Short plays d full-length plays about historical or fictional characters who become famous and the cost of that fame in their personal, professional or private lives.
A small-cast, full-length play by Kathleen McBlair dramatizes the limited private moments of Marilyn Monroe's life after she became a star. Both Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller take the stage in her downward spiral. Her life-after-fame was eerily lonely and filled with long telephone conversations with friends, doctors, and strangers as she groped to find a sense of peace and belonging. This play was a finalist in the 1988 Virginia Prize for Playwriting.
Prince Hedgehog is a dramatic adaptation of a delightful folk tale in which a Prince—in this case born a hedgehog because of his mother’s hasty words—is sent out to further his education. This is a transformation play with a twist.
From a murky past, Rasputin disrupts Russian society with his charismatic fervor. Despite several assassination attempts, Rasputin survives and thrives. Will nothing rid of us this meddlesome priest?
In The Devil’s Due, a one-act drama/comedy, an artist, Eric Talmadge, confronts the decline of his aesthetic powers and the possible dissolution of his marriage. In a satiric tour de force, a visitor—possibly a neighboring psychiatrist and possibly a more fearsome presence—offers him a possible way out of his dilemma. Is M. Boudreaux really an unorthodox psychiatrist practicing from his apartment in NYC or does he represent a power other than the mind? And what choice does he give Eric in order to regain his peace of mind and his artistic abilities?
