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Broadway Bookshelf — Acting Editions — Page 3

Biographies, show books, musical scores, history, and must-read theatre books.

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Acting Editions Books

Doctor Death

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Full Length Play, 3m, 7f. The author of I Shot My Rich Aunt sets this merry murder on a yacht in the French Riviera. The guests on board discover they are marked for a madman's murderous vengeance when Old Maid cards on which each is named and nastily described arrive. Can the malevolent mastermind be Linda Luscious, Victor Valor, bartender Margarita Martini, steward Queenie Quill, TV hostess Wendy Windy, shy secretary Portia Peck, sleazy Ritchy Raunchy, private eye Harry Hulk, math expe...

Doctor Death

Dix Tableaux

(11/30/-0001)

Dramatic Comedy, Full Length / 11m, 22f, 2boy(s), 3girl(s). The story of friendship between two women in their sixties is played out over the course of ten years, each year representing another reunion for Beverly Duggins and Addie Spool, two participants in a series of annual "tableaux" sponsored by the Museum of Dix, in a small city in the South. Within human diorama settings as simple as a frontier cabin porch or the cow stall of a local dairy barn, and as elaborate as the "Spit and Curl" bea...

Dix Tableaux

Division Street

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Full Length Play / 6m, 2f. Chris, a burnt out sixties radical, has settled in Chicago seeking obscurity as an insurance underwriter. He wants to forget his activist past, but is besieged by old cronies and unwanted new ones: a former Black militant, now a transexual city cop; his loopy ex-wife wife who speaks only the words of rock song cliches; a bomb wielding Serbian restauranteur; a former partner in radicalism who now rails agianst the "women's movement"; a prostitute who espouses th...

Division Street

Diviners, the

(11/30/-0001)

Drama, Full Length Play / 6m, 5f. Winner of the American College Theatre Festival, this marvelously theatrical play is the story of a disturbed young man and his friendship with a disenchanted preacher in southern Indiana in the early 1930s. When the boy was young he almost drowned. This trauma and the loss of his mother in the same accident has left him deathly afraid of water. The preacher, set on breaking away from a long line of Kentucky family preachers, is determined not to do what he does...

Diviners, the

Divine Sister, The

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Full Length Play / 1m, 5f. Nominee! Off Broadway Alliance Award for Best New Play The 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 ...

Divine Sister, The

Dividends

(11/30/-0001)

Dramatic Comedy, Full Length Play / 2m, 1f. Part memory play and part commentary on present relationship, Dividends is a warm and tender play about tradition, caring, change and love. How well does any grandson really know his grandfather? Dividends explores the generation gap between a struggling young artist and his grandfather who is in the hospital near the end of his life. Even though their relationship has always been distant, Neal finds himself forced to look after Pops and he learns a gr...

Dividends

Disappearance Of The Little Pigs, The

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Short Play / 8m, 8f. Nursery Land characters, both human and animal, coexist in this goofy 1940s spoof of classic film noir detective stories for grown-up kids. When her triplets disappear, Mrs. Pig hires detective Jack B. Nimble. Jack and his klutzy secretary Miss Muffet suspect B. B. Wolf. Characters from Humpty Dumpty and Henny Penny to Jack and Mrs. Sprat become involved in the investigation before Jack finds the missing boys and earns a dubious award: a kiss from a pig.

Disappearance Of The Little Pigs, The

Dirty Work at the Crossroads

(11/30/-0001)

Melodrama, Full Length / 3m, 7f. This play tells in laughable style the tear jerking story of Nellie Lovelace, an innocent country girl. Munro, the viper, has a wife in Ida Rhinegold, belle of the New Haven Music Halls, but that does not prevent him from pursuing Nellie and tearing her from the arms of her dying mother (whom he has poisoned). Nor does it prevent him from driving Adam Oakhart, the blacksmith's son, to drink, from blackmailing rich Mrs. Asterbilt, or from bewitching her daughter, ...

Dirty Work at the Crossroads

Die Mommie Die!

(11/30/-0001)

Melodrama, Full Length / 3m, 3f. A comic melodrama that evokes the 1960

Die Mommie Die!

Diaries of Adam and Eve, The

(11/30/-0001)

Dramatic Comedy, Full Length / 1m, 1f. Mark Twain's The Diaries of Adam and Eve is a uniquely American theatre piece, funny, beautiful, and deeply moving. Twain's Garden of Eden bursts with wit, laughter and the lyric poignance of the first love and the first loss. David Birney has crafted a light-hearted look at the world's first love story through the eyes of America's greatest humorist, Mark Twain. The Diaries is a uniquely American theatre piece. It was first produced for PBS American Playho...

Diaries of Adam and Eve, The

Diamond Studs

(11/30/-0001)

Musical, Full Length / 6m, 7f. A rip roaring country and western rendition of the Jesse James saga that even had New York critics stomping their feet to the music. Jesse James is seen as a frustrated Southerner at the end of the Civil War, hamstrung by Northern limits imposed on the losers' personal freedom. He turns to bank and train robbery, ultimately to be done in by his pal, Bob Ford, for the sake of reward and publicity.

Diamond Studs

Devil Of The 2Nd Stairs

(11/30/-0001)

Drama, Full Length Play / 9f. A remote priory is the center for local missionary activity. It is winter and the nuns are preparing for the burial of a deceased sister. As they are singing the Miserere, a warm wind rushes through the chapel and the dead nun sits up in her coffin and laughs! Thus begins for the community of nuns a week of terror, voodoo, suspicion, diabolical possession and attendant horrors.

Devil Of The 2Nd Stairs

Delightful Quarantine, A

(11/30/-0001)

Dramatic Comedy, Full Length Play / 5m, 10f, 2girl(s). An extra-terrestrial "invasion" of the suburban, middle-class community of Susqua Creek Acres, Pennsylvania places its human residents and visitors under sudden house-bound quarantine. Secrets get revealed, conflicts erupt and recede, long festering wounds are dressed, and friendships and relationships terminated or reinstated. Offering the rare opportunity for large ensemble casting, A Delightful Quarantine presents audiences with the inter...

Delightful Quarantine, A

Degas in New Orleans

(11/30/-0001)

Drama, Full Length Play / 6m, 5f. Winner! VCCA Award to Au Vilar France; Winner! Sewannee Writers Fellowship; Winner! Squaw Valley Fellowship; Winner! Invitation to Contemporary Theatre, London; Finalist! University Interscholastic League Texas competition for new plays Heralded by Southern Repertory Theatre as a star of their 25 year season, Degas in New Orleans explores the inner turmoil and conflict of Edgar Degas, the great French Impressionist painter, as he visits his New Orleans family to...

Degas in New Orleans

Deflores And Other Plays

(11/30/-0001)

Collection/anthology. Contents: Broadway Macabre Creatures Lurking in the Churchyard Deflores Doctor Faustus Gogol The Irish Girl Kissed in the Rain Wolfsbane

Deflores And Other Plays

Decisions Decisions

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Short Play / 3m, 1f. This funny and bittersweet play catches a moment in the life of Troy Watkins, an indecisive single woman in her thirties who lives alone in New York City. She meets an intriguing stranger in the park, a man who looks like a tramp but obviously is well educated. What has reduced him to his current state? Drugs? Financial difficulties? Crime? As they share thoughts and get to know each other, Troy decides to trust him. Is she right or wrong? The answer lies in a very f...

Decisions Decisions

Death By Golf

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Full Length Play / 2m, 2f. When an escaped convict, an anxious bride, a scheming new husband, and a suspicious attorney all convene at Grandpa's house--it doesn't take long for Grandpa to realize he has to reschedule his golf game. This lively combination of uproarious comedy and terrifying murder mystery revolves around the uncanny resemblance between escaped convict Tony and recent bridegroom Prescott (both played by the same actor). Newlywed Ashley's desperate attempt to figure out wh...

Death By Golf

Dear Love

(11/30/-0001)

Biography, Full Length Play / 1m, 1f. As the hit play Dear Liar drew on the life-long correspondence of Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, author Jerome Kilty uses the poems and letters of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, to present this compelling portrait of a couple whose words and love are legendary. First corresponding via letters, when Elizabeth thinks of Browning as merely "an acquaintance", his poetry moves her so deeply they eventually meet. Chastised by her stern father and ...

Dear Love

Dear Liar

(11/30/-0001)

Biography / 1m, 1f / Shining in the bewitching repartee between two great wits, Katharine Cornell and Brian Aherne played Mrs. Campbell and Shaw on Broadway. The play toured this hemisphere and Europe for two years before its return to Off-Broadway. It is a masterful compendium of badinage with Shaw and Mrs. Campbell in scenes of both confrontation and distancing. Here is Shaw in all his contradictions; he adores the actress, Mrs. Campbell, most ascetically, and persuades her to play in Pygmalio...

Dear Liar

Deadly Murder

(11/30/-0001)

Drama, Full Length Play / 2m, 11f. Nominee! 2008 Edgar Award for Best Play Camille Dargus has fought her way up from humble beginnings to a glittering Manhattan lifestyle. She has beauty, brains, wealth, and a successful career as a jewelry designer for the leading lights of New York society. She also has a penchant for attractive young men. One night at a society gala she meets Billy, a handsome young waiter, and brings him back to her Soho apartment. But there's more to Billy than meets the ey...

Deadly Murder

Dead Ringer

(11/30/-0001)

Dark Comedy, Full Length Play . 2m, 1f. Winner! 2005 BBC International Playwriting Contest Tyrus Cole, a horse trainer, lives on a ranch with his invalid sister Mary. Because he can't watch her during the day, Tyrus has Mary confined to a root cellar. When Dwight Foley arrives at the ranch seeking help with his horse, he and Mary fall in love and begin plotting the demise of Tyrus and their eventual escape. Their plan escalates and in the end, the three find themselves trapped in a complex web o...

Dead Ringer

Dead City

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Full Length Play / 3m, 4f. It's June 16, 2004. Samantha Blossom, a chipper woman in her 40s, wakes up one June morning in her Upper East Side apartment to find her life being narrated over the airwaves of public radio. She discovers in the mail an envelope addressed to her husband from his lover, which spins her raw and untethered into an odyssey through the city.... a day full of chance encounters, coincidences, a quick love affair, and a fixation on the mysterious Jewel Jupiter. Jewel,...

Dead City

Dawn

(11/30/-0001)

Drama, Full Length Play / 2m, 4f, 1a. Dawn revolves around Hampton, an abusive alcoholic who has completely alienated his wife and children. Can he stop drinking and make up for the past, even amidst some very dark revelations of incest and pedophilia? Dawn is one father's story of redemption and reconciliation

Dawn

David And Lisa

(11/30/-0001)

Drama, Full Length Play / 11m, 11f. Adapted from the book by Theodore Isaac Rubin and the Screenplay by Eleanor Perry. The award winning motion picture has been adapted for the stage with the utmost fidelity. It retells the strange, appealing and utterly fascinating story of two mentally disturbed adolescents: David, the only son of wealthy parents who is tortured by his mania against being touched, and Lisa, the waif with a split personality. One of her selves will speak only in childish rhymes...

David And Lisa

Daughters Of The Lone Star State

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy Del Shores 11 f. Int. This is the third of the Lowake, Texas series from the author of Daddy's Dyin' (Who's Got the Will?) and Cheatin'. It's the day before Christmas Eve and The Daughters of the Lone Star State are having their annual meeting. The old group is dying out, literally, so this year's effort to attract members is all out. When "white trash" and "coloreds" arrive, chaos erupts. This funny but biting play is a wonderful challenge for an all female ensemble. Nine characters ...

Daughters Of The Lone Star State

Darkside

(11/30/-0001)

Drama Ken Jones 3 m., 2 f., plus one m. or f. Unit set. Two American astronauts are stranded in a lunar landing module on the dark side of the moon while a third orbits in the command module. As they work with ground control toward rescue, flashbacks reveal their stories.

Darkside

Darkest Hour, The

(11/30/-0001)

Drama / 3m, 2f / One of the most powerful stories ever condensed into a one act play, The Darkest Hour tells the story of young John Madison, within four hours of his execution for murder, having been found guilty on circumstantial evidence. He is innocent, but has no way of proving it, as appearances have been too strongly against him. His sorrowing mother comes to pay her last visit before the State exacts its toll. He reiterates his innocence and relates the entire circumstances to her in thi...

Darkest Hour, The

Dark Sonnets of the Lady

(11/30/-0001)

2m, 2f Exterior The playwright was a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature This is Shaw's contribution to his country's national theatre, an imaginary adventure between William Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth. Will goes to the palace to meet the Dark Lady to whom he addressed his sonnets of love, only to find instead the Queen herself taking a walk before retiring. He is so fascinated by her - keeps writing down her bon mots - that he does not notice the approach of the Dark Lady, who is fu...

Dark Sonnets of the Lady

Damsel Of The Desert Or A Villain Foiled By Virtue

(11/30/-0001)

Melodrama Fred Carmichael 2 m., 3 f Int. After Melody's parents are taken by the angels, her grandmother mistakenly throws out her pitiful inheritance: a small pot of gold dust. Melody is pursued by an amnesiac villain, saved by the dauntless hero and enriched by the dirty water in the well (oil) in a riotous tale of loves lost and found.

Damsel Of The Desert Or A Villain Foiled By Virtue

Daddy's Dyin' (Who's Got The Will?)

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy 3m, 5f Interior "Set in a small Texas town in anytime, U.S.A., Daddy's Dyin' concerns the reunion of a family gathered to await the imminent death of their patriarch, who has recently suffered a physically as well as mentally disabling stroke. In essence, however, it is not the story of the impending demise of the father or of the drafting of his will, but of a rebirth of the spirit of the family unit. Without becoming ponderous, losing a sense of humor or pandering to timeworn cliches ...

Daddy's Dyin' (Who's Got The Will?)

Curse of Ravensdurn

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy Nick Hall 4 m., 3 f. Int Part three of Act I of THE CURSE OF RAVENSDURN - Six short plays by the author of Around the Clock and other popular plays tell the history of the most hideous, hilarious stately home in England. Ghosts, secret passages, romance, fortune hunters, big game hunters, stolen jewels, a heathen idol, a missing heir, faithful butlers, unfaithful butlers, murder, betrayal, Americans and thunder and lightning-lots of thunder and lightening-enliven these affectionate bu...

Curse of Ravensdurn

Curiosity Cat

(11/30/-0001)

TYA, Young Audience 6m, 4f, 6 m or f, plus extras

Curiosity Cat

Curate Shakespeare As You Like It, The

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy / 4m, 3f / This unusual piece is subtitled "The record of one company's attempt to perform the play by William Shakespeare". When the prolific Mr. Nigro was asked by a professional theatre company to adapt As You Like It so that it could be performed by a company of seven, he devised a completely original play about a rag tag group of players led by a dotty old curate who must present Shakespeare's play. The dramatic interest and the comedy derive from their hilarious attempts to imperson...

Curate Shakespeare As You Like It, The

Crooked

(11/30/-0001)

Dramatic Comedy/3F Fourteen year old Laney arrives in Oxford, Mississippi with a twisted back, a mother in crisis and a burning desire to be writer. When she befriends Maribel Purdy, a fervent believer in the power of Jesus Christ to save her from the humiliations of high school, Laney embarks on a hilarious spiritual and sexual journey that challenges her mother

Crooked

Creature Creeps!, The

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy Jack Sharkey. 4 m., 8 f. Int. This hilarious send up of the horror story genre has an ancient castle, creaking doors, a mad scientist, his misshapen assistant, a grim housekeeper, secret laboratory, shrieks from the depths of the cellar, disappearing villagers, an incredibly stalwart and stupid hero of sterling character, the scientist's absolutely dopey daughter, and so many laughs you'll lose count. The setting (designed for both proscenium and in the round performances) is the parl...

Creature Creeps!, The

Crazy And A Half

(11/30/-0001)

Comedies 2 m., 2 f. to play 12 characters. Ints. Six insanely hilarious and touching short plays take a sly look at therapists, patients and the way love drives everyone just a little over the edge. The first three, collectively called New York Crazy, deal with two therapists fighting for the only hour left in their shrink's day, a divorced couple struggling over custody of their dog Harry, and a shy Mafia wife demanding, with gun in hand, that her therapist make her happy. California Crazy ...

Crazy And A Half

Crawl, Fade to White

(11/30/-0001)

Dramatic Comedy 2m, 3f Simple Set A scream is heard throughout the stratosphere. It is the voice of the lamp. Louise is selling this expensive family heirloom to keep her daughter April in school and cease her more sordid "consultant" profession. April rushes home with lover in tow to halt the proceedings and save the lamp, but it has been intercepted by a quiet and bizarre middle-aged couple with a haunting secret.

Crawl, Fade to White

Couple Of Blaguards, A

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy 2m Bare stage A Couple of Blaguards, a two-man show by literary greats Frank and Malachy McCourt, is a bubbling stew of their well-known humor with a dash of poignancy to sharpen the flavor. A comedic springboard for Angela

Couple Of Blaguards, A

Count Dracula

(11/30/-0001)

Mystery Comedy Int. w. inset. This is a witty version of the story of a suave vampire whose passion is sinking teeth into the throats of young women. There are many surprising but uncomplicated stage effects including mysterious disappearances, secret panels, howling wolves and bats that fly over the audience. Magically, Dracula vanishes in full view of the spectators.

Count Dracula

Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick, A

(11/30/-0001)

Drama 3m, 2f A Cool Dip offers glimpses into the lives of Abebe, a young Ethopian man with a passion for the unlikely combination of Christianity and ecology, and the family that houses him during his college studies in Maryland. Through their interactions, the play uncompromisingly tackles the issues of drought and social injustice, combining a realistic evocation of human emotion with the fantastical to bring attention to the scarcity of something we so often take for granted: water.

Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick, A

Contempt of Court

(11/30/-0001)

Interactive Comedy Interior Contempt of Court is a new non-mystery interactive comedy from the inventor of the interactive dinner theater. It

Contempt of Court

Confessions of a Dirty Blonde

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore 6 m., 2 f. plus1 lion. Int. Get the boxer shorts, wigs and size ten pumps! The masters of modern farce are back with an outrageously zany comedy. The year is 1962. Living legend Lillian Lamour, a Mae West like sex siren, comes out of seclusion for a one night tribute at Carnegie Hall. While recreating her famous 1933 Time Magazine cover, a lion bites her world famous derriere exposing, among other things, that she is a he. Now Hollywood's best kept sec...

Confessions of a Dirty Blonde

Competition Piece

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy, Short Play John Wells 10-21 m/f Bare stage. This clever comedy is an ideal high school competition play. Three groups of students are preparing for a drama competition. One has lots of rehearsal time and chooses a romance. The meatheads decide to do a typical teen problem play. The arty clique wants to do a one act version of King Lear as a Japanese Noh drama. Winner of several competitions, this play is certain to delight your students, your audience and those hard to please judges.

Competition Piece

Company Of Wayward Saints

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy Jules Tasca 6 m., 4 f. (doubling possible) Bare stage. Six lusty commedia dell'art plays bring traditional characters like Harlequin, Pantalone and Punch into modern times. The seven deadly sins come to life with loads of laughs and audience participation. "Women gasped. Men guffawed. Children squealed and pointed. It was great!"-- Valley Review. See Index under individual titles for descriptions: Love Bite, Cupidosis, False Prophets, Peeping Punch, The Marriage of Don Juan and Pantal...

Company Of Wayward Saints

Commedia Americana

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy Jules Tasca 6 m., 4 f. (doubling possible) Bare stage. Six lusty commedia dell'art plays bring traditional characters like Harlequin, Pantalone and Punch into modern times. The seven deadly sins come to life with loads of laughs and audience participation.

Commedia Americana

Coming Apart

(11/30/-0001)

Full Length, Romantic comedy 2 m., 2 f. Int. From the author of Exit the Body and Out of Sight . . . Out of Murder comes a funny, refreshing and delightful romantic comedy which opens with the Kittridges saying simultaneously, "I want a divorce!" Both are conceited and rightly so: Colin is a successful humor columnist and Frances an equally successful romance novelist. There is rivalry between them and although they are still in love, each is too stubborn to give an inch. Stage right features...

Coming Apart

Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

(11/30/-0001)

Full Length, Drama 1m, 8f Int. In a small town dime store in West Texas, the "Disciples of James Dean" gather for their twentieth reunion. Now middle-aged women, they were teenagers when Dean filmed Giant two decades ago in nearby Marfa. One of them, an extra in the film, has a child whom she says was conceived with Dean during the shoot. The ladies' congenial reminiscences mingle with flash backs to their youth; then the arrival of a stunning but familiar stranger sets off a series of confro...

Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

Comanche Cafe and Domino Courts

(11/30/-0001)

Short Plays, Drama Ints. Comanche Cafe: 2 f In the late 1930's outside the seedy "Comanche Cafe", two waitresses pass the time: the older, Mattie recalls a fling; Ronnie, a regretful virgin, plans a bright future... Domino Courts: 2 m, 2 f Four years later, at a tourist cabin in the Oklahoma dust bowl, Floyd (now married to waitress Ronnie) and Roy, former bank robbers and self-proclaimed "Hot Grease Boys", meet up for an ill-fated reunion.

Comanche Cafe and Domino Courts

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