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Broadway Bookshelf — Acting Editions

Biographies, show books, musical scores, history, and must-read theatre books.
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You've Got Hate Mail (11/19/2011)

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...
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Wrong Window! (11/19/2011)

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...
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Woyzeck (Bentley) (11/19/2011)

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.
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Widdershins (11/19/2011)

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...
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Who's Under Where? (11/19/2011)

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...
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Where There's a Will There's a Relative (11/19/2011)

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...
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What Is Susan's Secret? (11/19/2011)

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...
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Welfarewell (11/19/2011)

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 ...
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Wedding Belles (11/19/2011)

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
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Two Gentlemen of Corona (11/19/2011)

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...
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Toyer (11/19/2011)

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...
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Tough Cookies (11/19/2011)

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...
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Tight Spot (11/19/2011)

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...
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Tell Me Another Story, Sing Me a Song (11/19/2011)

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...
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Sordid Lives (11/19/2011)

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...
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Skin Deep (11/19/2011)

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...
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Showtime at First Baptist (11/19/2011)

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...
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Seascape with Sharks and Dancer (11/19/2011)

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...
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Round and Round the Mulberry Bush (11/19/2011)

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.
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Rocket City, Alabam' (11/19/2011)

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...
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Robin Hood (11/19/2011)

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...
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Ravenscroft (11/19/2011)

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...
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Rat Wives And Other Plays (11/19/2011)

Contents: Dutch Interiors French Gold Rat Wives Rhiannon The Rooky Wood
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Quint and Miss Jessel at Bly (11/19/2011)

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...
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PIGmalion (11/19/2011)

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...
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Pastiche (11/19/2011)

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...
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Party to Murder, A (11/19/2011)

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 ...
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Palestrina and Other Plays (11/19/2011)

Demonology, MacNaughton's Dowry, Netherlands, The Bohemian Seacoast
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Out of Sight... Out of Murder (11/19/2011)

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...
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (11/19/2011)

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...
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New York (11/19/2011)

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...
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Nana's Naughty Knickers (11/19/2011)

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...
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My Husband's Wild Desires (11/19/2011)

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...
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My First Time (11/19/2011)

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...
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My Antonia (11/19/2011)

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. ...
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Murderous Crossing (11/19/2011)

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...
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Mother Courage and Her Children (11/19/2011)

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...
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Milk (11/19/2011)

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 ...
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Men in Suits (11/19/2011)

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...
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A Little Something for the Ducks (11/19/2011)

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
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Light Sensitive (11/19/2011)

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...
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Lebensraum (11/19/2011)

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...
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La Gringa (English Version) (11/19/2011)

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 Ri...
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Kindly Leave the Stage (11/19/2011)

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...
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It Had to be You (11/19/2011)

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.
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Israel Horovitz New Shorts (11/19/2011)

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...
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The Irish Curse (11/19/2011)

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...
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Having a Wonderful Time, Wish You Were Her (11/19/2011)

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...
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Grace & Glorie (11/19/2011)

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...
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Ghost of a Chance (11/19/2011)

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...
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Gertrude Stein and a Companion (11/19/2011)

Drama / 2f / This extraordinary play won first prize at both the Edinburgh Festival and the Theatre Festival in Sydney, Australia, as well as the Vita Award in South Africa as Best Play. The play begins just after the death of Gertrude Stein. Her ghost returns to Alice B. Toklas and the genesis and development of their relationship is richly portrayed. Mr. Wells has truly captured the feeling, art, music and literature of Paris of those years, when Pablo and Ernest and Henri and all of Gertrude'...
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Galway Girl, A (11/19/2011)

Drama / Characters:1 male, 1 femaleScenery: Interior. A couple sit at opposite ends of a table reminiscing about their life together. Each has a point of view and they rarely address each other directly. They are young to begin with, then middle aged, then old, then one dies. The anecdotes they relate are both humorous and tragic. Their lives seem wasted, yet the wife's muted final gesture of affection conveys a love that endured through years of bickering. A critical success in London, Ireland ...
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Funny Money (11/19/2011)

Little Theatre. Farce . Ray Cooney . Characters: 6 male, 2 female. Never has this master of farce been frenetically funnier. Henry A. Perkins, a mild mannered C.P.A, accidently picks up the wrong briefcase one full of money. Henry assumes it is illicit cash and he decides to keep it. Knowing that the former owner must have his briefcase, he rushes home to book one way fares to Barcelona. He tells his confused wife to leave everything behind; if she doesn't like Barcelona, they can go to Bali...
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Fresh Brewed: Tales from the Coffee Bar (11/19/2011)

Fresh Brewed is a collection of eleven plays, all of which take place in a coffee bar, all of which use the same set of two small tables and four chairs, and all of which can be performed by two male and two female actors in various combinations from a monologue to two quartets. If all of the plays are performed in one evening, there should be no black outs between plays. Simply changing the composition of the cast can signal the audience of movement between plays. On the hand, each play is writ...
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Frankenstein (11/19/2011)

Drama / Character: 4 male, 4 femaleScenery: Interior. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant young scientist, returns to his Swiss chateau to escape a terrible pursuer. No one can shake free the dark secret that terrifies him: not his mother, nor his fiancee, nor his best friend. Even the pleading of a gypsy girl accused of murdering Victor's younger brother falls on deaf ears, for Victor has brought into being a creature made from pieces of the dead. The creature tracks Victor to his sanctuary to dem...
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Farnsworth Invention (11/19/2011)

Drama<p>Characters: 15 male, 3 femaleIt's 1929. Two ambitious visionaries race against each other to invent a device called "television." Separated by two thousand miles, each knows that if he stops working, even for a moment, the other will gain the edge. Who will unlock the key to the greatest innovation of the 20th century: the ruthless media mogul, or the self-taught Idaho farm boy? The answer comes to compelling life in The Farnsworth Invention, the new play from Aaron Sorkin, creator of Th...
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The Fall of Heaven (11/19/2011)

Dramatic comedy. Cahracters: 3 male, 2 female. A hip and inventive new play by Walter Mosley, best-selling author of more than 25 books and most widely known for his popular Easy Rawlins mysteries, including <em>"Devil in a Blue Dress"</em>. Tempest Landry, a street-wise young man living in Harlem, unexpectedly finds himself at the Pearly Gates. When Saint Peter orders him to hell, the quick-witted Tempest refuses to go. A technical loophole forces heaven to send Tempest back to Ear...
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Elephant's Graveyard (11/19/2011)

Winner of the 2008 Keene Prize for Literature Winner of the 2008 David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award Characters: 10m, 3f, flexible casting (Roles may be played by any race or gender except when specified.) / Drama Elephant's Graveyard is the true tale of the tragic collision of a struggling circus and a tiny town in Tennessee, which resulted in the only known lynching of an elephant. Set in September of 1916, the play combines historical fact and legend, exploring the deep-seated ...
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Elephant’s Graveyard – Abridged Version (11/19/2011)

Drama / 10m, 3f -casting may vary / Simple Set Winner of the 2008 Keene Prize for Literature Winner of the 2008 David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award Elephant's Graveyard is the true tale of the tragic collision of a struggling circus and a tiny town in Tennessee, which resulted in the only known lynching of an elephant. Set in September of 1916, the play combines historical fact and legend, exploring the deep-seated American craving for spectacle, violence and revenge. This abri...
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Elephant Sighs (11/19/2011)

Comedy / 5m. Not long after moving to the small town of Randolphsburg, PA, uptight lawyer Joel Bixby is invited by Leo Applegate, an avuncular fast food connoisseur, to join a group of townsmen who meet in a ramshackle room at the edge of town. Leo has chosen Joel as a replacement for the late - and greatly beloved - Walter Deagon. Despite protesting that he's just not an organizational man, Joel finds himself mesmerized by Leo's ebullient manner and agrees to drop by - without ever asking just ...
Elephant Sighs Cover
Easter Monday (11/19/2011)

Dramatic Comedy / 2m, 1f / Interior An eccentric widower, Mack has been a stay-at-home dad for twenty years, his daily existence revolving around his son Billy. Not only can't he let go, Mack's convinced he's more needed than ever. First up is pulling Billy from a dead-end copy shop job and enrollment in culinary school-after all, he was a finalist in the Pillsbury Bake-off. Then Mack discovers that Billy, adopted from infancy, has contacted his birthmother, a Washington, DC secretary about t...
Easter Monday Cover
Drop Dead (11/19/2011)

Comedy / Characters: 7 male, 3 female Scenery: Interior . A cast of has been actors plan to revive their careers in Drop Dead!, a potboiler murder mystery directed by "Wonder Child of the Broadway Stage" Victor Le Pewe (a psychotic eye twitching megalomaniac). At the dress rehearsal the set falls, props break, and the producer and an actor are murdered. During the opening night performance, the murders continue. The remaining thespians must save the show and their careers, solve the mystery and ...
Drop Dead Cover
Dream of a Common Language (11/19/2011)

Drama / 2m, 3f, 1m child / This intriguing work produced at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and in New York was inspired by an actual incident: women were banned from the artists' dinner to plan the first Impressionist painting exhibit in 1874, even though works by women were to be shown. In the play, the dinner is at the home of Victor, a successful artist, and Clovis, an artist who no longer paints. After helping with the preparations and being excluded from the dining room, Clovis devises a "w...
Dream of a Common Language Cover
The Divine Sister (11/19/2011)

ComedyCharacters: 1 male, 5 femaleMultiple SetsThe Divine Sister is an outrageous comic homage to nearly every Hollywood film involving nuns. Evoking such films as The Song of Bernadette, The Bells of St. Mary's, The Singing Nun and Agnes of God, The Divine Sister tells the story of St. Veronica's indomitable Mother Superior who is determined to build a new school for her Pittsburgh convent. Along the way, she has to deal with a young postulant who is experiencing "visions," sexual hysteria amon...
The Divine Sister Cover
Die Mommie Die! (11/19/2011)

Comic melodrama. . Little Theatre. . Characters: 3 male. 3 female. . Interior set. . Newly revised! This comic melodrama evokes the 1960's movie thrillers that featured such aging cinematic icons as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner and Susan Hayward. Faded pop singer, Angela Andrews, is trapped in a corrosive marriage to film producer, Sol Sussman. In her attempt to find happiness with her younger lover, an out of work TV star, Angela murders her husband with the aid of a poison...
Die Mommie Die! Cover
The Diaries of Adam and Eve (11/19/2011)

Comedy . Characters: 1 male, 1 female . Exterior Set. Originally broadcast on American Playhouse, this delightful adaptation is set in a Victorian garden and is structured as a series of diary entries by Adam and Eve. The play also works as a reader's theatre piece. At first, Adam is puzzled by the new arrival in the garden and he is suspicious of her disturbing appetite for fruit. Eve, believing herself to be some sort of experiment, is curious about another experiment in the garden, perhaps s...
The Diaries of Adam and Eve Cover
Dew Point (11/19/2011)

Can a woman be friends with a womanizer - even if she once dated him herself? And if your best friend wants to date the guy, do you stand in her way? The Dew Point is a play about love and marriage, sex and friendship, authenticity and blackmail...and the lies we tell in order to stay honest. "...A comedy of sexual manners whose characters are funny yet sympathetic and complexly believable...The success of this deceptively labeled "romantic comedy" lies in the way it zeroes in on the way we ...
Dew Point Cover
Degas in New Orleans (11/19/2011)

Charaters: 3 male, 6 female . One Interior/Exterior Set . A historical drama that explores Edgar Degas' scandalous visit to New Orleans in 1872. Edgar Degas, the French Impressionist painter, is torn between helping his relatives in America and pursuing a career as a painter. Fame and family obligations come to a head when he discovers he is still in love with his sister-in-law, who is now pregnant and blind. As Edgar struggles with his own ethical conundrum, he discovers that his aggress...
Degas in New Orleans Cover
Established Price (11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Full Length / 4m. This timely comedy by the author of Split Second and Modigliani is a tale of white collar angst in this age of corporate takeovers. The central character, Frank Daniels played in regional productions by both Kenneth McMillan and Jason Robards, is the former general counsel for a cannibalized corporation and he does not intend to go gently into forced retirement. He refuses to pack, tears up the office, and tries to get his fellow executives to decline their golden parac...
Established Price
Escape To Freedom (11/30/-0001)

Drama, Historic, Full Length / 5m, 2f. Escape to Freedom is very useful in an educational context for both Black and White children as a tool to teach them about slavery-- and also about the importance of education. The story focuses on the boyhood of Frederick Douglass, born a slave and in later life an abolitionist and orator. Much of the plot centers on Fred's struggle to learn to read, the surest way to freedom. Eventually he attains his freedom and runs off disguised as a free sailor.
Escape To Freedom
Enjoy! (11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Full Length / 6m, 4f. From acclaimed Japanese director/playwright Toshiki Okada, Artistic Director of the internationally-lauded chelfitsch Theatre Company, comes a chronicle of post-college ennui and 21st Century relationships in Japan's Lost Generation. The static lives of several self-obsessed GenX comic book store clerks are thrown out of balance by the presence of a younger female co-worker, who rightly makes them question the meaning of their lives in a shifting socio-economic land...
Enjoy!
Enchanted Land, An (11/30/-0001)

Drama, Full Length / 8m, 5f. This steamy, tragic tale of love, jealousy, revenge and betrayal in Haiti is by the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Enchanted Land, An
Emma (11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Adaptation, Full Length / 6m, 6f. A highly theatrical adaptation of one of Jane Austen's greatest novels. Pledging never to marry, the mischievous Emma Woodhouse is nevertheless the "matchmaker of Highbury." Her newest project, Harriet Smith, has already received a proposal, but Emma insists she marry the eligible vicar Mr. Elton, while, an older family friend, Mr. Knightly, warns her to give up matchmaking. When Emma discovers Mr. Elton is more interested in her, she is forced to fend h...
Emma
Emergency & Through the Night (11/30/-0001)

Dramatic Comedy, Full Length / 1m. In Emergency, a Slave Ship emerges out of the Hudson River in front of the Statue of Liberty sending NYC into a frenzy. Emergency is an intricately woven, urgent, witty and moving exploration of our shared humanity and what it means to be free. An explosive play where rhythm, rhyme and remembrance rise. Through the Night is a timely and inspiring story of possibility and hope, weaving together a unique blend of humor, poetry, music, and drama. It portrays a co...
Emergency & Through the Night
Elephant's Graveyard: Abridged Version (11/30/-0001)

Drama, Full Length / 10m, 3f. Winner! 2008 Keene Prize for Literature Elephant's Graveyard is the true tale of the tragic collision of a struggling circus and a tiny town in Tennessee, which resulted in the only known lynching of an elephant. Set in September of 1916, the play combines historical fact and legend, exploring the deep-seated American craving for spectacle, violence and revenge. This abridged version, which runs about 40 minutes in length, is perfect for high schools looking to perf...
Elephant's Graveyard: Abridged Version
Elephant's Graveyard (11/30/-0001)

Drama, Full Length / 10m, 3f. Winner! 2008 Keene Prize for Literature Elephant's Graveyard is the true tale of the tragic collision of a struggling circus and a tiny town in Tennessee, which resulted in the only known lynching of an elephant. Set in September of 1916, the play combines historical fact and legend, exploring the deep-seated American craving for spectacle, violence and revenge.
Elephant's Graveyard
Elephant Sighs (11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Full Length / 5m. Not long after moving to the small town of Randolphsburg, PA, uptight lawyer Joel Bixby is invited by Leo Applegate, an avuncular fast food connoisseur, to join a group of townsmen who meet in a ramshackle room at the edge of town. Leo has chosen Joel as a replacement for the late - and greatly beloved
Elephant Sighs
Eight Plays From The Heartland (11/30/-0001)

Collection/Anthology. Strong roles for women and ample supplies of tears and laughs distinguish these short plays. This collection includes: Evelyn and the Environment 5:15 Greyhound Floating Island La Chienne in the Park Mustard Seed An Old Beagle Called Amour The Voyeur and the Widow You Don't Have to Go to Kansas City to Meet the Devil
Eight Plays From The Heartland
Egad, The Woman In White (11/30/-0001)

Melodrama, Full Length / 3m, 7f. This laugh oriented, old fashioned melodrama is based on Wilkie Collins' classic and it's wild, fast and funny. It features a disreputable (and hilarious) villain who dispatches his adversaries with nefarious ease and even seals his wife in a madhouse to steal her vast fortune! He battles a wicked countess in one of the most uproarious fight scenes ever staged! When all else fails, he engineers mock funerals. But he's scared of the mysterious "woman in white" who...
Egad, The Woman In White
Edith Wharton'S House Of Mirth, The (11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Period, Adaptation, Full Length / 5m, 5f. Based on the classic story that helped to establish Edith Wharton as the first great American woman novelist, this moving play vividly brings to the stage Lily Bart's flamboyant progress through the glorious whirl of New York's high society, circa 1905, and her tragic fall. The satirical love story is staged as a series of flashbacks over her coffin. Faithful to Edith Wharton's distinct style of dialogue, this dramatic version opened to acclaim i...
Edith Wharton'S House Of Mirth, The
Eat Your Heart Out (11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Full Length / 3m, 2f. Charlie is an out of work actor currently working as a waiter. The scene is a series of hilarious encounters in Manhattan restaurants both elegant and shabby. By changing the tablecloths in the course of the action, the basic setting of three tables and six chairs becomes another place. The action's uninterrupted and the comedy never stops. The other performers play several parts; the girl desperately trying to eat snails and oysters to please her fianc
Eat Your Heart Out
Easter Monday (11/30/-0001)

Dramatic Comedy, Full Length / 2m, 1f. An eccentric widower, Mack has been a stay-at-home dad for twenty years, his daily existence revolving around his son Billy. Not only can't he let go, Mack's convinced he's more needed than ever. First up is pulling Billy from a dead-end copy shop job and enrollment in culinary school
Easter Monday
Dusty and the Big Bad World (11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Full Length / 1m, 3f, 1 girl. Dusty and his animated friends hold a competition to find a model family based on letters written by children. The winning family will receive a visit from Dusty and will be filmed for an upcoming episode. Out of the 15,000 letters received, the producers pick Lizzie Goldberg-Jones and her family to be featured on the most popular animated PBS show in America. Her parents are exemplary role models
Dusty and the Big Bad World
Dust (11/30/-0001)

Drama, Mystery/Thriller, Full Length / 4m, 1f. Dust is an edge-of-your-seat thriller. Martin is an executive with money and a paunch. Zeke, a gifted young man torn down by drugs, is an ex-con with street smarts and a minimum wage position. Early one morning, in the fitness center of the Essex House, a battle-of-wills begins over the most trivial of requests. As described in The New York Times review: "Verbal sparring turns angry, posturing leads to entrenched positions, and out of nothing - out ...
Dust
Drop Dead (11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Mystery/Thriller, Full Length / 7m, 3f. A cast of has-been actors plan to revive their careers in "Drop Dead!," a potboiler murder mystery directed by "Wonder Child of the Broadway Stage" Victor Le Pewe (a psychotic eye twitching megalomaniac). At the dress rehearsal the set falls, props break, and the producer and an actor are murdered. During the opening night performance, the murders continue. The remaining thespians must save the show and their careers, solve the mystery and stay ali...
Drop Dead
Dream of a Common Language (11/30/-0001)

Drama, Full Length / 2m, 3f, 1 boy. Winner! 1995 Helen Hayes Awards including Best New Play. This intriguing work produced at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and in New York was inspired by an actual incident: women were banned from the artists' dinner to plan the first Impressionist painting exhibit in 1874, even though works by women were to be shown. In the play, the dinner is at the home of Victor, a successful artist, and Clovis, an artist who no longer paints. After helping with the prepara...
Dream of a Common Language
Dream Crust (11/30/-0001)

Drama, Full Length, Period / 3m, 3f, 1 boy. Frank Haynes, an earth loving farmer, has given up his hound-dogging and high times under the pressure of the family's admonition that "A man has got to get ahead." Haynes would be happy to do nothing but tend his farm and reap whatever profit it might generate. But he realizes that there are five mouths depending on him and the lure of big money available to him in a nearby big city factory too great to ignore. Set against a backdrop of the land-locke...
Dream Crust
Dramatis Personae (11/30/-0001)

Drama, Full Length / 4m, 7f. In April of 1946 the elderly Alison Armitage is sitting by her window. She is certain the young man she sees leaning against his black Chevy at the end of the lane is Death and that he has come for her. What is left of the Pendragon family is waiting downstairs to see her, but she refuses to let them in. As they wait they are forced to speak to each other for the first time in years, confronting some longstanding grudges and considering some looming dilemmas. Featuri...
Dramatis Personae
Dracula: The Musical? (11/30/-0001)

Musical, Comedy, Full length / 4m, 4f. At its New York City premiere, patrons stood in line in a blizzard for tickets. At its Australian premiere, every seat for every performance was sold, and one critic noted, "the performance was one of the most enjoyable I've seen . . . My only other experience of the Dracula play . . . was the one that Sir Robert Helpmann directed . . . I can honestly say I enjoyed this one much more. It exhibited a superb sense of humor." Melodic, rollicking and hilarious,...
Dracula: The Musical?
Dr. Magic: Six One Act Plays (11/30/-0001)

Collection/Anthology. Short Plays include: Homesick Dr. Magic Here She Is! Negative The Adoption When I was a Little Girl and My Mother Didn't Want Me
Dr. Magic: Six One Act Plays
Double Date (11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Short Play / The girls plan to outsmart the boys, but Uncle Clay and the boys learn what they are up to and give them a run for their money. The girls, who are from south of the Mason Dixon line, are not used to such discipline. A human and amusing play.
Double Date
Don't Tell Mother ! (11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Farce, Full Length / 3m, 5f. On the evening that timid librarian Cinnamon Schmidt and her mother are to entertain her fiance Hobart and his mother at serene family dinner, Cinnamon comes home in shock because she has witnessed a bank robbery and is the only one who can identify the crook. She confides her terror to chum Deedee Malone, not daring to tell her mother and then federal agent Joe Shimko arrives having gotten a tip that the robber, Orville Maddox, is en route to bump off the wi...
Don't Tell Mother !
Don't Say Goodbye, I'm Not Leaving (11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Full Length / 2m, 2f. Herb has just been admitted to the hospital with a non-specific illness where his wife, Edna, confronts him regarding a will, his options, and insists he see her brother, Bruce, a high-powered attorney. Herb is reluctant, but agrees to see Bruce who, during the confrontational visit, passes out and lapses into a coma. Bruce is now hospitalized and Herb appoints himself as his watch-dog to assure the medical "idiots" don't pull the plug. Herb and Edna invite Bruce's ...
Don't Say Goodbye, I'm Not Leaving
Don't Mention My Name (11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Full Length / 3m, 5f. An award winning playwright asks what you would do if you suffered temporary amnesia and stumbled into a bed and breakfast off season only to find you were expected for the week end. That is what happens to the leading man in this delightful comedy. The attractive real estate lady calls him by one name and the housekeeper by another. A business executive and his secretary appear with a confirmed reservation and call him by another name. The executive's wife surprise...
Don't Mention My Name
Don't Hug Me County Fair (11/30/-0001)

Musical, Comedy, Full Length / 3m, 2f. A Don't Hug Me County Fair is the summer sequel to the smash hit musical comedies Don't Hug Me and A Don't Hug Me Christmas Carol! It's summer time and the Bunyan County Fair is approaching, the biggest thing that's happened in Bunyan Bay since the winter carnival snowplow parade. This year the Bunyan County Fair means one thing to Gunner and Clara Johnson, owners of a little bar called The Bunyan; The Miss Walleye Queen Competition. Bernice, the pretty wai...
Don't Hug Me County Fair
Don't Hug Me Christmas Carol, A (11/30/-0001)

Musical, Comedy, Full Length / 3m, 2f. A hilarious spoof of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It's the smash hit sequel to the award-winning musical, Don't Hug Me. It's Christmas Eve in Bunyan Bay, Minnesota and cantankerous bar owner Gunner Johnson gets in an argument with his wife, Clara, tells her he's skipping Christmas, he storms out of the bar, goes snowmobiling across the lake, falls through the ice and goes into a coma. He comes back in his dream where he's visited by folk legend, Sven...
Don't Hug Me Christmas Carol, A
Don't Hug Me (11/30/-0001)

Musical, Comedy, Full Length / 3m, 2f. It's Fargo meets The Music Man (without the blood or the trombones). Oh, for cryin' in yer snow shoes! It's the coldest day of the year in Bunyan Bay when a slick karaoke salesman arrives at the bar and turns the locals' lives upside down. With its over the top songs and crazy characters, this Minnesota love story with singin' and stuff will have you laughing until the spring thaw! Don't Hug Me takes place in Bunyan Bay, Minnesota. Cantankerous bar owner, G...
Don't Hug Me
Done to Death (11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Full Length / 8m, 8f. Once famous mystery writers involve the audience as they apply their individual methods to solving various murders. They include a couple who write sophisticated murders, a young author of the James Bond school, a retired writer of the hard hitting method and an aging queen of the logical murder.
Done to Death
Doin' Time At the Alamo (11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Full Length / 2m, 5f. It's a hot July weekend at The Alamo, a woebegone motel that is directly across the street from a federal penitentiary in Texas. In this warm comedy, seven lonely, wise cracking characters "do time" between visits with loved ones in prison. They play cards, argue, order out for moo shu shrimp, plan a wedding and dream of love. At The Alamo, these prisoners of love take a final stand against loneliness and ultimately find freedom. Characters include the motel owner w...
Doin' Time At the Alamo
Dog Park: The Musical (11/30/-0001)

Musical, Comedy, Full Length / 3m, 1f. Follow Daisy the sassy Westie through her dating adventures with Itchy, Champ and Bogie at the hippest, hottest place in town: Central Bark, where every dog has his day, and love conquers all. Daisy has promised her BFF (Best Friend Forever) she'd give the dating scene one more chance. She meets Champ the Collie, a charming but full of himself show dog; Itchy, a "humperactive" Jack Russell terrier; and Bogie, the darkly mysterious Lab/mutt who sticks his ne...
Dog Park: The Musical

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