the centuries and explores the nature of truth and time, the difference between classical and romantic temperaments, and the disruptive influence of sex on our orbits in life. 8m, 4f | Full Length Play | Comedy
Hapgood Does light come in waves or particles? Experiments will show either: the experimenter can choose. “A double agent is like a trick of the light,” Kerner the physicist tells Blair the spy catcher. “You get what you interrogate for.” Dual natures, of light and of people, are the theme of Tom Stoppard’s espionage thriller. Kerner’s secret research is being leaked to Moscow. Is Ridley the double? Or is Kerner a triple? Hapgood is the person to find out, and maybe it will need two of her. 8m, 1f | Full Length Play | Mystery/Thriller
Rock ’n’ Roll A electrifying collision of the romantic and the revolutionary. It is 1968. Jan, a Cambridge graduate student, returns to his homeland of Czechoslovakia just as Soviet tanks roll into Prague. Back in England, his mentor Max faces a war of his own as his family attempts to break through his walls of academic and emotional obstinacy. Over the next 20 years of love, espionage, chance, and loss, their lives spin and intersect until a reunion forces them to see what is truly worth the fight. 7m, 6f | Full Length Play | Dramatic Comedy
Discover our complete collection of Tom Stoppard titles at samuelfrench.com
Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean
The Flick by Annie Baker
“Gem has passages of transporting beauty. Mr. Wilson is at the top of his form!” — The New York Times
WINNER! 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Set in 1904 in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, on the eve of Aunt Esther’s 287th birthday. Esther is a keeper of tradition and history for her people, and a cleanser of souls. When Citizen Barlow comes to her home seeking asylum, she sets him on a journey in search of a city in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and in doing so, helps him find redemption.
In a run-down movie theater in central Massachusetts, three underpaid employees mop the floors and attend to one of the last 35mm film projectors in the state. Their tiny battles and not-so-tiny heartbreaks play out in the empty aisles, becoming more gripping than the lackluster, secondrun movies on screen. With keen insight and a finely-tuned comic eye, The Flick is a hilarious and heartrending cry for authenticity in a fast-changing world.
5m, 2f | 120 minutes | Drama
3m, 1f | More than 120 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
The Vertical Hour by David Hare
Collapse by Allison Moore
“…richly stimulating…Hare’s play engages the heart and mind.” — The Guardian
“Moore skillfully builds her comedy as much from character and evolving situations as she does from jarring juxtapositions of topic and tone.” — San Francisco Gate
A thought-provoking exploration of how the political can sometimes intersect, collide with, and ultimately dismantle the personal. The play addresses the relationship of characters with opposing views on the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and reveals the psychological tension between public and private lives.
Hannah tries desperately to hold the facade of her perfect life together, even as her husband, David, mysteriously calls in sick to work. Day after day they struggle with infertility, and Hannah herself is on the verge of being laid off. When Hannah’s sister appears on their doorstep, she brings with her a renegade attitude and an illicit package that send David and Hannah on a 12-hour odyssey into the heart of their deepest fears.
3m, 2f | More than 120 minutes | Drama
2m, 2f | 120 minutes | Comedy
Calendar Girls by Tim Firth
Seminar by Theresa Rebeck
“It makes you laugh, it makes you cry, and it leaves you feeling better about life than you did when you entered the theatre.” — The Telegraph When Annie’s husband John dies of leukemia, she and best friend Chris resolve to raise money for a new settee in the local hospital waiting room. They manage to persuade four fellow WI members to pose nude with them for an “alternative” calendar, with a little help from hospital porter and amateur photographer Lawrence. The calendar is a success, but Chris and Annie’s friendship is put to the test under the strain of their new-found fame. 4m, 9f | 120 minutes | Comedy
“Sexy, savvy and uproarious!” — Time Out New York Four aspiring young novelists sign up for private writing classes with Leonard, an international literary figure. Under his recklessly brilliant and unorthodox instruction, some thrive and others flounder, alliances are made and broken, sex is used as a weapon, and hearts are unmoored. The wordplay is not the only thing that turns vicious as innocence collides with experience in this biting Broadway comedy. 3m, 2f | 90 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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Plays
The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World by Suzan-Lori Parks
Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme by Frank McGuinness
“A smart, poignant and often funny play that sets you up to watch a typically post-modern, woman-centered romantic comedy, only then to subvert and satirize many of the elements of that genre.” — Chicago Tribune
“Depicts war so powerfully that audiences are seen leaving in almost complete silence… The audience feels like it knows these men like sons or brothers.” — UPI
A woman tries to feed her husband a fried drumstick. Dragons roam a flat earth. The last black man in the whole entire world dies again. And again. Careening through memory and language, archetypes of Black America are explored and explode with piercing insight and raucous comedy. A riotous theatrical event that hums with the heartbeat of improvisational jazz.
This lyrical work follows a group of Irish Protestant volunteers from joining up until their slaughter on the fields of France during World War I. It opens in 1969 with the only survivor addressing a soliloquy to his long-dead comrades. The action jumps back to 1915, and the young men are seen as they meet, bond, and face their bloody fate. 8m | Full Length Play | Drama
6m, 5f | 90 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
No More Sad Things by Hansol Jung “A smart, poignant and often funny play that sets you up to watch a typically post-modern, woman-centered romantic comedy, only then to subvert and satirize many of the elements of that genre.” — Chicago Tribune A girl catches a last minute flight to Maui. A boy finds girl on the shores of Ka’anapali. Something strange and something familiar pulls them closer. They have sex on the beach. They are surprised. They spend the week together. But eventually girl catches the flight back home to Akron, Ohio. The girl is 32. The boy is 15.
Informed Consent by Deborah Zoe Laufer “The kind of work live theater needs more of — urgent, challenging and of the moment.” — The Cleveland Plain Dealer Inspired by a recent court case between a Native American tribe and an Arizona university, Informed Consent takes us into the personal and national debate about science versus belief, and whether our DNA is our destiny. With genomic breakthroughs happening at breakneck speed, we can learn more about what our futures may hold than ever before. But how much should we know? And who gets to decide? 2m, 3f | 90 minutes | Drama
2m, 1f | 75 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
The Realistic Joneses by Will Eno “Mr. Eno’s voice may be the most singular of his generation, but it’s humane, literate and slyly hilarious.” — The New York Times Bob and Jennifer, and their new neighbors, John and Pony, are two suburban couples who have even more in common than their identical homes and their shared last names. As their relationships begin to irrevocably intertwine, the Joneses must decide between their idyllic fantasies and their imperfect realities.
OOHRAH! by Bekah Brunstetter “The young scribe’s talent and potential are obvious in this Southern-basted dramatic comedy…” — Variety Ron is back from his final tour in Iraq, and his wife Sara is excited to restart their life together. When a young marine visits the family, life is turned upside down. A disarmingly funny and candid drama that raises challenging questions about what it means when the military is woven into the fabric of a family, and service is far more than just a job. 4m, 3f | 105 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
2m, 2f | 90 Minutes | Dramatic Comedy Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov a new version by Tracy Letts
based on dramaturgical translations by Charlotte Hobson and Dassia Posner
CRAIG LUCAS
“A speed and light, a sharpness and edgy heart that make it newly compelling.” — Chicago Sun-Times The Prozorov sisters pine for Moscow. Culture and life brim in the city center, while they live among the mundane of a crumbling army garrison after their father’s death. Though living with their brother Andrey, nothing keeps them back but their own misfortune, decisions, and the negativity that continues to follow this family. 9m, 5f | More than 120 minutes | Drama
Prayer For My Enemy
Two middle-class families in suburban New York State confront their private demons against the public backdrop of the American incursion into Iraq. As their paths cross in ways that are both comic and terrifying, lies and secrets are at last exposed, and an honest, hard-earned redemption is achieved for both. 3m, 3f | 105 Minutes | Drama
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by James Goss and Arvind Ethan David based on the novel by Douglas Adams
The Dying Gaul
A modern American tragedy about a grieving screenwriter who compromises his ideals to make a small fortune that enables him to climb from invisible poverty into the rarefied seductions and surreal beauty of the Hollywood Hills. Killingly funny and heart-stoppingly elegiac, this play is a thrilling dramatic experience. 3m, 1f | Full Length Play | Drama
Blue Window
Dirk Gently finds himself on the trail of a gruesome murderer who is somehow involved with the works of Coleridge, quantum physics, and the enigmatic study of the Cambridge Professor of Chronology. Ultimately, the stakes of the case are far greater than a single murder, but go to the fate of life on Earth. Confused? Don’t be — everything is connected.
Before, during, and after a Manhattan dinner party, the guests are revealed with touching comic irony as a cross-section of modern-day humanity. The colorful cast includes a narcissistic actor, a parachute instructor, an aspiring songwriter, a secretary, and a lesbian couple.
10m, 4f | Full Length Play | Comedy
3m, 4f | Full Length Play | Dramatic Comedy
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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Plays
“Deftly presents senility as an exaggerated state of the natural human condition…Deeply theatrical and often deeply funny.”
THE WAVERLY GALLERY by Kenneth Lonergan
— The New York Times
FINALIST! 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama Gladys, the elderly matriarch of the Green family, has run an art gallery in a small Greenwich Village hotel for many years. The management wants to replace her less-thanthriving gallery with a coffee shop. Always irascible but now increasingly erratic, Gladys is a cause of concern to her daughter, her son-inlaw, and her grandson, from whose point of view this poignant memory play is told. A wacky and heartrending look at the effect of senility on a family.
3m, 2f | More than 120 minutes | Comedy
Anne Cooper and Greg Hernandez in The Waverly Gallery, Lean Ensemble Theatre (French Guy Photography).
Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
THE WAVERLY GALLERY:
Kenneth Lonergan’s Most Personal Work by Nick Newell
K
enneth Lonergan has a Chekhovian knack for highlighting the beautiful humanity of his characters. He is perhaps better known for his plays Lobby Hero and This Is Our Youth, and his film You Can Count on Me, but The Waverly Gallery is his most personal work. As such, it fit in nicely to Lean Ensemble Theatre’s programming theme for its first full season: “A Season of Memories,” which also included The Glass Menagerie. Waverly Gallery revolves around a family’s experience as their matriarch slips further and further into dementia. Despite the gravity of the subject matter, the play is filled with comedy and delightful characters. It is no surprise to us that Mr. Lonergan is currently getting a lot of attention for his movie Manchester by the Sea, which he also directed. One of the biggest challenges of producing Waverly Gallery is casting (and playing) the role of Gladys. In addition to needing superb comic timing and an ability to show a woman’s mental deterioration in subtle and overt ways, the actor must be able to carry the play’s incredibly detailed language, which contains a marathon of disjointed sentences and repetition. It would be a challenge for any actor regardless of age, and is required of an actor who must reasonably play around seventy years old. I really do not think I am exaggerating when I describe the role in this
contemporary play as a female King Lear. We were very fortunate to have hired the amazing Anne Cooper, a veteran actress from Los Angeles, who brought such spontaneity, humor, and pathos to the role that our subscribers regularly write us to suggest her return to our stage.
I really do not think I am exaggerating when I describe the role in this contemporary play as a female King Lear. Lean Ensemble Theatre is very committed to community outreach, and we sought out a partnership with Memory Matters, a local nonprofit that serves patients with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, as well as their families. A representative from Memory Matters was present at every performance and attended the post-show talkbacks, which were perhaps the most meaningful post-show forums I have ever been a part of. The content of the talkbacks would flow from discussions about the production, to information about Alzheimer’s, to experiences volunteered by audience members of living with loved ones suffering from the disease. Many audience members remarked upon how accurately the situations presented in Waverly Gallery reflected their own
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journeys with the disease, and the Memory Matters representatives often used these events from the play as teachable moments to instruct family members on what courses of action are most beneficial for both the patient and the caretaker. The response from our audience was tremendous. The population of Hilton Head connected to the play in a way that we never could have imagined. Suddenly our fledgling theatre company had the mayor calling us for tickets. When the local paper reviewed our show and praised aspects of the production but questioned the wisdom of choosing a play with such depressing subject matter, a spontaneous letter-writing campaign by audience members who had seen the show testified to the universality of the experiences presented in Waverly Gallery, and the benefit of having those issues represented in dramatic art. The reviewer eventually published an apology for her remarks. We were humbled by the fact that our new audience felt so protective of the piece that they were compelled to defend its integrity in print. We prefer an energized and enthusiastic audience to a fourstar review any day, and Waverly Gallery helped our company find one that continues to support us.
This article originally appeared on Breaking Character Magazine in February, 2017.
Marjorie Prime by Jordan Harrison
August Wilson’s Jitney
“Jordan Harrison’s elegant drama keeps developing in your head, like a photographic negative, long after you have seen it.” — The New York Times
“A transport of delight! So vividly written …it keeps you steadily amused, concerned and moved.” — New York Magazine
85-year-old Marjorie — a jumble of disparate, fading memories — has a handsome new companion who’s programmed to feed the story of her life back to her. What would we remember, and what would we forget, if given the chance? A spare and wondrous exploration of the mysteries of human identity and the limits of what technology can replace.
Set in the early 1970s, this richly textured piece follows a group of men trying to eke out a living by driving unlicensed cabs, or jitneys. When the city threatens to board up the business and the boss’ son returns from prison, tempers flare, potent secrets are revealed and the fragile threads binding these people together may come undone at last.
2m, 2f | 90 minutes | Drama
8m, 1f | More than 120 minutes | Drama
Evelyn in Purgatory by Topher Payne
The Albatross 3rd & Main by Simon David Eden
“The Breakfast Club for teachers…an uncommonly smart and restrained commentary on the public education system.” — Atlanta Journal-Constitution A claim of improper behavior by a failing student lands Evelyn Reid in “the rubber room,” where she encounters a group of other New York City teachers, some guilty, some not, who have long since lost any hope of returning to a classroom. Over a year, these colleagues form an unlikely alliance, reminding each other of forgotten passions, and emerging to face life outside in unexpected ways. 2m, 5f | Full Length Play | Dark Comedy
“An excellent comedy that is rich, dark, well designed and acted…loaded with wit, wisdom and the courage to examine some important themes.” — Fringe Review Gene Lacy, a former lobster boat fisherman and proprietor of Lacy’s General Store, is down on his luck big time: he’s ducking creditors, huge gambling debts, and an ex-wife with very expensive tastes. So when Spider walks into his store with a golden lottery ticket in the shape of a rare and valuable dead bird, Gene has a choice to make. 3m | 90 minutes | Dark Comedy
Six Rounds of Vengeance
by Qui Nguyen
“Overflowing with awesome stage combat and imaginative writing, this show packs a huge theatrical punch in just under 90 minutes.” — TheaterMania In a post-apocalyptic “Lost Vegas,” a young gunslinger named Jess December enlists the help of a mysterious samurai cowboy to help avenge the murder of her sister. However, the gang they’ll be going against has powers that go way beyond just gunpowder and steel. To get revenge, they may have to become just as bloodthirsty as the monsters they’re facing. 3m, 2f, Flexible Casting| 90 minutes | Dark Comedy
Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties by Jen Silverman “…a perfect balance between the really absurd and the absurdly real.” — Broadway World Betty is rich, Betty is lonely, Betty’s working on her truck, Betty wants to talk about love, Betty needs to hit something. And Betty keeps using a small hand mirror to stare into parts of herself she’s never examined. Five different women named Betty collide at the intersection of anger, sex, and the “thea-tah.” 5f | 105 minutes | Dark Comedy
Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
TINA HOWE Chasing Manet
A rebellious painter from a distinguished Boston family and an ebullient Jewish woman with a huge adoring family form an unlikely bond. Inside the confining walls of Mount Airy Nursing Home, the two plot an escape to Paris aboard the QE2. Can they pull it off amidst the chaos of their surroundings? 3m, 4f | 105 minutes | Comedy
Coastal Disturbances
This charming ensemble play follows four generations of vacationers on a Massachusetts beach, focusing on a romance between a lifeguard and a kooky young photographer. 3m, 4f | Full Length Play | Comedy
One Shoe Off
Leonard is an actor who hasn’t worked in 11 years, Dinah is an overworked costume designer who can’t dress herself for dinner. When an old friend drops in for dinner, memories stir and passions kindle as vegetables and Dinah’s costumes fly. In Howe’s signature style, this story of marriage and adulterous longing becomes a comedy of existential proportions. 3m, 2f | 105 minutes | Comedy
Painting Churches
Up-and-coming artist Mags, returns to her elderly parents’ home in Boston to paint their portrait, and to help them close the house and pack for a move to Cape Cod. Over the course of several days, Mags sees her role in the parent-child relationship changing. In painting them, Mags hopes to come to terms with them and they with her. 1m, 2f | Full Length Play | Comedy
Pride’s Crossing
At 90, Mabel Tidings Bigelow insists on celebrating her daughter and granddaughter’s annual visit with an archaic croquet party. As it unfolds, she relives vignettes from the last 80 years that subtly weave past and present to reveal the precise moments of opportunity lost and love rejected that define her life. 4m, 2f | Full Length Play | Drama
See all of Tina Howe’s titles at samuelfrench.com. Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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For over 40 years, the Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival has highlighted the best in shortform playwriting from emerging writers. From an initial pool of thousands of submissions, 30 short plays are chosen to be performed during the week-long festival in New York City. Six plays are then selected by Samuel French to receive publication and licensing representation.
Off Off Broadway Festival Plays #40 (2015) Evelyn Shaffer and the Chance of a Lifetime by Greg Edwards and Andy Roninson
Evelyn Shaffer, an indie game designer, has landed an interview for her dream job. A 10-minute musical infused with a 32-bit score. Sometimes, the greatest quests aren’t in video games, but our own lives. 2m, 1f | Musical Comedy
Throws of Love by Amy Staats
Three 13-year-old girls on a late night adventure have an unexpected run-in with their former Girl Scout leader. 1f, 3g | Comedy
Narrators
The Gulf
Bill is a narrator. Walter is a narrator, too. Stephen is a stagehand for narrators. Being a narrator is the best job in the world. But as these narrators’ myopic world begins to fold in on itself, and all they talk about is talking (and talking about talking), it becomes increasingly unclear which stories are worth telling — or worth living. 4m or f | Comedy
On a quiet summer evening, somewhere down in the Alabama Delta, Kendra and Betty troll the flats looking for red fish. After Betty begins diagnosing Kendra’s deadend life with career picks from What Color is Your Parachute, their routine fishing excursion takes a violent turn. 2f | Drama
by Simon Henriques
by Audrey Cefaly
Seabird is in a Happy Place
Blind
The fast-paced, energetic testimony of Seabird, a young woman who purports to have died and come back to life under the condition that she die once again as soon as the rain stops. Her resurrection coincides with a sudden romance that complicates her inevitable return to the state of being dead. 1f | Drama
While a man waits for his blind date to show, a female stranger catches his eye and ends up being exactly who he was looking for. 1m, 1f | Comedy
by James Gordon King
Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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by Gloria Calderon Kellett
Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
The Samuel French Off Off Broadway
SHORT PLAY FESTIVAL Plays from the Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival may be licensed individually or in combinations of titles. These plays represent the best of our festival and are perfect for competitions, play festivals, and evenings of short plays. For more information about the festival, visit oobfestival.com.
Off Off Broadway Festival Plays #41 (2016) Risen from the Dough
clarity
In a small, rustic Brooklyn bakery previously hit with several code violations, two sisters prepare for their next health inspection. As the two sisters bake and bicker, they eventually come to terms with grief, identity, and the complicated realities of immigrant life. 2f | Drama
Cameron enjoys rough sex. Which is fine. However, in the final moments leading up to his wedding, one particular sexual encounter with his fiancé demands he question his marriage, racial identity, and sexual preferences altogether. 1m | Drama
After a hate crime shocks their community, newly-instated Rabbi Gold tries to help Grandpa widen his world view. This ain’t gonna be easy. 2m | Comedy
Wedding Bash
The Cleaners
Monsoon Season
Lower East Side. Right now. It’s Rita and Jerry’s job to clean up the stuff no one else will: death. 1m, 1f | Comedy
It’s monsoon season in Phoenix, and Danny hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks. Between his recent divorce, his mind-numbing job in technical support, and the neon sign from the strip club that glows through his window all night, his grasp of reality is slipping. 1m | Drama
by France-Luce Benson
by Lindsey Kraft and Andrew Leeds
When a newly-married couple invites their two friends over for a post-wedding rehash, things get tense when it becomes clear that some people didn’t love the wedding as much as they said they did. 2m, 2f | Comedy
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
by Korde Arrington Tuttle
by Lindsay Joy
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Grandpa and the Gay Rabbi
by Jonathan Josephson
by Lizzie Vieh
Midori Francis and the cast of The Wolves at The Playwrights Realm (Daniel J. Vasquez).
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
THE WOLVES by Sarah DeLappe
“A delightful meditation on society, sex, and soccer…DeLappe’s dialogue is hilarious and idiosyncratic, moving swiftly from gross-out humor to pain…She offers us ninety minutes in a smart, sympathetic, female world. It’s a patch of Astroturf I would gladly set foot on again.” — The Village Voice
FINALIST! 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama Left quad. Right quad. Lunge. A girls indoor soccer team warms up. From the safety of their suburban stretch circle, the team navigates big questions and wages tiny battles with all the vim and vigor of a pack of adolescent warriors. A portrait of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for nine American girls who just want to score some goals.
10f | 90 minutes | Dramatic Comedy
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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MUSICALS
Andrew Keenan-Bolger and the original cast of Tuck Everlasting on Broadway (Joan Marcus).
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
TUCK EVERLASTING book by Claudia Shear and Tim Federle music by Chris Miller lyrics by Nathan Tysen based on the book by Natalie Babbitt
“A warm-spirited and piercingly touching musical!”
— The New York Times
11-year-old Winnie Foster yearns for a life of adventure beyond her white picket fence, but when she becomes unexpectedly entwined with the Tuck Family, she finds more than she could have imagined. When Winnie learns of the magic behind the Tucks’ unending youth, she must fight to protect their secret from those who would do anything for a chance at eternal life. As her adventure unfolds, Winnie faces an extraordinary choice: return to her life or continue with the Tucks on their infinite journey. A magical, thoughtprovoking musical adapted from Natalie Babbitt’s best-selling children’s classic by Claudia Shear and Tim Federle and featuring a soaring score from Chris Miller and Nathan Tysen.
6m, 3f, 1g, Ensemble 120 minutes | Comedy Medium Orchestra | Moderate Vocals Folk, Contemporary Broadway
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Girlfriend book by Todd Almond music & lyrics by Matthew Sweet “Those who can enter the rhythm of the musical may find themselves returning to some epic emotions from their youth.” — Los Angeles Times Nebraska in the 90s. Will, a bit of a social outcast, and Mike, a popular football player, figure out there’s more to life than what high school has taught them. Days after graduation, they explore their relationship and begin to ask themselves where their lives begin. Based on the album by Matthew Sweet, this pop/rock musical is for anyone who’s lived in a small town and feels for their first love. 2m | 90 minutes | Dramatic Comedy Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Pop/Rock
Chess
music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus lyrics by Tim Rice based on an idea by Tim Rice book by Richard Nelson “One of the best rock scores ever produced. This is an angry, difficult, demanding and rewarding show.” — Time The pawns in this drama form a love triangle: the loutish American chess star, the earnest Russian champion and a Hungarian American female assistant who arrives at the international chess match with the American but falls for the Russian. From Bangkok to Budapest, the players, lovers, politicians, and spies manipulate and are manipulated to the pulse of a monumental rock score. The game becomes a metaphor for romantic rivalries, competitive gamesmanship, super power politics and international intrigues. 9m, 2f, 1b or 1g | More than 120 minutes | Drama Large Orchestra | Difficult Vocals | Pop/Rock, Classic Broadway
La Cage Aux Folles
music & lyrics by Jerry Herman book by Harvey Fierstein based on the play by Jean Poiret “Jerry Herman’s best musical yet…happier, more assertive, more buoyant than Hello Dolly! or Mame.” — New York Post Georges and Albin, two men partnered for better-orworse, get a bit of both when Georges’ son announces his impending marriage to the daughter of a bigoted, rightwing politician. Further complicating the situation is the family business: Albin and Georges run a drag nightclub in St. Tropez, where Albin is the star performer, Zaza. Georges reluctantly agrees to masquerade as “normal” when he meets the family of the bride-to-be. But Albin has other plans, with hilarious results. 7m, 3f, Flexible Casting | 120 minutes | Comedy Large Orchestra | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway
Judge Jackie:
Disorder in the Court book & lyrics by Christopher Dimond music by Michael Kooman based on a concept by Van Kaplan “This jury of one finds in favor of the creators and cast for inciting lighthearted laughter.” — Pittsburgh Tribune Review Judge Jackie Justice rules her reality television courtroom with an iron fist, presiding over a three-ring circus of America’s most chaotic civil cases. But, when a drop in ratings brings her face-to-face with the liability of her own love life, the judge must learn to navigate the ludicrous laws of love in this over-the-top courtroom comedy. 3m, 2f, Flexible Casting | 120 minutes | Comedy Small/Combo Band | Classic Broadway, Pop/Rock
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
JASPER IN DEADLAND book by Hunter Foster book, music, & lyrics by Ryan Scott Oliver
“Foster and Oliver unleash their cleverness in this playful, energetic and wide-ranging new musical.” — The New York Times When you’re failing classes, kicked off the swim team, and your family is on the skids, life can feel like it’s going to hell. Yet, in all the disappointment, Jasper has his best friend, Agnes. In one night of teenage passion, Jasper and Agnes consummate a yearslong friendship. But in the morning Agnes is gone, telling Jasper to meet her at their cliff. When he arrives there’s no sign of his best friend, only a swirling vortex to another world in the water below. Jasper dives into Deadland. 5m, 4f, Flexible Casting | More than 120 minutes | Dark Comedy | Medium Orchestra | Difficult Vocals | Pop/Rock Matt Doyle and the cast of Jasper in Deadland at 5th Avenue Theatre, Seattle, WA (Matthew Murphy).
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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Fly By Night
conceived by Kim Rosenstock written by Will Connolly, Michael Mitnick, and Kim Rosenstock “Its unabashed emotionalism could turn it into more than a hit. It could turn it into a cult phenomenon.” — New York Post A star-crossed prophecy. A lot of music. Just not a lot of light. In this darkly comic rock-fable, a melancholy sandwich maker’s humdrum life is intersected by two entrancing sisters. A sweeping ode to young love set against the backdrop of the northeast blackout of 1965. A tale about making your way and discovering hope in a world beset by darkness. 5m, 2f | More than 120 minutes | Dark Comedy Small Orchestra | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway, Pop/Rock
A… My Name Will Always Be Alice conceived by Julianne Boyd and Joan Micklin Silver
“Retains the energy and desire to entertain that marked the first as a breakthrough.” — New York Newsday A combination of the 1984 award-winning Off Broadway musical revue A… My Name Is Alice and its 1992 sequel A… My Name is Still Alice. The songs and sketches are among the most beloved from each revue and are designed to be performed on a bare stage with set pieces. The music ranges from gospel to country western to rock to some glorious pop ballads. 5f | Musical Revue/Cabaret Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway
Kiss of the Spider Woman
book by Terrence McNally music by John Kander lyrics by Fred Ebb based on the novel by Manuel Puig originally directed by Harold Prince WINNER! 1993 Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Original Score Cellmates in a Latin American prison, Valentin is a tough revolutionary undergoing torture, and Molina is an unabashed homosexual serving eight years for deviant behavior. Escaping from the reality of prison life, Molina shares with Valentin fantasies about an actress, Aurora. He loves her in all roles, but one scares him: the Spider Woman who kills with a kiss. 15m, 3f | More than 120 minutes | Drama Large Orchestra | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway
Whenever
book by Alan Ayckbourn music by Denis King “Something to savor. A historical-futuristicfarcical-grown-up-romantic musical adventure.” — The Guardian Beginning in 1886, this historical-futuristic musical finds Emily’s good Uncle Martin inventing a time-machine that wicked Uncle Lucas wants to get his hands on. So Emily must journey to the end of time to ensure evil does not prevail. Emily picks up three traveling companions from various eras (1940, 2010) along the way — a chipper Cockney, a sensitive android, and a friendly Yeti. 5m, 4f, Flexible Casting | Full Length Musical | Comedy Piano Only | Easy Vocals | Classic Broadway
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
Return to the Forbidden Planet
Side Show
book & lyrics by Bill Russell music by Henry Krieger additional book material by Bill Condon
by Bob Carlton
WINNER! 1989 Olivier Award, Best Musical
Blast off on a routine flight and crash into the planet D’Illyria where a sci-fi version of The Tempest set to rock ’n’ roll golden oldies unfolds with glee. The planet is inhabited by a sinister scientist, Dr. Prospero; his delightful daughter Miranda; Ariel, a faithful robot on roller skates; and an uncontrollable monster whose tentacles penetrate the space craft. This juke box musical is packed with classics such as “Heard it Through the Grapevine,” “Young Girl,” “Good Vibrations,” and “Gloria.”
“…the musical burrows deep into your spirit… It’s just wonderful!” — The New York Times Based on the true story of conjoined twins Violet and Daisy Hilton, who became stars during the Depression. A moving portrait of two women joined at the hip whose extraordinary bondage brings them fame but denies them love. Told almost entirely through song, the show follows their progression from England to America, from the vaudeville circuit to Hollywood. With a new book and songs, the 2014 revival delves deeper into their backstory, fleshing out characters and situations and offering more sophistication and truth to the story.
7m, 4f, Flexible Casting | Full Length Musical | Comedy/Sci-Fi Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Pop/Rock
Nymph Errant
14m, 7f, Flexible Casting | More than 120 minutes | Drama, Biography Large Orchestra | Difficult Vocals | Classic Broadway, Pop/Rock
book by Steve Mackes and Michael Whaley music & lyrics by Cole Porter based on the novel by James Laver
Dames at Sea
“The new script is full of delightful jokes [but] what makes the evening are Porter’s jaunty and brilliantly witty songs…A handful of hauntingly beautiful numbers can stand with Porter’s finest love songs.” — Daily Telegraph Cole Porter’s famous “lost musical” follows innocent Evangeline Edwards as she bids farewell to a Swiss finishing school and sets off across Europe, looking for love and adventure. She gets into one scrape after another and is “rescued” by a series of unsuitable men: a French producer, Russian musician, Austrian nudist, Italian count, Greek magnate, Turkish Pasha, and a eunuch. 1m, 6f, Flexible Casting | Full Length Musical | Comedy Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
book & lyrics by George Haimsohn and Robin Miller music by Jim Wise “A winner! A gem of a musical!” — The New York Times It’s big-time New York City, into which sweet little Ruby from faraway Hometown, USA has come to make it big on Broadway. Who should she chance to meet but another boy from Hometown, USA, Dick, a sailor who also has ambitions as a songwriter. Ruby begins in the chorus, and by the end of the day, in true Hollywood fashion, Dick saves her doomed Broadway show with a smash tune, as Ruby becomes a star on the deck of a battleship which just happens to be passing by. 4m, 3f | Full Length Musical | Comedy Medium Orchestra | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway
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Musicals
Hands On A Hardbody Ruthless! book by Doug Wright lyrics by Amanda Green music by Trey Anastasio and Amanda Green
“You can hear the sound of America singing in this daring new musical!” — The New York Times For 10 hard-luck Texans, a new lease on life is so close they can touch it. Under a scorching sun for days on end, armed with nothing but hope, humor, and ambition, they’ll fight to keep at least one hand on a brand-new truck in order to win it. In the hilarious, hard-fought contest only one winner can drive away with the American Dream. Inspired by the true events of the acclaimed 1997 documentary of the same name by S.R. Bindler, produced by Kevin Morris and Bindler. 9m, 6f | 120 minutes | Dramatic Comedy Medium Orchestra | Moderate Vocals | Pop/Rock, Country
Raisin
based on Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun book by Robert Nemiroff and Charlotte Zaltzberg music by Judd Woldin lyrics by Robert Brittan WINNER! 1974 Tony Award for Best Musical Lorraine Hansberry’s classic is transformed into a soulful, inspiring musical as a proud African American family’s quest for a better life explodes in song, dance, and incisive human drama. 9m, 6f, Flexible Casting | 120 minutes | Drama Large Orchestra | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway
Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
book & lyrics by Joel Paley music by Marvin Laird “A spoof that has enough absurd plot twists and multiple identities to fill several old movies…The fun comes from the sheer brazenness!” — The New York Times Eight-year-old Tina Denmark knows she was born to play Pippi Longstocking, and she will do anything to win the part in her school musical. Anything includes murdering the leading lady! 1m, 6f | Full Length Musical | Comedy/Farce Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway
Adding Machine: A Musical
composed by Joshua Schmidt libretto by Jason Loewith and Joshua Schmidt based on the play by Elmer Rice “A brilliant musical! A superb libretto by Loewith and Schmidt and music that gets under your skin and stays there.” — The New York Times A darkly comic and heartbreakingly beautiful musical adaptation of Rice’s incendiary 1923 play. Mr. Zero, after 25 years of service to his company, is replaced by a mechanical adding machine. Enraged, he murders his boss. An eclectic score gives memorable voice to this stylish and stylized show, following Zero’s journey to the afterlife, where he is met with one last chance for romance and redemption. 5m, 4f, Flexible Casting | 105 minutes | Drama Small/Combo Band | Difficult Vocals | Operetta
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
Richard O’Brien’s
THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW
“A musical that deals with mutating identity and time warps becomes one of the most mutated, time-warped phenomena in show business.”
— The New York Times
An over-the-top tribute to science fiction and B movies, this cult classic tells the story of a newly engaged couple getting caught in a storm and coming to the home of a mad transvestite scientist unveiling his new creation: an artificially made, fully grown, physically perfect muscle man named Rocky Horror. Complete with sass from the audience, cascading toilet paper, and an array of other audience participation props, this deliberately kitschy rock ’n’ roll gothic musical is more fun than ever. 7m, 3f, Flexible Casting | 90 minutes | Dark Comedy | Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Pop/Rock Dan Domenech in The Rocky Horror Show, Dallas Theater Center (Karen Almond). Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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HEATHERS THE MUSICAL
book, music & lyrics by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe based on the film written by Daniel Waters
“Ingenious, naughty and very funny. Heathers still cliques.” — New York Post Are you in, or are you out? Veronica Sawyer, a brainy, beautiful teenage misfit hustles her way into the most powerful and ruthless clique at Westerberg High: The Heathers. Before she can get too comfortable atop the high school food chain, Veronica falls in love with the dangerously sexy new kid, J.D. When Heather Chandler, the Almighty, kicks her out of the group, Veronica decides to bite the bullet and kiss Heather’s aerobicized ass…but J.D. has another plan for that bullet. 8m, 9f, Flexible Casting | 120 minutes | Dark Comedy | Medium Orchestra | Difficult Vocals | Pop/Rock
Ryan McCartan and Barrett Wilbert Weed in Heathers The Musical at New World Stages (Chad Batka).
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
WHY PRODUCE HEATHERS
or We Gotta Do Something to Stop Bad Behavior and Violence Everywhere by Jeremy Quinn
A
s a member of the high school class of 1987, you would think by now that I’d be over the days of teen angst. Remarkably, I’m not in many ways, which I will explain later. But at that time, my angst was different than what we know it to be today…well, in some ways. Sure, there were some bullying issues, issues with self-identity, body image, jock envy (because I was an artsy-fartsy kid), and the general hormonal imbalance that sets us all on our ear for about four to five years or so. For some, maybe more and others less. But my teen angst centered around having a voice, being heard, making a difference, standing out in a crowd any way I knew how, and as an only child, most often being the center of attention. SO OF COURSE I JOINED THE DRAMA CLUB! Having now made theatre my career/life choice, I don’t know whether to thank my
parents for allowing me to discover such an amazingly rewarding profession or blame them for letting me follow my financially unstable passion. At the end of the day, being in theatre did what it needed to do, especially during that awkward yet hopeful era we fondly remember as the 80s. I had purpose, I was accepted for who I was and what I was becoming, and people listened to what I had to say — even the jocks and the brainiacs. I learned about collaboration, leadership, friendly and not-so-friendly competition, public speaking, hard work, and getting results because of the hard work. I learned what it meant to step outside myself and walk in someone else’s shoes. I learned that no matter what happened on stage, I was part of something bigger than myself. Everyone involved knew it and felt the same. We astonished ourselves and others with what we could
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accomplish. It was a natural high that brought many, many people together — no drugs or alcohol needed. For a short while, every fall and spring, I belonged. And that’s how I got through high school. The drama club saved my life. Becoming addicted to doing theatre, I was sheltered from all the bad stuff I could have gotten into. “Play practice” was my modus operandi, and I loved every second of it. When we were in rehearsal, I couldn’t WAIT to get out of school and do what made me feel the most ALIVE (even if it meant that my mother spent hours in the parking lot reading while she waited for me to be done). You’re probably nodding your head in complete agreement and hopefully laughing a bit or smiling because of your own memories. But the power of theatre is not what this article is ultimately
about, even though theatre should be required curriculum in every single high school that exists because of the positive effect it has on young people; not to mention how it should be prioritized on an equal playing field with all sports and academic programs. I digress. What this piece is about is the importance of producing a show like Heathers. So fast forward to the Internet, email, texting and social media — a whole new way for kids (and adults for that matter) to get in trouble, but on an overwhelmingly easy and public level. We live in a time where reality television is usually scripted; people are so obsessed with themselves that even Narcissus would stop and take note; kids think nothing of bringing deadly weapons to school along with their homework; the lack of respect for fellow human beings is clearly evidenced by the way people speak, tweet or post about each other, not to mention the way they drive; consideration and politeness are things of the past; we’ve lost faith in our justice system; and no one knows what the word “integrity” really means. What’s most infuriating is that people don’t think before they speak, and worse, don’t care what the repercussions may be for what they say. Bad behavior is as addictive as heroin and the media feeds it to us non-stop because supposedly we can’t get enough. So much so, that our society will even elevate and applaud a U.S. presidential candidate notorious for poor behavior, disgusting rhetoric, and many, many bad choices. I’m surprised we haven’t blown ourselves up yet. But clearly, we’re on the path to do so…just turn on the news. And the youth in our society have access to all this information via every possible medium. After all,
it’s a veritable “current events” buffet that apparently we can’t stop watching. Couple that with bad parenting and a failing educational system and here we are — a society in big, big trouble.
[Heathers is] an important part of our new musical theatre canon, in my opinion, but maybe not for the reasons you’d expect. — What makes it work is its audacious sincerity presented subtly within an infrastructure of outlandish, hysterical circumstances. Enter Heathers: The Musical, which is actually an important part of our new musical theatre canon, in my opinion, but maybe not for the reasons you’d expect. You might think me mad, and purists are rolling their eyes while Richard Rodgers rolls in his grave. But hear me out. The show is similar to a bawdy Molière farce for present day audiences, poking fun at how ridiculous a society we’ve become on both sides of the slamming doors. Not that it should be played that way, nor lean toward camp by any stretch of the imagination. What makes it work is its audacious sincerity presented subtly within an infrastructure of outlandish, hysterical circumstances. It’s the type of comedy that if not played honestly with tongue firmly planted in cheek, it doesn’t work at all, hits way too close to home and becomes a Greek tragedy of present day horrors with no appeal whatsoever. We’ve already got plenty of that.
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So here are some reasons why I think Heathers wins. Firstly, the relatable characters. We’ve all known a “Heather” at some point in our lives. We’ve all known “Kurts,” “Rams,” “Marthas,” and that estranged but oddly sexy “J.D.” type that everyone was just a little bit scared of for one reason or another. Perhaps some of us were a “Veronica” waiting to bloom out of our misfit existence. Even the adults in this piece are trueto-form stereotypes. But they’re built as a stereotype because why? Because if these people didn’t really exist, there would be no stereotype. I know how un-PC that is, but dial it down a second and remember that this is musical theatre! The characters have to be relatable in order for the piece to achieve what it sets out to say. Secondly, it’s so perverse and raunchy but yet so delectable and touching at the same time, that we happily applaud its well-intentioned achievements, screaming “YASSS! Give me more truth!” And while we’re at it, let’s hear it for a well-written, intelligent, strong female lead character who doesn’t take sh*t from anybody and exudes an authenticity we appreciate and root for every step of the way. Sure, she falters a bit along her journey (and who hasn’t?) while making some co-dependent choices that clearly don’t serve her well, but it helps add a much appreciated complexity to the storyline. She “fails” so we can learn. Thirdly, there are lessons on how to treat people better everywhere. Because the show satirizes the characters and events in such an incredulous “I can’t believe they actually did/sung that on stage” manner, it’s like a Family Guy episode on crack, and we can’t stop watching the “in your face” shenanigans because it still has something honorable to say. Its
no-holds-barred attack forces us to look at what it’s really like being a teenager during a time that’s supposed to be the best years of adolescence and what those poor kids have to deal with on a daily basis. It’s no joke, and they need all the help they can get to make it out alive. Each and every one of them. Of course my answer is always going to be, “Go join the Drama Club!” as unrealistic as that may be. But Heathers is such a magnificent example of what not to do that it should be required producing in every single high school across the country. It’s certainly more entertaining than any anti-bullying presentation I can think of and exceedingly better written with its intelligent, provocative humor and cadre of one-liners. Thankfully, this show has such major widespread appeal and a cult-like following among today’s musical theatre geeks, that a High School Edition was recently created, and Hallelujah! because the more young people who experience the powerful lesson of “bad behavior gets you nowhere” the better. Maybe we can get out of this pickle. Make no mistake, Heathers is deliciously seductive because it presents characters who appear to “win” because of their bad behavior, but look deeper and realize they really don’t. Thankfully the writers succeeded in taking out a lot of the glamour that usually goes with the depiction of despicable characters and chose to elevate the positive choices of our heroine as the piece resolves. And if you look even deeper still, you come to realize that every character has an underlying positive aspect to them, from the seemingly homophobic dads to the most psychopathic of the bunch, J.D. His devotion to Veronica is real, very real,
and on some level a wonderful achievement for someone who has lacked strong parental support and affection.
Heathers is deliciously seductive because it presents characters who appear to “win” because of their bad behavior, but look deeper and realize they really don’t. — If you look even deeper still, you come to realize that every character has an underlying positive aspect to them
repeats itself over and over again, and has, since the dawn of time. Heathers lets us take a small breath for a moment and laugh at how ridiculous this concept really is, while acknowledging that it can totally be rectified just by getting to know someone and finding a way to love and accept them for who they are. How can you dislike someone without getting to know them?
So, for some odd reason, I gravitate toward directing angsty teen musicals because I still haven’t finished saying what I need to say in that arena. And thankfully, many of those shows address the issues I feel most passionately about. Hence not being over my teen angst. But moreover, I still want to make a difference, especially with the next generation, because I believe they’re worth it and like many true educators out there, I too believe that the best education possible is the key to solving many of our society’s issues. At least it’s a good start and worth the investment. I dream of the day when bullying and school violence is just a memory of a time when our ignorant society just didn’t know any better and couldn’t help themselves from searching out and destroying others who were different on any level. Unfortunately, we kill what we don’t take time to understand. And sadly, it’s a human trait that
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Photo Page 73: The Heathers pose during a rehearsal of Heathers The Musical at White Plains Performing Arts Center (Stephen Ferri).
This article originally appeared on Breaking Character Magazine in October, 2016.
Adrift in Macao
book & lyrics by Christopher Durang music by Peter Melnick “A drop-dead funny book…shamefully silly lyrics…and lethally catchy music.” — Broadway World Everyone that comes to Macao is waiting for something, though none of them know exactly what that is. There’s Laureena, the curvaceous blonde; Rick Shaw, the cynical surf and turf casino owner; and don’t forget about Mitch, the American who has just been framed for murder by the mysterious villain McGuffin. With songs and quips, puns and farcical shenanigans, this musical parody of noir films will please audiences of all ages. 4m, 3f | 100 minutes | Comedy/Parody Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway
The Wildest!!! Hip, Cool and Swinging!
conceived & written by Randy Johnson, Thomas Porras, Luanne Prima, and Toni Elisabeth Prime “A wonderful reminder of an amazing era, The Wildest!!! is smart and fast-paced.” — The Desert Sun The Wildest!!! arrives at a moment when Louis Prima, Keely Smith, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and other Las Vegas icons are being idolized as musical heroes. It captures a unique era — the nightclub years of the late 50s and early 60s — and is a journey to the past that is sure to either evoke cherished memories, or lead some to new discoveries! 4m, 4f | Full Length Musical | Dramatic Comedy Small/Combo Band | Pop/Rock, Jazz
35mm:
A Musical Exhibition music & lyrics by Ryan Scott Oliver based on photographs by Matthew Murphy “When theater pundits talk about the future of Broadway and the new generation of composers, they’re talking about artists like Ryan Scott Oliver … a major new voice in musical theater.” — Entertainment Weekly A picture is worth 1,000 words — what about a song? Can a picture inspire a song or 15? In 35mm, each photo creates a unique song, moments frozen in time; a glimmer of a life unfolding, a glimpse of something happening. A stunning new multimedia musical that re-imagines what the modern American musical can be. 3m, 2f, Flexible Casting | 90 minutes | Song Cycle Small/Combo Band or Medium Orchestra | Difficult Vocals Classic Broadway, Pop/Rock, Country
The Wiz
adapted from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum book by William F. Brown music & lyrics by Charlie Smalls “Radiates so much energy you can hardly sit in your seat…great fun.” — New York Post A beloved Broadway gem, The Wiz infuses L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with a dazzling mix of rock, gospel, and soul music. This timeless tale of Dorothy’s adventures through the Land of Oz is a fun, family-friendly, modern musical and one of the most popular shows in the Samuel French catalog. A magical, high-energy show, appropriate for theaters at all levels. 6m, 5f, 4m or f, Flexible Casting | Full Length Musical | Comedy Large Orchestra | Moderate Vocals | Pop/Rock, Jazz
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
CHICAGO
book by Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb music by John Kander lyrics by Fred Ebb script adaptation by David Thompson
“One of the few musicals that provide[s] the viewer with something to think about the next day.” — The New York Times
“Fosse’s best work, uncompromising and with real strength showing in every idea and image.” — Newsweek In Roaring Twenties Chicago, chorine Roxie Hart murders a faithless lover and convinces her hapless husband, Amos, to take the rap — until he finds out he’s been duped and turns on Roxie. Convicted and sent to death row, Roxie and another “Merry Murderess,” Velma Kelly, vie for the spotlight and the headlines, ultimately joining forces in search of the “American Dream”: fame, fortune, and acquittal.
9m, 10f, Flexible Casting 120 minutes | Comedy Large Orchestra | Moderate Vocals Classic Broadway, Jazz
Chicago, North Shore Music Theatre (Paul Lyden).
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
WILLIAM FINN A Tony Award-winning composer and lyricist, William Finn creates touching, compelling work that draws from his own life experiences. His musicals explore the gay and Jewish experiences in modern America, and issues of family, belonging, sickness, healing, and loss. From the groundbreaking Falsettos musicals to the quasi-autobiographical A New Brain, Finn’s work is a dynamic part of contemporary musical theatre.
Falsettos
A seamless pairing of March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, acclaimed Off Broadway musicals written nearly a decade apart, Falsettos won 1992 Tony Awards for Best Book and Musical Score. It is the tale of Marvin, who leaves his wife and young son to live with another man. His ex-wife marries his psychiatrist, and Marvin ends up alone. Two years later, Marvin is reunited with his lover on the eve of his son’s bar mitzvah, just as AIDS is beginning its insidious spread. Also available to license: March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland. 3m, 3f, 1b | 120 minutes | Dramatic Comedy | Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Contemporary Broadway
In Trousers
The Marvin musical that precedes March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland. It centers on the women in Marvin’s life — his wife, his teacher, and his high school honey — and on his attempts to decide if he is hetero, homo, or bi. Eventually, of course, Marvin does leave the rather shrewish and demanding woman in his life to find happiness with dear, delightful “Whizzer” Brown. 1m, 3f | Full Length Musical | Drama | Small/Combo Band | Difficult Vocals | Classic Broadway
Elegies: A Song Cycle
An intimate and moving remembrance of departed friends that pays tribute to a disparate group that includes impresario Joe Papp, actors Peggy Hewitt and Jack Eric Williams, a teacher, the Korean family who ran a deli frequented by Finn, relatives in New Jersey, friends, long-lost pets, and, in a moving sequence, Finn’s mother. A three-song conclusion offers a tribute to the victims of 9/11. Each number captures poignant, often funny glimpses of life and death that sparkle with the narrative sophistication always apparent in Finn’s work. 3m, 2f | 90 minutes | Musical Revue, Cabaret | Piano Only | Moderate Vocals | Contemporary Broadway
A New Brain
An energetic, sardonic, often comical musical about a composer during a medical emergency. Gordon collapses into his lunch and awakes in the hospital surrounded by his maritime-enthusiast lover, his mother, a co-worker, the doctor and nurses. Reluctantly, he had been composing a song for a children’s television show that features a frog — Mr. Bungee — and the spectre of this large, green character, and the unfinished work haunts him throughout his medical ordeal. What was thought to be a tumor turns out to be something more operable, and Gordon recovers, grateful for a chance to compose the songs he yearns to produce. 6m, 4f | 105 minutes | Drama | Small/Combo Band | Difficult Vocals | Contemporary Broadway
Learn more about William Finn at samuelfrench.com.
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ReWrite
by Joe Iconis “Beneath Iconis’s quirkiness lies a talented dramatist who knows how to create a nicely integrated musical.” — CurtainUp ReWrite, a musical comedy triple feature, is comprised of three wild musicals that connect in surprising and dangerous ways. Nelson Rocks! is a pop/rock show about a young dude who needs to fix his life before the “You better get to class” bell rings. Miss Marzipan is a dizzy musical about the life-changing preparation that goes into a high stakes dinner party. The Process deals with a writer. With a deadline. As the Dunkin’ Donuts fills with the voices in his head, the writer must conquer his writer’s block and finish his musical. 3m, 3f, Flexible Casting | 90 minutes | Comedy Piano Only | Moderate Vocals | Pop/Rock
Neil Simon’s Musical Fools
book & lyrics by Neil Simon music & lyrics by Phil Swann and Ron West adapted from the play Fools by Neil Simon 1893. After a harrowing journey, Leon Tolinchinsky arrives in Kulyenchikov, Ukraine to tutor Sophia Zubritsky, 19. Her parents, Nickolai and Leyna, inform him the village is cursed, rendering every resident as dumb as a bag of rocks. Leon must educate Sophia in 24 hours or fall victim to the curse himself. Teaching her, her parents, or anyone else about anything is just about impossible. To complicate matters, Leon and Sophia fall in love, infuriating Count Gregor, her longtime suitor. But Leon will risk everything to break the curse and rescue the village. 7m 7f, Flexible Casting | Full Length Musical | Comedy Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway
Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
Imaginary Friends
by Nora Ephron music by Marvin Hamlisch lyrics by Craig Carnelia “Highly theatrical and engaging…The songs…add considerably to the show’s entertainment value…echoing the vaudevillian brouhaha of the headline making feud.” — CurtainUp Novelist Mary McCarthy’s notorious statement on the Dick Cavett Show calling playwright Lillian Hellman a liar exploded into one of the most famous of all literary feuds. This surreal farce chronicles a compelling story of two women shaped by their different but equally unsettled childhoods, their looks, and the men in their lives, while it brilliantly examines (to great comic effect) the concept of truth in fiction: Who can you believe? 3m, 6f | Full Length Musical | Dramatic Comedy Piano Only | Moderate Vocals | Contemporary Broadway
Pump Boys and Dinettes
by John Foley, Mark
Hardwick, Debra Monk, Cass Morgan, John Schimmel, and Jim Wann “Both musically and theatrically, a triumph of ensemble playing. It doesn’t merely celebrate the value of friendship and life’s simple pleasures, it embodies them.” — The New York Times The “Pump Boys” sell high octane on Highway 57 in Grand Ole Opry country and the “Dinettes”, Prudie and Rhetta Cupp, run the Double Cupp diner next door. Together they fashion an evening of country western songs that received raves on and off Broadway. With heartbreak and hilarity, they perform on guitar, piano, bass, and yes, kitchen utensils. 4m, 2f | 105 minutes | Comedy Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Pop/Rock, Country
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
Iowa
Barbara’s Blue Kitchen book, music & lyrics by Lori Fischer
“In fact, it’s a perfectly judged balance of flavors — exactly what you’d hope for in theatrical comfort food.” — Time Out New York Set in a small town just outside of Nashville, this sliceof-life comedic play with music is a genuine look into the hearts of everyday people. As the proprietor, Barbara Jean, tries to figure out, “When is it courageous and when is it just plain crazy to hang on to love,” her customers come in and take a load off by sharing their funny, heartbreaking humanity.
“Smart, off-angle pop art songs add to the abundance of pleasures.” — Time Out New York When Becca’s mom finds her soulmate on Facebook, she must leave the unusual pleasantries of her hometown and teenage life to venture to Iowa as her mother seeks a new beginning. But no amount of Facebook chatting can prepare them for their new life in the lone Midwest. This daring piece successfully melds absurdism and musical theatre into a genre-bending romp about the relationships that connect us in a disconnected world.
1m, 1f, Flexible Casting | 90 minutes | Comedy Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Country, Folk
1m, 6f, 1g | 90 minutes | Dark Comedy Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Pop/Rock
The Spitfire Grill
book & music by James Valcq book & lyrics by Fred Alley based on the film by Lee David Zlotoff
Pageant
“Soulful…The amiable country flavored tunes and lyrics are rendered with the kind of conviction and expertise that make them transcendent.” — New York Magazine A feisty parolee follows her dreams, based on a page from an old travel book, to a small town in Wisconsin and finds a place for herself working at Hannah’s Spitfire Grill. It is for sale, but there are no takers for the only eatery in the depressed town, so newcomer Percy suggests to Hannah that she raffle it off. Entry fees are 100 dollars,and the best essay on why you want the grill wins. Soon, mail is arriving by the wheelbarrow-full and things are definitely cookin’.
book & lyrics by Frank Kelly and Bill Russell music by Albert Evans conceived by Robert Longbottom “Screamingly funny!” — The New York Times Pageant is a pageant, with its six contestants competing for the title of Miss Glamouresse. Judges selected from the audience actually vote and determine the winner who, therefore, may be different at each performance. The show takes its shots not by mocking the pageant from the outside, but by being one. 7m | 90 minutes | Comedy Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway, Pop/Rock
3m, 4f | Full Length Musical | Drama Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Folk
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book & lyrics by Jenny Schwartz music & lyrics by Todd Almond
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Musicals
THE SECRET GARDEN A Musical Classic Gets a Bold New Staging in San Antonio by Kurt Gardner Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
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F
ounded in 1912, San Antonio’s historic San Pedro Playhouse continues to thrive as The Playhouse San Antonio, whose latest production, The Secret Garden, opened February 10. It’s an appropriate piece to stage here, as The Playhouse is an impressive edifice nestled in the midst of a beautiful urban garden — San Pedro Springs Park. Despite the verdant setting, the creative team behind this production is presenting the Tony Award-winning musical with a decidedly modern twist. Rather than the expected staging — lots of foliage and massive Edwardian sets — their approach is daringly minimalist. Director Laura Michelle Hoadley described the genesis of this production and the reasoning behind it. “The staging is deliberately minimal in order to provide a sharper focus on the beautiful content,” she said. “It’s all about the music and the relationships, which are certainly relatable to today’s audiences. “There’s the little girl, Mary, who’s lost her parents and is trying to find her way with a new family. Then we have her tormented Uncle Archibald, still grieving for Lily, his late, beloved wife. There’s also his son, Colin, whom he’d been left with after Lily’s death. Colin is also gravely ill, so Archibald is tragically denied a happy relationship with his own boy.” Regarding the design, Hoadley said, “I’ve never seen the show staged this way. I was completely floored by (scenic designer) Nick Ponting’s work, because it’s not what you expect. Since the show is set in 1905 London, you expect
grand staircases, topiaries — things that are very tangible and heavy. “Our production has a very abstract, very minimalist feel to it, which positively reinforces the emphasis on the music and the relationships. I don’t think it loses anything with the abstract approach; rather, it enhances the power of the piece.”
“The staging is deliberately minimal in order to provide a sharper focus on the beautiful content. It’s all about the music and the relationships, which are certainly relatable to today’s audiences.” Hoadley has also assembled a talented and intuitive cast. “They’ve been a dream team,” she said. “They’ve got beautiful voices and they’re all very engaged. This is a show where an actor can’t say ‘Oh, I’m just a part of the ensemble,’ because every single element of this production is integral to the full telling of it. Each of the so-called ensemble members has a name. They’re very specific Dreamers, and represent very specific places in Mary’s memory. They contribute very much to the overall emotional heft of the production. “They also act as our crew, silently moving panels and boxes when they’re not performing. It makes the atmosphere come to life,” she added. Hoadley has been a fan of the piece since she first saw it as a high-
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school student. “The music has always touched me,” she said. “The first time I saw the show, I was left sort of numb in the sense that I almost couldn’t comprehend what hit me. It was some of the richest, most moving music I’d ever heard. Musicals often get put in the fluff category, but this one is anything but that.” “I love the story, too,” she continued. “My favorite character is Dr. Neville Craven, Archibald’s brother. He’s such a complex character. So many times I’ve heard people speak of him as the bad guy and I want to scream, ‘No! He’s the misunderstood guy! He’s the heartbroken guy! He’s the lost guy!’ He’s frustrated because he doesn’t know how to help his brother, or his nephew, or how to let go of the love he never really knew. “It’s a joy to watch the child actors grow as their choreography gets a little tighter and they begin adding things you don’t expect them to add. Their facial expressions say, ‘I’m really starting to get it now.’ They become self-assured. They’re not so worried about their steps, their lines, their lyrics or their notes. They’re starting to get what they’re singing about, what they’re talking about. “The adults are doing the same thing. They get caught up in their notes at first and then you start to see them realize, ‘Oh there’s another person onstage with me. That’s why I have this line! I have this line because it means something.’ They start to identify the portions that reference back to other parts of the play. “For example, there’s a scene where Archibald is reading a letter in Paris that Mary has written him and he says, ‘Streets of Paris, like
a maze.’ Well, the first half of the show has been about the maze of the garden, so he and Mary are traveling in their own mazes in their lives at this point, which is a really nice reference point they’re starting to make.” Actor Nicholas Szoeke is making his Playhouse debut as Archibald. “I love this place,” he said. “Everyone has been so welcoming and the emphasis on teamwork and collaboration makes you want to do the very best you can.” The vision of scenic designer Nicholas Ponting is the driving force behind the Playhouse’s staging. He described how he approached the project: “Typically, I read the show’s script, regardless of whether I’ve seen it before, done it before or played in it before. I’ll read it without my designer hat on, just like an audience member. Then I draw or create something. Sometimes it’s just a collage of words, sometimes a painting. And that’s what I did here. “I read the play, I listened to the music, and then I painted what I saw in my head. From whatever that piece of art I make, that’s my honest reaction to the show, and then I try to design around it. I know that with The Secret Garden, audiences usually expect a lot of foliage, a big old manor, and lots of business on stage, but the music itself is what really drove my design. It’s gorgeous and timeless, and I wanted to find a way to highlight it by symbolizing the design rather than have the stage groaning with sets. “So I took my first impression painting and decided to go with this pastel watercolor. There are three distinct locations we travel through; the manor, the garden and the maze. I designed
those three areas with colors and textures I believe will strongly suggest them to audiences. “This set allows for very organic movement and smooth transitions in the show. I didn’t want to have any hard distinction of locations, aside from color palettes. I wanted to leave it up to the audience to create that in their minds. And as I was working, I wondered if I could get by without a single piece of foliage on the set.
“I know that with The Secret Garden, audiences usually expect a lot of foliage, a big old manor, and lots of business on stage, but the music itself is what really drove my design. It’s gorgeous and timeless, and I wanted to find a way to highlight it by symbolizing the design...” “We don’t have that many blackouts; we just have transitions. Nothing can kill a show more than having a lot of 10-second blackouts.” Ponting’s set design naturally expanded his involvement with the director and choreographer, since it is so mobile and flexible. “This show has been a real puzzle,” he confessed. “It’s so abstract that you could do anything. I created these pieces and suggested to Laura how they might function. I didn’t give her a hard ‘This is the garden!’ because one of the things we like to do at the Playhouse is to collaborate. So there were things that others changed that I didn’t originally visualize, but I thought
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turned out to be better decisions. “I think audiences are very smart and are capable of creating these worlds in their heads. I think allowing them to do so enhances the experience. In this regard, the set for The Secret Garden is like a canvas — a canvas for the imagination.” The Playhouse’s artistic director, George Green, is delighted with the production. “The Secret Garden is a wonderful story that has title appeal. Upon seeing those words, most people fondly recall either the book or one of the films, and that’s appealing from a patronage standpoint. Laura Michelle and Nick’s fresh staging just enhances that title value for us. “It rounds out the overall balance of the season because we have some contemporary pieces, some new work, some Disney pieces, and then this perfect show that we know our audiences will love.” Green provided a glimpse of what’s on the horizon for the Playhouse. “We’re announcing our 2017-2018 season on February 16, which is very exciting. We have three Texas premieres; we have six productions upstairs and six downstairs (in the Cellar Theater). We have three new collaborations that we’ll be announcing on that day as well. “This season will be one of the busiest the Playhouse has ever had,” he continued. “The infrastructure put in place over the last six months has been intended to prepare for the new ways the Playhouse will forge into the future.” Photo Page 82: Rehearsals of The Secret Garden at The Playhouse San Antonio (Daniel D. Baumer).
This article originally appeared on Breaking Character Magazine in February, 2017.
THE SECRET GARDEN
book & lyrics by Marsha Norman music by Lucy Simon adapted from the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett
“Revels in theatrical imagination [and] achieves the irresistible appeal that moves audiences to standing ovations.”
— Christian Science Monitor
A stunning musical that brings to life the haunting beauty of this beloved literary classic. Orphaned in India, 11-year-old Mary Lennox is sent to a Yorkshire manor to live with relatives she’s never met. Left to her own devices, Mary’s personality blossoms as she and a young gardener restore a neglected garden — bringing new life to the manor, and ultimately healing her sickly cousin and uncle. Evocative music dramatizes The Secret Garden’s compelling tale of forgiveness and renewal.
Cast of The Secret Garden, Court Theater, Chicago (Michael Brosilow).
Apply for a license at samuelfrench.com.
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12m, 10f, 1b, 1g 120 minutes | Drama Large Orchestra | Difficult Vocals Classic Broadway
LOVE, NOËL:
THE LETTERS AND SONGS OF NOËL COWARD an entertainment devised by
Barry Day
“An endearing pastiche of Noël Coward’s intimate correspondence with a generous helping of his immortal songs.” — Hollywood Reporter Based on Barry Day’s book, Love, Noël: The Letters and Songs of Noël Coward is the dramatic staging of the letters and correspondence of the playwright, director, actor, composer, and singer. Coward’s letters span several decades and give you insight to some of his closest relationships with everyone from George Bernard Shaw to Edna Ferber, from the Queen Mother to his own mother, and of course, his constant collaborator, Gertrude Lawrence. A loving portrait of one of the theatre’s most influential minds. 1m, 1f | 90 minutes | Musical Revue/Cabaret | Piano Only | Easy Vocals | Classic Broadway Courtesy of the Noël Coward Archive Trust
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
Kudzu: A Southern Musical
book, music & lyrics by Jack Herrick, Doug Marlette, and Bland Simpson based on the comic strip by Doug Marlette “A joyous musical score and delicious satire.” — The Boston Globe The story of a boy who comes of age against the changing face of the American South. Like the comic strip from which it is adapted, this musical celebrates the values, humor, and original characters still found in disappearing rural America.
Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill by Lanie Robertson
“Hurts and exhilarates in just the right proportions.” — New York Magazine The time is 1959. The place is a seedy bar in Philadelphia. The audience is about to witness one of Billie Holiday’s last performances, given four months before her death. More than a dozen musical numbers are interlaced with salty, often humorous, reminiscences to project a riveting portrait of the lady and her music. 1m, 1f | 90 minutes | Drama Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Jazz
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas book by Larry L. King and Peter Masterson music & lyrics by Carol Hall based on a story by Larry L. King
11m, 3f, Flexible Casting | Full Length Musical | Comedy Medium Orchestra | Moderate Vocals | Pop/Rock, Country
The Tap Dance Kid
book by Charles Blackwell music by Henry Krieger lyrics by Robert Lorick
“A font of fun and friendliness, engagingly rich in regional nostalgia and spiced with delicate bawdry. The country and western score is a delight.” — Time
“Stunning, warm heated new musical comedy.” — Christian Science Monitor A wonderful cornucopia of music, drama, comedy and above all, tap dancing. The story concerns a 10-year-old African American child named Willie who doesn’t want to be a lawyer like his stern father; he just has to dance, like his uncle, an aspiring Broadway choreographer who is very much Willie’s mentor. And dance he does!
This happy-go-lucky view of small town vice and statewide political side-stepping recounts the good times and the demise of the Chicken Ranch, known since the 1850s as one of the better pleasure palaces in all of Texas. Governors, senators, mayors, and even victorious college football teams frequent Miss Mona’s cozy bordello until that puritan nemesis Watchdog focuses his television cameras and his righteous indignation on the institution. 13m, 14f, Flexible Casting | 120 minutes | Comedy Medium Orchestra | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway, Country
5m, 6f | Full Length Musical | Dramatic Comedy Large Orchestra | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway, Jazz
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Musicals
Big Nate: The Musical book by Jason Loewith and Lincoln Peirce music by Christopher Youstra lyrics by Jason Loewith and Christopher Youstra based on the cartoons & books by Lincoln Peirce “Bursting with energy and fun music! A rocking fresh bundle of raucous fun.” — D.C. Theatre Scene Nate Wright, a detention-riddled sixth grader (and drummer for the greatest garage band in the history of the galaxy, Enslave the Mollusk!), hopes to capture beautiful Jenny’s heart by winning “The Nicholodeon,” the first prize in his school’s Battle of the Bands. But when Artur and Jenny team up with Nate’s arch-rival Gina to form the sap-pop band Rainbows and Ponies, he’s gotta take his game to an all-star level. 4m, 3f | 75 minutes | TYA Comedy Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway, Pop/Rock
Fugitive Songs
music by Chris Miller lyrics by Nathan Tysen “A powerful yearning weaves through the tunes…a song cycle tailored to anyone who has ever thought of shucking his job, his mate or his life to start anew.” — Variety An innovative song cycle, conceived as half-musical/halfhootenanny, spotlights people on the run: a disgruntled Subway sandwich employee, a jilted ex-cheerleader, a pair of Patty Hearst fanatics, and others. Blending traditional folk music with contemporary pop and gospel, this eclectic score provides material for a wide range of experienced singers and delivers poignant and thoughtful lyrics that capture each character’s “reasons to run.” 3m, 3f, Flexible Casting | 90 minutes | Song Cycle Small/Combo Band | Difficult Vocals | Pop/Rock, Country, Folk
Journal of Plays and Musicals | Spring/Summer 2017
The Green Heart book by Charles Busch music & lyrics by Rusty Magee based on the short story by Jack Ritchie “Plump with funny lines.” — The New York Times William Graham discovers to his dismay that he has run through his entire inheritance. His glamorous mistress Uta, gets the brainstorm that he should marry a wealthy woman who will support them both. Bill latches onto Henrietta, a hopelessly eccentric Professor of Botany and heiress to a large fortune. As Bill extricates her from the exploitative clutches of her corrupt lawyer McPherson, and sinister housekeeper Mrs. Tragger, he finds himself falling in love with his wife! 2m, 3f, Ensemble, Flexible Casting | 120 minutes | Comedy, Mystery Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway
James A. Michener’s Sayonara
book by William Luce lyrics by Hy Gilbert music by George Fischoff adapted from the novel by James A. Michener “A spectacle with a soul.” — The New York Times This classic tale recounts the haunting love story of jet pilot hero Major Ace Gruver and exotic Japanese actress Hana Ogi, star of Japan’s all-female Takarazuka Theatre, whose forbidden passion grows against a lush backdrop of Japanese tradition, soaring melodies, and lavish production numbers. 5m, 6f | Full Length Musical | Drama Large Orchestra | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
ROCK OF AGES
book by Chris D’Arienzo music by A Bunch of Really Sweet 80s Bands
“Rock of Ages is the power-ballad decade in all its glory, tricked out with big perms, bigger dreams, and the kind of operatic ecstasy you read about only in bathroom stalls.”
— Entertainment Weekly
“A seriously silly, absurdly enjoyable arena-rock musical.”
— The New York Times
Set in L.A.’s infamous Sunset Strip in 1987, Rock of Ages tells the story of Drew, a city boy from South Detroit, and Sherrie, a smalltown girl, both in L.A. to chase their dreams of making it big and falling in love. Rock of Ages takes you back to the time of big bands with big egos, playing big guitar solos, and sporting even bigger hair!
Matthew Mello and Rob Watson in Rock of Ages, courtesy of Arizona Broadway Theatre.
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7m, 10f 120 minutes | Comedy Small/Combo Band | Difficult Vocals Pop/Rock
A Tale of Two Cities, A Musical
The Sparkley Clean Funeral Singers
“The return to the era of big blockbusters such as Les Miserables, Phantom, and Miss Saigon.” — The Associated Press
FINALIST! 2012 Richard Rogers Award
book, music & lyrics by Jill Santoriello based on the novel by Charles Dickens Two men in love with the same woman. Two cities swept up in revolution. One last chance for a man to redeem his wasted life and change the world. Based on Charles Dickens’ masterpiece, A Tale of Two Cities is a musical that focuses on the love triangle between young beauty Lucie Manette, French aristocrat Charles Darnay, and drunken English cynic Sydney Carton — all caught in the clutches of the bloody French Revolution. 7m, 3f, 1g, Ensemble | 120 minutes | Drama Large Orchestra | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway, Operetta
Trey Parker’s Cannibal! The Musical book, music & lyrics by Trey Parker
“It’s finger-licking good! It will take a truly jaded soul to push away from the table before this often hilarious meal is over. Bon appetit!” — San Francisco Examiner The true story of the only person convicted of cannibalism in America, Alferd Packer. The sole survivor of an ill-fated trip to the Colorado Territory, he tells his side of the harrowing tale to news reporter Polly Pry as he awaits his execution. And his story goes like this: While searching for gold and love in the Colorado Territory, he and his companions lost their way and resorted to unthinkable horrors, including toe-tapping songs! 10m, 2f, Flexible Casting | 105 minutes | Comedy Piano Only | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway
book by Lori Fischer music & lyrics by Lori Fischer and Don Chaffer
June has inherited the responsibility of caring for her aging father and her sister, just back from rehab. When all June wants is to achieve her dream to become a country star, an opportunity comes her way via the local church. She has been offered the chance to sing parting songs for the recently deceased. A musical about family, loss, and the ways life gives you exactly what you need. 2m, 2f | 105 minutes | Comedy Small/Combo Band | Easy Vocals | Country/Western
Luck! A Musical
based on a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer book & lyrics by Mark Waldrop music by Brad Ross “First time theatergoers [will be] engrossed and experienced theater lovers entertained… A glorious storydriven score will have you humming the songs as you leave the theater.” — Anthony Gruppuso In this fractured folk tale, Mazel and Shlimazel, the spirits of Good Luck and Bad Luck, make a bet to determine who is the more powerful. The terms: Mazel will take a hapless young man named Tam under her wing for one year, at the end of which Shlimazel will attempt to undo everything she’s done in one second. Along the way, matters are complicated by a lovely princess, crafty prime minister, a superstitious nurse, and a lion on the loose! 6m, 6f, Flexible Casting | 120 minutes | Comedy Piano Only | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
FUN HOME
music by Jeanine Tesori book & lyrics by Lisa Kron based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel
“A rare beauty, extraordinary and heart-gripping.” — The New York Times When her father dies unexpectedly, graphic novelist Alison dives deep into her past to tell the story of the volatile, brilliant, one-of-a-kind man whose temperament and secrets defined her family and her life. Moving between past and present, Alison relives her unique childhood playing at the family’s Bechdel Funeral Home, her growing understanding of her own sexuality, and the looming, unanswerable questions about her father’s hidden desires. A refreshingly honest, wholly original musical about seeing your parents through grown-up eyes. 2m, 4f, 2b, 1g | 90 minutes | Drama | Small/Combo Band | Moderate Vocals | Classic Broadway, Pop/Rock Judy Kuhn in Fun Home on Broadway (Joan Marcus).
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DenĂŠe Benton in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 on Broadway (Chad Batka).
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Restrictions may apply to certain titles.
NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 by Dave Malloy
“A witty, inventive enchantment from rousing start to mournful finish! The most innovative and the best new musical to open on Broadway since Hamilton!”
— The New York Times
The Off Broadway sensation is now a Broadway hit! Young and impulsive, Natasha Rostova arrives in Moscow to await the return of her fiancé from the front lines. When she falls under the spell of the roguish Anatole, it is up to Pierre, a family friend in the middle of an existential crisis, to pick up the pieces of her shattered reputation. With daring score and bold storytelling, this award-winning musical brings to life a scandalous slice of a classic Russian epic. This title is currently on Broadway and unavailable for licensing at the time of publication. 5m, 5f, Ensemble, Flexible Casting More than 120 minutes | Drama Medium Orchestra | Difficult Vocals Pop/Rock, Folk, Operetta
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SHINING THE LIGHT:
How One Teacher Brought The Ghostlight Project To His High School by Philip Goodchild
A
lot of my students, right now, in 2017, are scared. A lot of that is the usual teenage concern about not fitting in, the changes in their bodies and the like, but lately something is definitely different. There’s an edge to the fear my students are feeling. I know because I feel it too. I am a British-born high school theatre teacher in America, I witnessed the results of the UK referendum to leave Europe, and then, well, November, USA happened. A consistent thread of these populist movements is the apparent normalization of being openly hostile to minorities, specifically people who are nonwhite. This may seem like a broad generalization, but it is true that the day after the UK referendum, anti-immigrant sentiment was on virulent display via graffiti and multiple other forms of media, with one shining example being:
“We voted leave, it’s time for you to do the same,” with “No more Polish vermin” added for good measure. I heard about the Ghostlight Project a few days before it went live. The Ghostlight Project is an initiative started by a collective of playwrights, actors, and other theatre professionals to “create a ‘light’ for dark times and to make, or renew, a pledge to stand for and protect the values of inclusion, participation, and compassion for everyone regardless of race, class, religion, country of origin, immigration status, (dis)ability, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation.” I considered having my class participate, but decided against it; the timing was just too close not to be considered a political act, and I had to factor in my administration. I don’t always see eye to eye with
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my administration. To me, theatre is a powerful educational tool just as much as it is entertainment; a vehicle in which to hold the mirror up to nature and explore the world as it is and as it could be. Knowing the push-back I would receive should I wish to participate in the Ghostlight Project’s event on January 19 pushed me into a corner of self-censorship. It’s too political, I don’t want us to be pushing a “gay agenda,” I don’t want to get any parent phone calls saying you’re telling them your political opinions, yadda yadda blah blah. So I decided not to raise the subject at all with my students. But it stayed with me, nagging at me, my conscience nudging me and probing me, forcing me to ask myself whether I was making the right choice. A week passed, and a discussion was started by
a member of the Educational Theatre Association’s online community about the Ghostlight Project. I shared my position and read some other responses, but was moved especially by a comment from George F. Ledo. He wrote, “While I agree that schools themselves ‘should not,’ as institutions, take sides in politics, I also feel that they should educate their students…about the principle of free speech.” Somewhat hangdog and feeling not a little guilty, I went back on my decision and decided to introduce the Ghostlight Project to my students from the perspective of what the theatre has traditionally been about, and what it means to be a safe, or in the Ghostlight parlance, a “brave” space.
It was quite refreshing to hear so many students talk about their feelings of security and safety within our school’s theatre community, and that they know they have a place where they can be gay, straight, male, female, non-binary, white, black, brown, mentally ill, Christian, atheist, Muslim, undocumented, and so on, without feeling judged.
When I taught the lesson at my high school, the material came with a heavy disclaimer that we were not getting into a political discussion per se; rather, the discussions for the day could lean toward ideas and thoughts that could be considered by their very context to be political speech. I made sure to emphasize that our discussions were not about who the president was, or what his administration was apparently for. The important question I posed to my students was what do they, what does our theatre program, stand for? From that starting point, we spent two days talking about inclusivity and diversity, and my eyes were opened in many ways by what my students were feeling, and how they perceived the world: they agreed that theatre shouldn’t be dumbed-down, that theatre is a low-key way of making pointed political statements and providing commentary on the state of the world, and that far from being the much-touted super-tolerant generation, there are many of their peers with whom they are afraid of sharing their sexual orientations or identities.
We found our space to be a place where politics could be discussed rationally, with opposing viewpoints listened to and respected, as opposed to just airing views in the echo chamber of social media algorithms. Ultimately, several different theatre classes came to the same conclusion: that there is an inherent strength in recognizing and celebrating our differences, and that unity does not mean agreeing with everybody’s opinions all the time.
The Ghostlight Project is an initiative started by a collective of playwrights, actors, and other theatre professionals to “create a ‘light’ for dark times.”
This discussion led neatly into the students declaring who they were and what they pledged to fight for. Through these discussions, students realized what they ultimately felt strongly about. Many of my female students, regardless of their views on abortion, declared their passion for bodily autonomy. A handful of my students come from privileged backgrounds, and pledged to fight for those who were unable to defend themselves. A range of pledges and opinions were shared as the culminating activity, after which we took time to display the pledges in the backstage area of
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our school’s auditorium, where students now see a daily reminder of what they vowed to fight for. This lesson was completed a few weeks ago, and many students have started telling me how they are trying to further their pledges and “do something good” for others. They’ve started exploring auxiliary resources offered by the Ghostlight Project to help further their advocacy — finding out about local groups or associations that need help or have additional information on what to do next. Rather than feeling afraid about the current political climate, many of my students are energized as they turn to face the world head-on. Even their scene work selections have demonstrated the desire to dig deeper into theatre’s power to send a message — they’ve been exploring multi-layered pieces containing political subtexts (gender inequality, race problems within the U.S., etc.), and overtly political plays such as All the Way by Robert Schenkkan. As we embark upon the new year, I am personally grateful for what the Ghostlight Project has given me: a reminder to be the light in a dark world. Fear has to be combated; fear lives in the darkness. That light in the darkness represents, ultimately, the opposite of fear: that light, ultimately, is hope. To find out more about The Ghostlight Project visit theghostlighttproject.com
Photo: Participants gather in front of the Public Theater in New York City to “shine a light” on January 19, 2017 (Chris Kam).
This article originally appeared on Breaking Character Magazine in March, 2017.
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TITLES 10 out of 12 — 17
Betties — 56
the Living Dead Live — 34
35mm — 77
Colossal — 11
Girlfriend — 66
45 Seconds From Broadway — 33
Comedy of Tenors, Ken Ludwig’s
Gnit — 36
A… My Name Will Always Be Alice — 68 Adding Machine: A Musical — 70 Adrift in Macao — 76
A — 49
Going to a Place Where You
Dames at Sea — 69 Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, The — 52
Already Are — 45 Good and Faithful Servant, The — 20
Albatross 3rd & Main, The — 56
Dear Elizabeth — 26
Grand Concourse — 23
Amelia — 7
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective
Grandpa and the Gay Rabbi — 59
Among the Dead — 10
Agency — 53
Great Wilderness, A — 31
Antlia Pneumatica — 17
Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea — 9
Green Heart, The — 88
Arcadia — 50
Doris to Darlene — 31
Grown-Up, The — 23
Back Back Back — 45
Dot — 16
Gulf, The: full length — 8
Barbara’s Blue Kitchen — 81
Dusty and the Big Bad World — 18
Barefoot in the Park — 33
Dying Gaul, The — 53
Hands On A Hardbody — 70
Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes
El Nogalar — 9
Hapgood— 50
Mystery, Ken Ludwig’s — 18
short play — 58
El Paso Blue — 30
Happy Ones, The — 48
Behavior of Broadus, The — 9
Elegies: A Song Cycle — 79
Harriet Jacobs — 23
Bellwether — 8
End of the Rainbow — 35
Harvest, The — 6
Ben Hur — 38-39
Entertaining Mr. Sloane — 20
Healing, The — 16
Best Little Whorehouse in
Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End — 24
Heathers The Musical — 72, 73-75
Evelyn in Purgatory — 41, 56
Homos, or Everyone In
Texas, The — 87 Betrayed — 28 Big Nate: The Musical — 88
Evelyn Shaffer and the Chance of a Lifetime — 58
America — 11 House Rules — 24
Blind — 58
Everything You Touch — 30
Blood at the Root — 45
Fade — 19
Blood Play — 46
Falsettos — 79
How to Get Into Buildings — 36
Blue Window — 53
Familiar — 24
Human Being Died That Night,
Brighton Beach Memoirs — 33
Father Comes Home From the
brownsville song (b-side for tray) — 31
How I Learned What I Learned, August Wilson’s — 22
Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) — 35 Feminine Ending, A — 35
A — 36 Imaginary Friends — 80 Important Hats of the Twentieth
Buddy Cop 2 — 46
Fish Eye — 24
Century — 17
Calendar Girls — 51
Flick, The — 51
In Trousers — 79
Cape Disappointment — 46
Fly By Night — 68
Informed Consent — 52
Captain’s Tiger, The — 48
For Peter Pan on Her 70th
Iowa — 81
Cleopatra, Charles Busch’s — 36
Birthday — 48
Jacuzzi — 46
Chasing Manet — 57
Friend Art — 7
James A. Michener’s Sayonara — 88
Chess — 66
Fugitive Songs — 88
Jasper in Deadland — 67
Chicago — 77
Fun Home — 91
Jitney, August Wilson’s — 56
City of Conversation, The — 16
Funeral Games — 20
John — 27
clarity — 59
Future Thinking — 7
Judas Kiss, The — 28
Cleaners, The — 59
Gem of the Ocean,
Judge Jackie: Disorder in the
Coastal Disturbances — 57
August Wilson’s — 51
Court — 66
Collapse — 51
General from America, The — 30
Kindness — 45
Collective Rage: A Play in Five
George A. Romero’s Night of
Kingdom Come — 7
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Kiss of the Spider Woman — 3-4, 68
Odd Couple, The — 33
Seminar —51
Kudzu: A Southern Musical — 87
Ohio State Murders — 23
Shakespeare in Love — 25
La Cage Aux Folles — 66
Old Neighborhood, The — 17
Shakespeare’s Sister — 28
Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar
Oldest Boy: A Play in Three
Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat — 27
and Grill — 87
Ceremonies, The — 45
Side Show — 69
Laughter on the 23rd Floor — 33
One Shoe Off — 57
Significant Other — 37
Layover, The — 8
OOHRAH! — 52
Six Rounds of Vengeance — 56
Leader of the Pack: The Ellie
Open Hand, The — 31
Skeleton Crew — 31
Greenwich Musical — 5
Open House, The — 23
Smart People — 18
Life, A — 11
Pageant — 81
Somewhere Fun — 18
Lifetime Burning, A — 27
Painting Churches — 57
Sparkley Clean Funeral
Long Way Go Down — 10
Passion Play — 18
Loot — 20, 21
Peerless — 44
Spitfire Grill, The — 81
Lost in Yonkers — 33
Perfect Arrangement — 41, 43
Stage Kiss — 28
Love, Noël — 86
Pink Mist — 11
Substance of Bliss, The — 11
Luck! A Musical — 90
Play About My Dad, The — 6
Summerland — 7
Mala Hierba — 6
Plaza Suite — 33
Taking Care of Baby — 28
Mama’s Boy — 8
Pluto — 11
Tale of Two Cities, A Musical,
Maria/Stuart — 16
Pocatello — 24
Marjorie Prime — 56
Poor Behavior — 18
Tap Dance Kid, The — 87
Marie and Rosetta — 10
Prayer for My Enemy — 53
This Much (or An Act of Violence
Mary Page Marlowe — 30
Pride’s Crossing — 57
Towards the Institution of
Masked — 24
Pump Boys And Dinettes — 80
Marriage — 9
Maytag Virgin — 10
Radio Golf, August Wilson’s — 36
Three Sisters — 53
Middletown — 17
Raisin — 70
Throws of Love — 58
Mnemonist of Dutchess County,
Real Thing, The — 50
Title and Deed — 48
Realistic Joneses, The — 52
Tomb of King Tot, The — 8
Monsoon Season — 59
Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again — 31
Trey Parker’s Cannibal!
Moors, The — 36
Return to the Forbidden
The — 23
Mr. Burns, a post electric play — 17
Singers, The — 90
A — 90
Planet — 4, 69
The Musical — 90 Tribute Artist, Charles Busch’s
Muckrakers — 7
ReWrite — 80
My Mañana Comes — 48
Risen from the Dough — 59
Tuck Everlasting — 3, 64-65
Mystery of Love & Sex, The — 35
Rock ‘n’ Roll — 50
Ugly Lies the Bone — 16
Narrators — 58
Rock of Ages — 89
Verité — 35
Nat Turner in Jerusalem — 10
Rocky Horror Show, Richard
Vertical Hour, The — 51
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 — 92-93
The — 16
O’Brien’s The — 71
Vietgone — 14-15
Romance Novels for Dummies — 27
Village Bike, The — 48
Native Son — 8
Roommate, The — 27
Waverly Gallery, The — 54, 55
Neil Simon’s Musical Fools — 80
Royale, The — 28
Wedding Bash — 59
New Brain, A — 79
Rumors — 33
What the Butler Saw — 20
Nice Fish — 6
Ruthless! — 70
Whenever — 68
No More Sad Things — 52
Samsara — 35
Wildest!!! Hip, Cool and Swinging!,
Not About Nightingales — 29
Santos & Santos — 30
Nymph Errant — 69
Se Llama Cristina — 30
Wiz, The — 76
Observe the Sons of Ulster
Seabird is in a Happy Place — 58
Wolves, The — 60-61
Second Coming of Joan of Arc,
Wonderful Tennessee — 45
Marching Towards the Somme — 52 Occupant, Edward Albee’s — 27
The — 9
The — 76
Yen — 10
Secret Garden, The — 82-84, 85
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AUTHORS Albee, Edward — 27
Dimond, Christopher — 66
Harrison, Jordan — 23, 31, 56
Alley, Fred — 81
Dohrn, Zayd — 7, 10
Hatsor, Ilan — 24
Almond, Todd — 66, 81
Domingo, Colman — 16
Headland, Leslye — 8
Almos, Carolyn — 9
Doran, Bathsheba — 35
Henriques, Simon — 58
Almos, Matt — 9
Dufault, Olivia — 8
Herman, Jerry — 66
Alvarez, Sofia — 7
Durang, Christopher — 76
Herrick, Jack — 87
Anastasio, Trey — 70
Ebb, Fred — 68, 77
Hinderaker, Andrew — 11
Andersson, Benny — 66
Eden, Simon David — 56
Howe, Tina — 57
Ayckbourn, Alan — 68
Edwards, Greg — 58
Hunter, Samuel D. — 6, 16, 24, 31
Baker, Annie — 27, 51
Engel, Allison — 24
Iconis, Joe — 80
Barlow, Patrick — 38-39
Engel, Margaret — 24
Irwin, Elizabeth — 48
Beauregard, Jon — 9
Eno, Will — 17, 23, 36, 48, 52
Jenkins, Louis — 6
Benson, France-Luce — 59
Ephron, Nora — 80
Johnson, Randy — 76
Birch, Alice — 31
Evans, Albert — 81
Jones, Arlitia — 7
Blackwell, Charles — 87
Federle, Tim — 64-65
Jones, Nick — 17, 35
Bock, Adam — 11
Ferrentino, Lindsey — 16
Jordan, Anna — 10
Bond, Christopher — 34
Fierstein, Harvey — 66
Josephson, Jonathan — 59
Bos, Hannah — 46-47
Finn, William — 78-79
Joy, Lindsay — 59
Boyd, Julianne — 68
Firth, Tim — 51
Jung, Hansol — 10, 52
Boyer, Dale — 34
Fischer, Lori — 81, 90
Kander, John — 3, 68, 77
Brant, George — 10
Fischoff, George — 88
Kavner, Lucas — 24
Brittan, Robert — 70
Fitzpatrick, John — 9
Kellett, Gloria Calderon — 58
Brown, William F. — 76
Foley, John — 80
Kelley, Nambi E. — 8
Brunstetter, Bekah — 45, 52
Fosse, Bob — 77
Kelly, Dennis — 28
Busch, Charles — 16, 36, 88
Foster, Hunter — 67
Kelly, Frank — 81
Butler, Oliver — 46-48
Friel, Brian — 45
Kennedy, Adrienne — 23
Caisley, Robert — 31
Fugard, Athol — 48
Killebrew, Boo — 6, 27
Callaghan, Sheila — 30
Gage, Carolyn — 9
King, Denis — 68
Carlton, Bob — 69
Giardina, Anthony — 16
King, James Gordon — 58
Carnelia, Craig — 80
Gilbert, Hy — 88
King, Larry L. — 87
Cefaly, Audrey — 8, 10, 58
Glazer, Tony — 11
Koenigsberg, Josh — 23
Chaffer, Don — 90
Goss, James — 53
Kooman, Michael — 66
Clark, Eliza — 7
Green, Amanda — 70
Kraft, Lindsey — 59
Condon, Bill — 69
Grote, Jason — 16
Kreidler, Todd — 22
Connolly, Will — 68
Gurira, Danai — 24
Krieger, Henry — 69, 87
Coward, Noel— 86
Haimsohn, George — 69
Kron, Lisa — 91
Cram, Cusi — 18, 27
Hall, Carol — 87
Laird, Marvin — 70
D’Arienzo, Chris — 89
Hall, Lee — 25
Laufer, Deborah Zoe — 52
David, Arvind Ethan — 53
Hamlisch, Marvin — 80
Lee, Kimber — 31
Davis, Nathan Alan — 9, 10
Hansberry, Lorraine — 70
Leeds, Andrew — 59
Day, Barry — 86
Hardwick, Mark — 80
Letts, Tracy — 30, 53
Dayan, Albert — 9
Hare, David — 28, 51
Loewith, Jason — 70, 88
Debate Society, The — 46-47
Harmon, Joshua —37
Lonergan, Kenneth — 54, 55
DeLappe, Sarah — 60-61
Harnetiaux, Trish — 36
Longbottom, Robert — 81
Diamond, Lydia R. — 18, 23
Harrison, Christopher — 34
Lorick, Robert — 87
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Lucas, Craig — 53
Quilter, Peter — 35
Washburn, Anne — 17
Luce, William — 88
Ramirez, Marco — 28
Waters, Daniel — 72
Ludwig, Ken — 18, 49
Rapp, Adam — 45
Webb, Alex — 7
Mackes, Steve — 69
Ravenhill, Mark — 27
Weiner, Jenny Rachel — 7
Magee, Rusty — 88
Rebeck, Theresa — 18, 51
West, Ron — 80
Malloy, Dave — 92-93
Rice, Elmer — 70
Whaley, Michael — 69
Mamet, David — 17
Rice, Tim — 66
Whipday, Emma — 28
Marlette, Doug — 87
Robertson, Lanie — 87
Williams, Tennessee — 29
Martin, Trevor — 34
Romero, George A. — 34
Wilson, August — 22, 36, 51, 56
Masterson, Peter — 87
Roninson, Andy — 58
Wise, Jim — 69
McGuinness, Frank — 52
Rosenstock, Kim — 68
Woldin, Judd — 70
McNally, Terrence — 68
Ross, Brad — 90
Wright, Doug — 70
Melnick, Peter — 76
Ruhl, Sarah — 18, 26, 28, 45, 48
Wright, Nicholas — 36
Millburn, Brendan — 9
Russell, Bill — 69, 81
Ulvaeus, BjÖrn — 66
Miller, Chris — 64-65, 88
Rylance, Mark — 6
Yee, Lauren — 35
Miller, Robin — 69
Santoriello, Jill — 90
Yockey, Steve — 8, 11, 42
Mitnick, Michael — 68
Saracho, Tanya — 6, 9, 19
Youstra, Christopher — 88
Monk, Debra — 80
Schimmel, John — 80
Zaltzberg, Charlotte — 70
Moore, Allison — 51
Schmidt, Joshua — 70
Zlotoff, Lee David — 81
Morgan, Cass — 80
Schreck, Heidi — 23
Morisseau, Dominique — 31, 45
Schwartz, Jenny — 18, 81
Moses, Itamar — 45
Seavey, Jordan — 11
Murphy, Kevin — 72
Shear, Claudia — 64-65
Murphy, Matthew — 76
Sheers, Owen — 11
Myatt, Julie Marie — 48
Silver, Joan Micklin — 68
Nelson, Richard — 30, 66
Silverman, Jen — 27, 36, 56
Nemiroff, Robert — 70
Simon, Lucy — 85
Nguyen, Qui — 14-15, 56
Simon, Neil — 32-33, 80
Norman, Marc — 25
Simpson, Bland — 87
Norman, Marsha — 85
Skinner, Penelope — 48
O’Brien, Richard — 71
Smalls, Charlie — 76
O’Keefe, Laurence — 72
Solis, Octavio — 30
Oliver, Ryan Scott — 67, 76
Staats, Amy — 58
Orton, Joe — 20, 21
Stoppard, Tom — 25, 50
Packer, George — 28
Swann, Phil — 80
Paley, Joel — 70
Sweet, Matthew — 66
Pamatmat, A. Rey — 24
Taub, Michael — 24
Park, Jiehae — 44
Tesori, Jeanine — 91
Parker, Trey — 90
Thompson, David — 77
Parks, Suzan-Lori — 35, 52
Thureen, Paul — 46-47
Pattinson, Phil — 34
Treem, Sarah — 35
Payne, Topher — 40-42, 43, 56
Tuttle, Korde Arrington — 59
Peirce, Lincoln — 88
Tysen, Nathan — 64-65, 88
Porras, Thomas — 76
Urbinati, Rob — 8
Porter, Cole — 69
Valcq, James — 81
Prima, Luanne — 76
Vieh, Lizzie — 59
Prime, Toni Elisabeth — 76
Waldrop, Mark — 90
Prince, Harold — 68
Wann, Jim — 80
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