Acting Editions

Comedy / Characters: 2m, 3f / Unit Set "LOL! An audience is guaranteed to do just that" at this hilarious broadband comedy of errors. You've Got Hate Mail is Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore's comic answer to A.R. Gurney's Love Letters. In You've Got Hate Mail, love "bytes" all when an extra-marital affair goes horribly wrong, thanks to a juicy e-mail left sitting on a desktop. The story is told entirely in e-mails from laptop computers, although the play still manages to have an unforgettabl...

Comedy/Thriller / 5m, 3f / Interior Van Zandt & Milmore pay tribute to Master of Horror Alfred Hitchcock, with this comedy whodunit. Off-and-on New York couple Marnie and Jeff enter an even more complicated phase of their relationship when they think they spy their cross-courtyard neighbor do away with his wife. After they draw their torn curtain, the lady vanishes, and suspicion places murder beyond a shadow of a doubt. The bumbling witnesses sneak into their neighbor's apartment - 39 steps awa...

Drama / Characters: 14 male, 4 female Sacrificed to powers larger than himself, Woyzeck is one of drama's first anti-heroes. He serves a German captain and makes money by allowing a doctor to experiment on him, but his deeper morality leads him to a tragic end.

Characters: 4 male, 6 female. Interior. Inspector Ruffing, the troubled hero of Nigro's Ravenscroft, Demonology, Creatures Lurking In The Churchyard, The Rooky Wood and Mephisto returns in this baffling mystery that was an audience favorite at the First International Mystery Festival in 2007. In a peaceful house near the Welsh border, an entire family has vanished suddenly without a trace one evening with supper on the table and no apparent violence. Ruffing's attempt to understand what's happen...

Marcia Kash and Doug Hughes . Farce. Characters: 5 male, 2 female. Interior Set. Jane and Sybil are on the verge of the deal of their lives. They have rented a hotel suite for a very private showing of their "Passion Fashion Wear" lingerie. Only famous Italian designer Bruno Fruferelli is to attend. The models are booked, the champagne is on ice and the sexy samples are on display. They have anticipated every contingency, expect the arrival of their jealous husbands who have jumped to the wron...

Comedy / 3m, 3f / Interior Sam Price, a wealthy entrepreneur, has just recently passed away and, at his request, has been laid out in his townhouse. With the corpse in the bedroom, his immediate family-sister, brother, nephew and niece-have gathered to discuss their inheritance, a meeting that descends into acrimony over the division of property. Much to their chagrin, they learn that Sam has left his entire estate to the church, a discovery that results in them reluctantly seeking the advice o...

Characters: 3-7 male, 3-7 femaleFarceInterior The Cider Mill Inn is an old, rustic and somewhat run down country inn owned and operated by an endearing elderly couple, Michael and Susan Edwards. At first they appear to be bordering on senility. We quickly learn however that they are very clever con artists, preying on their unsuspecting guests, by advertising huge discounts to various tradesmen. Using an elaborate check-in form with duplicate copies, guests are, in fact, signing a work contract...

Dramatic Comedy / Characters: 1m, 7f, Larger Cast Possibilities /Simple Set Winner of the 2009 Samuel French Canadian Playwriting Competition Esmerelda Quipp is 80, still of sound mind, but her body is beginning to "come unglued", as she puts it. Having spent her working life as an actress, age pushing her gradually out of the business, she now faces the fact that her meagre government pension is insufficient to support her, even with her minimal needs. When she is arrested for attempting ...

5f / Comedy / Exterior Four garden-club ladies meet a young girl who has come to their little Texas town to marry an infantryman before he ships off for World War II. The women impulsively decide to throw the girl an elaborate wedding, and their lives and friendships are thrown into turmoil as they race to accomplish the nuptials in one frenzied afternoon. "Delightful! ... Funny and folksy ... The ladies light up the stage!" - Dallas Morning News

Comedy / Characters: 5m, 1f / In this world-premiere comedy, it's 1963 and Joey and Carmine are low-level soldiers in the New York mob. Joey services juke boxes and vending machines...Carmine makes two runs a week to South Carolina for illegal cigarettes. But things are looking up for the pair. The 1964 World's Fair is just around the corner and these Two Gentlemen of Corona are plotting to help their boss, John, swindle thousands of foreign tourists. It looks like nothing can stand in their way...

Drama / Characters: 1 male, 1 femaleThis psychological thriller is a favorite in acting workshops. It is a mind game play. Toyer is someone who toys; he is a mass paralyzer who toys with his victims. He does not murder or rape, he seduces and them immobilizes. Following productions in Los Angles and the Actors Studio, it was produced at the Eisenhower Theatre and the Kennedy Center with Kathleen Turner and Brad Davis, directed by Tony Richardson. . "Strong stuff. . .Outlandish mind games. Riveti...

Short Play, Comedy / 3W /Unit Set Set in the formerly oil-rich desert Southwest, this play explores the lives of two generations of women living under one roof. The story centers on Jo who, after her father dies, takes in her feisty mother. The dialogue between them and with a long-time neighbor is, at once, outrageously funny and heart-breakingly tragic. These women tear and rip into each other¿s psyche with reckless abandon and something barely resembling love. The cookies in question may or ...

An Improper Comedy / 3m, 3f / Interior Set / Anyone nutty enough to buy an old lighthouse for a summer home is looking for trouble. It comes on the double to a novelist, her estranged TV film star husband and the latest gleam in his roving eye when this unsociable triangle, along with the novelist's globetrotting journalist mother, a baffled editor and a grocery boy find themselves trapped on the top floor during the off season. Suspense spirals and comedy crackles during three days of confineme...

Play . Jean Lenox Toddie. Characters: 2 female. Bare stage or simple set. . This witty look at mother daughter relationships is a light hearted exploration of irritations and misunderstandings that build walls between a woman and her female off spring-- and the love and compassion that destroys these walls. The crisis and humor of childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age are evoked in a celebration of dissonance and the harmony between mothers and daughters. With the light touch of fantasy...

Comedy / 6m, 6f Winner! 14 DramaLogue awards including Best Production. A black comedy about white trash! The author of Daddy's Dyin' (Who's Got the Will?) brings you a comedy that was nominated for over thirty awards during its long run in Los Angeles. When Peggy, a good Christian woman, hits her head on the sink and bleeds to death after tripping over her lover's wooden legs in a motel room, chaos erupts in Winters, Texas. . "[This play by] the master of Texas Comedy ... is maybe funnie...

Comedy / 2m, 2f / Single Set In Skin Deep, a large, lovable, lonely-heart, named Maureen Mulligan, gives romance one last shot on a blind-date with sweet awkward Joseph Spinelli; she's learned to pepper her speech with jokes to hide insecurities about her weight and appearance, while he's almost dangerously forthright, saying everything that comes to his mind. They both know they're perfect for each other, and in time they come to admit it. They were set up on the date by Maureen's sister Sh...

Dramatic Comedy / 6f Showtime at First Baptist is the sequel to the hugely popular and widely produced First Baptist of Ivy Gap. First Baptist of Ivy Gap's 100th anniversary picnic was a smashing success, except for one little thing: the bolt of lightning that struck the church's steeple, igniting a fire that destroyed the sanctuary and so much more. In the wake of the disaster, key women of the church - led by Edith, the pastor's take-charge wife - gather in what's left (the fellowship ha...

Drama / Casting: 1m, 1f / Scenery: Interior This fine work in the Pendragon cycle of plays enjoyed a sold out, critically acclaimed production at the world famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The play is set in a beach bungalow. The young man who lives there has pulled a lost young woman from the ocean. Soon, she finds herself trapped in his life and torn between her need to come to rest somewhere and her certainty that all human relationships turn eventually into nightmares. The struggle betw...

ComedyCharacters: 4 male, 7 femaleSimple Set Two one-act plays by internationally known playwright Jean Lenox Toddie celebrating with poignancy and humor the struggle of the heart to find its way home. Eleven colorful characters range in age from a sassy teen, to a middle-aged professor, to an old woman waiting for a bus. What bus? The bus for which we all will wait.Plays include Did You Hear the Owl Last Night? and Once Again in Glyn Kerrie.

Play with Music / Characters: 6m, 3f, with doubling Rocket City, Alabam', a play with songs, captures a lost, true-life episode in the history of the American South, presenting a hushed-up story, colorful Southern characters, and several famous songs of the region- blues, spirituals and gospel. At the dawn of the Cold War, the early 1950's, a young, brash, Army major, Hamilton Pike, brings famed German rocket scientist and former Hitler employee Wernher Von Braun to Huntsville, Alabama, a cot...

Comedy Characters: 14 male, 8 female (more if desired.) . Unit set.. In a land where the rich get richer and the poor are starving, Prince John wants to cut down Sherwood Forest to put up an arms manufactory, a slaughterhouse and a tennis court for the well to do. This bawdy epic unites elements of wild farce and ancient mythologies with an environmentalist assault on the arrogance of wealth and power in the face of poverty and hunger using feeble and insane jesters, a demonic snake oil salesma...

Mystery / 1m, 5f / Simple unit set This psychological drama is a thinking person's Gothic thriller, a dark comedy that is both funny and frightening. On a snowy night, Inspector Ruffing is called to a remote house to investigate the headlong plunge of Patrick Roarke down the main staircase. He becomes involved in the lives of five alluring and dangerous women: Marcy, the beautiful Viennese governess with a past; Mrs. Ravenscroft, the flirtatious lady of the manor; Gillian, her charming but poss...

Contents: Dutch Interiors French Gold Rat Wives Rhiannon The Rooky Wood

DramaCharacters: 2 male, 1 female. Unit Set. Peter Quint is sent by his lifelong employer, the Master of Bly, to be the servant in charge of a remote English country house where Miss Jessel has just arrived to be governess to the orphaned children of the master's brother. The ultimately deadly love triangle that results forms a darkly funny and erotic Gothic love story. These are the lovers who haunt Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. Quint is brilliant, sardonic and angry, a man of great abil...

Dramatic Comedy / 9m, 8f (cross casting and double casting possible) Inspired by Pygmalion, Shaw's classic drawing room tale of language and class division, and its musical incarnation, My Fair Lady, the play tells the story of one Eliza Doolittle-the daughter of a hardscrabble Mississippi pig farmer-who sells homemade pork rinds at the Tri-Counties Fair and Livestock Show, and dreams of someday working as a waitress at "one of those nice downtown barbecue restaurants where all the tourists g...

Romantic Farce. Nick Hall . Characters: 2 male, 2 female. Interior Set . Sir Peter, has planned a dinner for two. His companion is Viola, a young chorus girl. But he's forgotten it's his wedding anniversary-- his wife, Lady Alexandra, comes home early and aided by the butler, Medford, turns Sir Peter's evening into a shambles. Medford interrupts the dinner disguised as a policeman-- then Lady Alexandra appears in a Salvation Army uniform-- then Medford in the guise of a gypsy violinist-- and f...

Little Theatre. Mystery . Marcia Kash and Douglas E. Hughes. Characters: 3 male, 3 female . Interior Set. Six people have come in secret on Halloween to play a murder mystery game at a rustic island cottage. Invited by writer Charles Prince, they appear set for a weekend of fun until ghosts from the past begin to haunt the proceedings and it becomes clear that all is not as it seems. The game takes on a sinister dimension when guests begin to die and the remaining players realize that they are ...

Demonology, MacNaughton's Dowry, Netherlands, The Bohemian Seacoast

Mystery Comedy / Characters: 4 males, 5 females Set Rewuirements: Interior. Peter Knight is grinding out a murder story in an old mansion where another author was murdered years before. A weird electrical storm effects a cosmic snafu and his characters come to life. There's the lovely ingenue, the trusty butler, a feisty character woman, a dauntless hero, a fascinating "other woman," the always pregnant serving girl, and the wily lawyer waiting for midnight to read the will. Peter looses control...

Comedy Drama / 13m, 4f / Int. w. inset. Kirk Douglas played on Broadway as a charming rogue who contrives to serve a short sentence in an airy mental institution rather in a prison. This, he learns, was a mistake. He clashes with the head nurse, a fierce artinet. Quickly, he takes over the yard and accomplishes what the medical profession has been unable to do for twelve years; he makes a presumed deaf and dumb Indian talk. He leads others out of introversion, stages a revolt so that they can...

7m, 8f / Drama / Simple Set / David Rimmer, a Pulitzer Prize finalist author for Album, originally wrote New York to raise funds for volunteer psychiatrists dedicated to helping the overwhelming number of patients psychologically affected by 9/11. Depicting the reactions of 15 individuals to the events of that day, the characters all speak to a central psychiatrist. The play has been performed at theaters, schools and colleges throughout New York and the Northeast to great acclaim,called "brilli...

Farce / 3m, 5f with doubling /Interior Bridget and her Grandmother are about to become roommates. However, what Bridget saw as a unique opportunity to stay with her favorite Nana in New York for the summer quickly turns into an experience she'll never forget. It seems her sweet Grandma is running an illegal boutique from her apartment, selling hand-made naughty knickers to every senior citizen in the five borough area! Will Bridget be able to handle all the excitement? Will her Nana get a...

Full Length, Comedy / Characters: 3m, 2f / Interior set / A super-macho business executive suddenly has problems in the bedroom with his long-term wife and mother of his grown children. Failure in any part of his life has never been an option for him. So he recruits his wife into solving the problem through the "Live Your Fantasy" sex-therapy technique pioneered by Dr. Leopold Baumgartner. The wife discovers the dominatrix/diva that has been buried beneath the gracious hostess, and they blackmai...

2m, 2f / Comedy / Simple Set "I remember my first sexual experience. I was alone at the time!" (Story #6509) "I still have the Metallica shirt he wore that night." (Story #23960) "File mine under clumsy and awkward!" (Story #4294) My First Time features four actors in hysterical and heartbreaking stories about first sexual experiences written by real people. In 1998, a decade before blogging began, a website was created that allowed people to anonymously share their own true stories...

Drama / 11m, 7f, 7 children / Unit set This faithful adaptation brings the wonderful romantic novel's profoundly human characters and its expansive view of 19th century American frontier life vibrantly to the stage. The play celebrates Antonia's story and her extraordinary delight in the happenings of daily life. It moves from the raw hardships of her immigrant family's first year as settlers on the plains through her joyful and rebellious youth to her fulfillment as a farm wife and mother. ...

Full Length / Comedic Mystery / 4m, 3f / Interior The year is 1923 and audience members are passengers on board the HMS Victoria as it crosses the English Channel. The famous Inspector Clurrot has tracked down a homicidal mastermind hiding out on board. Meanwhile, the ship is the vessel of matrimony for the Contessa Follette and John D. Rothchild - a marriage encouraged through financial need and murderous greed. But not everything is as it seems, and it turns out that the English Channel isn't...

Full Length, Drama w/music / 18m, 5f, extras /Int./5 Exts. This German play was written in 1939 and was first produced in Zurich in 1941. In America, it was published in English right away (1941, by New Directions) but did not reach Broadway till 1963 - in a memorable production directed by Jerome Robbins and starring Anne Bancroft. It had, of course, by that time been produced to much acclaim all over the world. When Bertolt Brecht directed the play in Munich (1950), Eric Bentley, Assista...

Dramatic Comedy Characters: 3 male, 3 female. Rural New England, just before Reagan's second term. Meg and Ben are a creditor away from losing their family farm. To the rescue flies a high-powered businessman - in a private chopper no less - offering a tidy sum for a taste of farm life and the pure, raw milk that goes with it. Even before locavores roamed the earth, "back to the land" was hardly as simple as its promise; livestock and humans aren't known for behaving as expected. And ...

Comedy/Drama / 3 m. / Simply suggested sets Charles Durning, Dan Lauria and James Handy starred at Westport Country Playhouse of this portrait of up and coming Mafia soldiers: Bobby who does as he's told and never questions the legendary Boss and Max who is haunted by the screams of people they've killed. They whack the wrong guy in Grand Central Station and are seen driving to Vermont to confess their error. Short scenes chronicle the drive; settings en route are easily suggested with set pi...

Dramatic Comedy / 1m, 1f / Winner of the John Gassner Playwriting Contest and the Princeton Players One Act Playwrighting Contest. This is a story of a zestful, youthful courtship. She is 68 and he is 79. They put their moves on each other in a minuet that is a joy to behold. Published with A Scent of Honeysuckle

Dramatic Comedy. . Characters: 2 male, 1 female. Interior Set. Thomas Hanratty, lifelong resident of Hell's Kitchen and once the most dangerous white cab driver in New York, was blinded eight years ago in a drunken accident and is fading into a routine of self pity and alcohol. His bartender and only friend, who was partly responsible for the accident, is moving to Vermont with a new lady friend, but he can't abandon Tom. He recruits an unattractive, slightly handicapped volunteer reader from...

Drama / 2m, 1f / Using a cast of three to play 40 sharply drawn characters, this bold work of penetrating intelligence is based on the fanciful, explosive idea that a German Chancellor might, as an act of redemption, invite six million Jews to Germany and promise them citizenship and jobs. A resulting scenario unfolds that explores the effects of the policy on Jews and Gentiles with widely varying outlooks: an out of work Jewish dock worker from Massachusetts who brings his Irish wife and his so...

Comedy / 3m, 3f / Areas / La Gringa is about a young woman's search for her identity. María Elena Garcia goes to visit her family in Puerto Rico during the Christmas holidays and arrives with plans to connect with her homeland. Although this is her first trip to Puerto Rico, she has had an intense love for the island and even majored in Puerto Rican Studies in college. Once María is in Puerto Rico, she realizes that Puerto Rico does not welcome her with open arms. The majority of the Puerto Rica...

Comedy / Characters: 3 males, 5 femalesSet Requirements: Interior. The marriage of Rupert and Sarah is on the rocks and their friends Charles and Madge, both of whom are lawyers, agree to handle the divorce. After the curtain has been up a few minutes, Rupert forgets his lines, has a brain storm and threatens to kill Charles in full view of the audience because he's been having an affair off stage, with Rupert's real wife, Madge. Quite true as it happens. The rest of the cast try to ignore the i...

Comedy / 1m, 1f / This delightful comedy which starred the authors on Broadway is about Theda Blau, a failed actress, health food nut, analysand and would-be playwright who wants to find love and success in New York, and Vito Pignoli, a hugely successful TV commercial director. By holding him hostage in her apartment on a snowy Christmas Eve, she somehow manages to convince him to be her partner both in on the page and off.

Dramatic Comedy / Flexible casting: 2-5m, 2-5f This brilliant collection of Horovitz's newest one-act plays can be mixed and matched to form several "theme" evenings. For example, nine of these plays formed the highly-successful off-Broadway show "Israel Horovitz's New Shorts": The Bridal Dance, Affection In Time (The Prologue), The Fat Guy Gets The Girl, Beirut Rocks, The Audition Play, The Hotel Play, Cat-Lady, Inconsolable and The Race Play . Additionally, six of these plays were joined to...

Comedy5mWhat "The Irish Curse" is - and how it manifests itself - is the raw centerpiece of this wicked, rollicking and very funny new play. From its blistering language to its brutally honest look at sex and body image, The Irish Curse is a revealing portrait of how men, and society, define masculinity. In doing so, it dares to pose the fundamental question that has been on the minds of men since the beginning of time: "Do I measure up to the next guy?" Size matters to a small group of Iris...

Comedy. Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore. Characters: 3 male, 3 female. Single set. This wild bedroom farce involves infidelity, double standards, midnight rendezvous and a hungry bear. Danny and Kathy halt their night of sultry passion when Kathy reveals she is dating another man. Paul and Jennifer play a mad slapstick scene of frustration because she is reluctant to cheat on her husband. Bill and Mary, a couple about to celebrate their twenty ninth wedding anniversary are at odds: Mary yearn...

Comedy / 2f / Estelle Parsons and Lucie Arnaz starred on Broadway in this charmer set in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Grace, a feisty 90 year old cancer patient, has checked herself out of the hospital and returned to her beloved homestead cottage to die alone. The volunteer hospice worker who appears with the pain medication Grace willfully left behind is a Harvard MBA recently transplanted to this rural backwater from New York. Glorie is tense, unhappy and guilt ridden, her only child having been...

Little Theatre . Comedy. Flip Kobler and Cindy Marcus . Characters: 3 male, 3 female . Interior Set . Bethany is bright, strong, independent, beautiful and has zero self esteem. She has brought her finance, Floyd, and his mother, Verna, up to her cabin in the woods, the site of the hunting accident that killed Chance, her first husband. Much to her consternation, he or rather, his ghost is still there. Only Bethany can see him, so Floyd and Verna think she is crazy as she frantically tries to ge...