A one-act Christmas comedy - a play with live music for young actors, telling the story of how the Christmas song "Silent Night" came to be written. Set in Oberndorf, Austria in 1818, the play is staged with live guitar in a Readers Theatre format. Memorized historical vignettes are combined with a straight-forward Christmas reading. But it soon goes "off-book" as student readers question the truth of the text they're reading, and they end up squabbling on stage among themselves. Just when their performance seems doomed, Josef Mohr remembers a short poem he had been writing—Silent Night.
A whimsical musical that weaves together a collection of Jewish folktales about the wise fools of Chelm into a single fable. As Rabbi Itzik searches the world for his scattered congregation, we relive the rise and fall of his little village that proved time and again that "God loves the people of Chelm."
In Kentucky, caves were popular tourist attractions and a source of revenue. In 1925 Floyd Collins hoped to find another entrance to the Mammoth Cave, He got trapped undergound for two weeks and a frantic media circus ensued, heightened by a new invention, public radio broadcasts.
In GROUP S.O.S. by Bonnie Culver, the S.O.S stands for Survivors Of Sexual abuse. In two separate full-length plays, male or female survivors both confront and comfort one another as they begin their processes of healing. Appropriate for a teen or adult audience, previous productions of these plays have led to audience members seeking help as they begin to recognize themselves among the characters. Run time is about 95 minutes.
An award-winning, full-length play with music filled with the poetry of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Robert P. Arthur weaves fragments of conversations and traditional melodies to portray the love and heartbreak of its watermen and women--the love of the sea, a mother for a child, a man for a woman.
"Legacy of a Father" is a collection of seven dramatic and comedy one-act plays inspired by real one-on-one, personal interviews conducted by the playwright, Monique Franz. The series addresses a fatherless theme and deals with absentee fathers and the absence of what a father traditionally provides.
A short play collection by Jack J. Berry consists mainly of short comedies. Berry loves to stand the world on its head. A comedy about attempted assassin John J. Hinkley? Travel from Old Testament to WWII in a matter of minutes? These short plays can be produced as an evening of theater or individually as introductions to meetings and events.
"Ophelia Chooses" begins at Ophelia’s funeral. After perfunctory mourning by the cast of Hamlet, she is resurrected by a feminist from our time, who offers her the chance to live. Feminist Fay instructs Ophelia in the art of standing up for what she wants (and ultimately believes). This is done by revisiting all the scenes from Hamlet in which Ophelia appears.
Playroom is a series of comedies created by the author as a way to explore the short play and "one act" format, one setting (and one evening) at a time. An otherwise ordinary family, the characters of Hinton’s Playroom are thrust into extraordinary, supernatural, and preternatural circumstances.
Is Hamlet all that he pretends to be? Did he really see his father's ghost? Critics for years have argued about how to interpret Shakespeare's Hamlet. This one-act spoof by George Freek suggests some rather unusual answers. The dialogue comically mixes Shakespearean quotes and phrases with contemporary expressions.
A full-length touching and funny 'dramedy' by Mickey Coburn, about a newly widowed woman and her changing relationships with her grown children. Yetta's family expect her to remain 'mama': dependent and indecisive but Yetta has ideas of her own. After years of marriage, she wants to live for herself. But when the suitors begin to appear!!!! Will Yetta be able to emancipate herself from the role of "Jewish Mother"? Even if her new beau is the "likker" salesman?
Great for community and regional theaters. Downloadable PDF available.
An award-winning romantic comedy that imagines Tom and Huck as gay sixteen-year-olds, trapped in the 1850’s in St. Petersburg, Missouri. The adventures will be familiar, yet comically twisted, full of teenage angst, and discovery of one's sexuality and uniqueness.
“Wrong Place, Wrong Time” is another 10-minute short in Monique Franz play series, “Legacy of a Father.” The script touches on the soil on which many troubled inner-city youth grow, especially those without the presence of a quality father figure. The script highlights the lack of choices that men of urban contexts are presented with, from birth until adulthood.
