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Broadway Bookshelf — Acting Editions — Page 5

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

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Acting Editions Books

Black Jack: The Thief of Possession

(11/30/-0001)

Full Length, Southern Comedy CharacterS: 2 male, 4 female. Unit Set. Blackjack follows an eccentric Southern family as it is squeezed into the close quarters of a Mississippi cruise ship for the New Year's holiday. Kaitlyn is convinced that she is channeling the poet Baudelaire, and certain that her husband is having an affair with a larger-than-life ship entertainer. Irene, the matriarch of the family, suspects a rift in her daughter's marriage. Her sexy maid sets her sights on the grandson, a...

Black Jack: The Thief of Possession

Birthday And Nobody

(11/30/-0001)

Collection of two plays. In Birthday, an anxious young woman slips away from a unwelcoming birthday party in a bar only to discover a stranger sitting in the other room. Confiding old secrets and past mistakes as the party rages nearby, they find they may have a chance to forgive themselves and each other. In Nobody six people come together, each for their own reasons, at a restaurant on the Lower East Side. Obsessively going over the events of the day, they grasp at trying to come to terms wit...

Birthday And Nobody

Bill W. and Dr. Bob

(11/30/-0001)

Drama / 3m, 3f (w/doubling) / Unit set Newly revised edition! From the author of the best-selling novel, The House of God, this critically acclaimed version which played Off-Broadway in 2007, tells the amazing story of the two men who pioneered Alcoholics Anonymous, and of their wives, who founded Al Anon. During the roaring '20s, New York stockbroker Bill Wilson rides high on money, fame, and booze. In '29, both he and the market crash and he becomes a hopeless drunk. Dr. Bob Smith, a surgeon ...

Bill W. and Dr. Bob

Big Black Box, The

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy / 1m, plus 1 offstage voice / In this frighteningly funny parable of a modern man who puts all of his eggs into the wrong basket and then falls into that basket, the gullible Arnold is lured into conversation with a mysterious black box. The box tricks him out of his possessions and ultimately uses them to ensnare him. Arnold nearly escapes, but the box plays on his weaknesses to trap him inescapably.

Big Black Box, The

Beware The Man Eating Chicken

(11/30/-0001)

Farce / 2m, 3f, with doubling / Betty, wanting to be a good mother to her son William, devises a plan to Make Him Bigger and Make Him a Winner. She enters William in the “Fattest Man in the Universe

Beware The Man Eating Chicken

Best Christmas Pageant Ever, The

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy / All Groups / 4m, 6f, plus 8 boys and 9 girls / In this hilarious Christmas tale, a couple struggling to put on a church Christmas pageant is faced with casting the Herdman kids - probably the most inventively awful kids in history. You won't believe the mayhem - and the fun - when the Herdmans collide with the Christmas story head on! This delightful comedy is adapted from the best selling book and the only story ever to run twice in McCall's Magazine. / "One of the best Christmas stor...

Best Christmas Pageant Ever, The

Beside Yourself

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy / 2m, 2f / The ultimate mistaken identity comedy! Four actors each play two parts twins. Some married, some single, all amusingly characterized are at a motel for a study of human behavior. What a study! It takes only one twin wanting an extra marital fling to set off a hilarious chain reaction. Not only is there predictable, farcical confusion, but also a stunning surprise. A comic tour de force about who we are now. "Takes the mistaken identity ploy, gives it an imaginative contem...

Beside Yourself

Bermuda Avenue Triangle

(11/30/-0001)

2m, 4f / This outrageous comedy by the authors of Lovers and Other Strangers and other uproarious hits starred Nanette Fabray and the authors on Broadway. It concerns the adventures of a Jewish widow and an Irish widow whose successful daughters move them to Las Vegas, where they share a retirement village condo. On an excursion, they are saved from a mugger by a charming if not quite sober gambler who is short on cash. They allow him to curl up on the living room floor and he manages to sweet t...

Bermuda Avenue Triangle

Bequest, The

(11/30/-0001)

Comic drama / 3m, 3f / Eyebrows rise in a small town in Wisconsin when a notorious playboy dies leaving a large bequest to a local resident, the lovely and beloved wife of a local newspaper reporter. She refuses to explain why this windfall has come her way. "A polished miniature from a playwright better known for his blockbusters ... a wicked, witty look at such piquant matters as male female politics, the secret nature of women, and that little green demon known as retroactive jealousy. In the...

Bequest, The

Bent

(11/30/-0001)

Drama / 11m / Simple sets / In 1934 Berlin on the eve of the Nazi incursion, Max, a grifter and his lover Rudy are recovering from a night of debauchery with a SA trooper. Two soldiers burst into the apartment and slit their guest's throat, beginning a nightmare odyssey through Nazi Germany. Ranked lower on the human scale than Jews, the men as awoved homosexuals, flee. Desperate and on the run, Max asks his own "discreetly" homosexual Uncle Freddie for help as the older man offers little more t...

Bent

Bench In The Sun, A

(11/30/-0001)

Harold and Burt, longtime friends, live in a retirement home and spend their days on a bench in the garden bickering. A once famous actress has just moved in, giving them something new to argue over. When they learn that the home is about to be sold and they will have to find a new residence, the three join forces to prevent this upsetting development. "Very wise, very moving, but most of all, very funny."-Mel Brooks. . "A sunny comedy...it charms throughout."-Stamford Advocate.

Bench In The Sun, A

Belles

(11/30/-0001)

This is a play in 2 acts and 45 phone calls. The six Walker sisters hail from Memphis, but now they are scattered all over the country. Only Peggy still lives in Memphis, where she cares for Mama. When the play begins, Peggy is phoning her sisters to tell them that Mama is in the hospital. Nothing serious she just ate some bad tuna. An intriguing story of vivid characters and involving conflicts emerges in the ensuing phone calls among the sisters. Your audiences will love this endearing play ...

Belles

Belle Of Amherst

(11/30/-0001)

Biographical drama / A play based on the life of Emily Dickinson . Characters: 1 female . Interior Set. The Belle of Amherst delicately explores the life of America's greatest woman poet at various stages in her experience from the age of 15, when she was full of hope and success, until she died at 56, a virtual recluse with her door closed against society. Her life is recreated with liberal excerpts from her poetry and by the method of her playing the roles of her father, teacher and fr...

Belle Of Amherst

Bedrooms

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy. Plays include: Alan, Betty and Riva (1 male, 2 females) Alan gets his mistress Betty to agree to join him in a menage a trois with Riva, a hooker who calls herself a sex therapist. Betty gets cold feet and acquiesces only when Alan convinces her it will help him make the decision to finally leave his wife. Afterward, Betty is depressed and, when she realizes Alan still isn't going to leave his wife, she threatens suicide. . Bill and Laura (3 males, 3 females) Bill and Laura hav...

Bedrooms

Beckett at Greystones Bay

(11/30/-0001)

Short Play, Drama Characters: 1 male. One exterior set or bare stage. A young writer faces love, death, and the challenges of creating a joyful life. Setting: Rocky coast of Ireland in the 1930's.

Beckett at Greystones Bay

Beauty and the Beast. Really.

(11/30/-0001)

Children's musical Characters: 3 male, 4 female . Set: Exterior and Interior . Unexpected and hilarious twists make this version of the classic an entirely different romp for the whole family. The cast of seven play nine roles: Beauty, The Beast, Father, Mother, Stepsister, Boyfriend, a hound dog, a theatrical entrepreneur and a hopelessly inept tap dancer whose thankless job is to distract the audience during the scene alterations. There is only a single set that ingeniously convert...

Beauty and the Beast. Really.

Beau Jest

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy / Characters: 4 male, 2 female. Interior Set. Sarah is a nice Jewish girl with a problem: her parents want her married to a nice Jewish boy. They have never met her boyfriend, a WASP executive named Chris Kringle. She tells them she is dating a Jewish doctor and they insist on meeting him. She plans a dinner party and, over the heated protests of Chris, employs an escort service to send her a Jewish date to be Dr. Steinberg. Instead, they send Bob Schroeder, an aspiring actor who agrees...

Beau Jest

Beast With Two Backs

(11/30/-0001)

In Greenwich Village in the late 1920s Al, an artist, moves into a rooming house on Macdougal Street and finds himself being pulled deeper and deeper into the lives of its inhabitants. Above him live Mary Margaret, a lost actress from Ohio, and her philandering poet boyfriend, Jem. Al meets Mary Margaret when she comes home drunk one night and blunders into his bed. He falls in love with her. The landlord, McLish, keeps bursting into Al's room to help him with his romance. McLish, a failed write...

Beast With Two Backs

Beanie and the Bamboozling Horror Machine

(11/30/-0001)

This highly anticipated sequel to Beanie and the Bamboozling Book Machine has Beanie once again trying to win the science fair, but this time with his new and improved book machine! But something nasty is afoot in Bookworld and an evil mastermind wants to turn everyone there into an obedient zombie! Not only are the original fairytale characters (Hansel & Gretel, Snow White, Dorothy) released from their stories, but also villains like Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, Mr. Hyde, and, ...

Beanie and the Bamboozling Horror Machine

Beanie and The Bamboozling Book Machine

(11/30/-0001)

Fantasy / 13 m.& f. / Beanie Boren, a science wiz who is not keen on reading, has designed a book reading machine for the science fair. It combines a computer, a mini video cam and a contraption of his own design to enable one to read three books at once. Unfortunately, the machine is neither user friendly nor bug free. When Beanie turns it on, lights flash, thunder booms and out pop the witches from Snow White, Hansel and Gretel and the The Wizard of Oz, each set to wreak havoc! Beanie must get...

Beanie and The Bamboozling Book Machine

Be a Good Little Widow

(11/30/-0001)

Dramatic Comedy / 2m, 2f / Interior / Young wife Melody has never been to a funeral

Be a Good Little Widow

Barking Sharks

(11/30/-0001)

A solid hit with diverse audiences in Gloucester, New York City and Fairbanks, this startling town and country drama is built around the son of a Gloucester fisherman who finds himself, at age forty, living in New York City where he runs a hip ad agency in Tribeca. He dreams of his roots: of being a fisherman in the waters off Massachusetts. When he does follow his dream back to Gloucester, he brings havoc into the lives of friends and family. "Harrowing.... A sweeping epic."—Boston Herald ...

Barking Sharks

Banker's Dilemma

(11/30/-0001)

Farce / 2m, 2f / Banker Van Bludgeon roars into Widder Twilly's store to collect the money owed him, or bounce her and her son, Norman, out into the street. The stagecoach from Ponca City deposits a veiled and hysterical young maiden-- Dorothea-- into the Twilly store. Norman sets out to raise money by peddling his stock of crocheted doorstops, but rapidly gets tangled up in a hilarious plot which involves the entire cast. When the dust settles, the Banker and the Widder are making eyes at each ...

Banker's Dilemma

Banana Man and Other Plays

(11/30/-0001)

A table and some chairs. In New York, in the summer of 1964, Buster Keaton appeared in a short experimental film written by Samuel Beckett. In this play, set in an Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village that summer, two gentlemen named Sam and Buster attempt to communicate with each other, with the unlikely help of a chattery young waitress with theatrical ambitions, who mistakes Buster for Moe from the Three Stooges and Sam for his agent. A funny and moving play about the quiet, absurd heroism...

Banana Man and Other Plays

Balkan Women

(11/30/-0001)

Full Length, Drama / 2m, 3f, chorus / Simple set. This meditation on the horror of war set in 1990 brings the spirit of Euripides to a Serbian detention camp for Muslim women. Men are pitted against women, Christians against Muslims, and Croats against Serbs in a drama that bares the inner conflicts that result when society is governed by illogical ethnic hatreds. A hard boiled, devoutly Christian guard is torn by conflicting inner voices as he interrogates a prisoner and her mother about an ex...

Balkan Women

Bag of Green Apples

(11/30/-0001)

Patricia, a young woman of twenty, returns to the scene of her childhood-- her aunt Ester's beach house. She hopes to learn from her aunt, who raised her, answers about her past so that she can better understand who she is in the present. She interacts with Patty (her ten year old self) as well as with Ester of past and present. She finally decides to stay.

Bag of Green Apples

Baby Taj

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy / Characters: 2m, 3f / "I've dreamed you for so long, I can hardly believe you're with me now. Yet here you are: a tiny human voyager, sleeping off the shock of migration..." The legendary Taj Mahal is the next assignment for Rachel, an American travel writer whose failed romances have led her to ask: Why not have the baby she craves - on her own? She finds unexpected answers - and larger questions - among the glittering legacies of India's past. Alive with the sounds and colors of a re...

Baby Taj

Baby

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy / 4m, 4f, 4 m or f / In this fast paced play Baby completely forgets his (or her) pre baby training and is completely overwhelmed by adults from birth to the first birthday. Bad breath in the face, being tossed high into the air, and unwanted vocabulary lessons assail the infant before Baby is coached to employ tricks that drive adults to distraction.

Baby

Awakening Of Kate Chopin, The

(11/30/-0001)

Kate Chopin, author of The Awakening, struggles to hold onto her marriage and her six small children as she launches her career as a novelist in 1884. Frustrating her attempts are: her wealthy next door neighbor, wanting to prove his masculinity; her jealous husband, stricken with malaria; the little sex-pot seamstress next door, the town gossip; and the bankrupt cotton business, which consumes all of her time. This crazy cacophony of personalities ends up compelling Kate toward her goal of beco...

Awakening Of Kate Chopin, The

Avenue A

(11/30/-0001)

Full Length Dark Dramatic Comedy 3m, 1f Various Settings/Unit Set Described as

Avenue A

Attempted Murder of Peggy Sweetwater, The

(11/30/-0001)

Farce, 7m, 4f; 1930's. In this light hearted tale of attempted murder on a banana plantation in South America. in the British potboiler a la Monte Python style, three bumbling upper class twits attempt to solve a gaggle of murder attempts. "Illegitimate triplets, poisoned crumpets, unregistered Liberian freighters and ancient Siamese bone china all work themselves into the silliest of funny plots."-- Pacesetter/Highlander. "A double barreled blast of pure nonsensical comedy."-- L.A. Times.

Attempted Murder of Peggy Sweetwater, The

At First Sight

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy / 3m, 4f / Fifty-one year old Julia Goldman thought she had experienced it all. Although she had been widowed for two years, she was left financially well-fixed with two grown children who were busy with their successful careers. Life was routine and uneventful for Julia in her Hollywood home. She thought she would just ease into the rest of her days without anything notable looming on the horizon. Suddenly, "Life with a Capital L" hands her what is to become the biggest decision of her l...

At First Sight

Arts & Leisure

(11/30/-0001)

Written by the popular author of On the Open Road and other works, this brilliantly caustic play is built around a self absorbed drama critic who judges theatre and life by the same criteria, to absurd extremes. He is confronted by the bitter, alienated women who have suffered from his unyielding clinical detachment and his determination to judge suffering, global and personal, by its dramatic impact on him. These include his ex wife, a former actress who is losing her grip; his tragic daughter...

Arts & Leisure

Around The Clock

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy / 6f / Interior / A medieval German clock with life-sized moving figures of a saint, an angel, a knight and a wicked pagan queen has been acquired by a small American town, and six women want to stage a publicity event: an enactment of the movements of this amazing clock. The relationships among the ladies are nearly as intricate as the clockworks: two have been married to the same man, the young teacher is after another's husband and, of course, the ex-show girl wants to star. Polly, who...

Around The Clock

Armitage

(11/30/-0001)

Mystery / 6 m., 6 f. / Unit set / Zachary Pendragon rages among the tombstones of the family burial plot. Filled with hatred and waiting for him to die, his stepdaughter Margaret watches from their Gothic mansion in the east Ohio woods. So begins the dark and labyrinthine tale of a family with a complex and terrible history. Through Margaret's journal, Zach's memories, the batty poetry of Margaret's mother, and the memories of Zach's tormented son John, a Gothic tale woven back and forth in time...

Armitage

Ardy Fafirsin

(11/30/-0001)

Based on lurid accounts of one of the most sensational murders in English history, this wild and dark mock Elizabethan farce tells the twisted and strangely compelling story of Alice Ard. This young wife was repeatedly thwarted in her attempts to murder her devoted and unsuspecting older husband with the help of her reluctant lover, her bumbling servants, a lecherous grocer, and two gluttonous murderers Black Will and Shakebag. These two find themselves lost in fog, locked out of gates, drenched...

Ardy Fafirsin

Apostasy

(11/30/-0001)

Sheila Gold, 55, a successful Jewish businesswoman suffering from terminal cancer, is spending the end of her life in a comfortable hospice where her only companion is her 30 year old daughter, Rachel. The two have a tense relationship as Rachel has spent most of her adult life working at Planned Parenthood and is generally a disappointment to her entrepreneurial mother. While in the hospice Sheila has become fascinated by a late night televangelist, Dr. Julian Strong, a black man in his 50's. ...

Apostasy

Any Number Can Die

(11/30/-0001)

An hilarious take off on the mystery plays of the Twenties complete with sliding panels, robed figures, wills being read at midnight, etc. The idioms, costumes, hairdos, and make up of the period add to the thrills and laughter. Four ingenious murders take place in an island mansion as a pair of elderly detectives set to work on their first case. The ever popular storm, the unexpected guests, the cryptic poem, and the missing fortune all add to the intricate and inventive mystery off which the l...

Any Number Can Die

Any Given Day

(11/30/-0001)

Full Length Drama / 6m, 3f / Interior / This engrossing drama by the author of The Subject Was Roses covers eighteen months in the life of the Benti family during 1942 and 1943. The household is ruled by Mrs. Benti, a prescient and iron willed widow, and includes her three adult children: Carmen, Nettie (a main character in Roses), and Eddie as well as Carmen's illegitimate son Willis whom the others orbit like the sun. Eighteen year old Willis is mentally impaired and in a wheelchair. He appear...

Any Given Day

Antic Spring

(11/30/-0001)

3m, 3f / Short Play, Comedy Placing emphasis on pantomine and character portrayal, it needs only six chairs- to represent an open touring car. In the car are young people of high school age going on a picnic. There is Ginger, earnest and overbearingly sunny; Robert, the sensitive one, impressed only by poetry (or ants, as a hilarious final scene proves); Blossom, the exuberant and idiotic teenager; Sam and Gwendolyn, the lovers who live-- in thirty minutes-- a life of adolescent violence, rangi...

Antic Spring

Anne & Gilbert

(11/30/-0001)

Based on the novels Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery Based on the sequel novels to Anne of Green Gables, this new Canadian musical continues the story of Anne Shirley's life. Set in the village of Avonlea and at Redmond College in Halifax, Anne and Gilbert follows Anne's journey to young adulthood and her romance with high school academic rival, Gilbert Blythe. Gilbert is in love with Anne, but she seems to be immune to his declarations of love. In the end, Anne realizes...

Anne & Gilbert

Anima Mundi

(11/30/-0001)

Drama 8m, 5f (with doubling). Unit set. A young American poet arrives in London at the turn of the century, falls in love with a troubled dancer and has his fortune told by Madame Blavatsky. Each tarot card triggers a vivid scene from his turbulent future. Yeats in the tower, the Satanist Alister Crowley, and cranky Ezra Pound in the mad house are there as well as Oscar Wilde among some French ladies of easy virtue, a shell shocked Everett in no man's land, the bitter ballplayer Rex, and the ...

Anima Mundi

Angry Young Women in Low-Rise Jeans with High-Class Issues

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy /6m, 7f (flexible casting if actors play multiple roles) / Simple Sets This outrageous new comedy is told in five outrageously funny parts and it's all about young women and the various issues they confront today. It's part sit-com, part stand-up comedy and part sketch-comedy. This collection of vignettes parades a series of foxy, witty and anxious women who bear the expectations of the world like an itchy muffler. These girls are coffee-driven, sensitive, wired, misunderstood and fuming...

Angry Young Women in Low-Rise Jeans with High-Class Issues

Angel Street

(11/30/-0001)

Melodrama, 2 m, 3 f, 2 extras; A Broadway hit first produced on the West End under the title Gaslight and filmed twice, Angel Street tells the story of the Manninghams who live on Angel Street in 19th Century London. As the curtain rises, all appears the essence of Victorian tranquility. It is soon apparent however, that Mr. Manningham, a suavely handsome man, is slowly driving his gentle, devoted wife Bella, to the brink of insanity with an insinuating kindness which masks more sinsister motive...

Angel Street

Angel On My Shoulder

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy / 2m, 1f / Interior A beautiful young book illustrator is having an affair with her dream man, a ruggedly attractive owner of a demolition company. When he announces his intention to leave his family, Donna gets looped and awakes in the arms of an angelic looking man with "Wings" printed on his sweat shirt. He seems to know everything about her, including her present predicament. Complications ensue when the lover shows up suitcase in hand to discover Donna is sharing her apartment with...

Angel On My Shoulder

And Go to Innisfree

(11/30/-0001)

Comedy/Drama. Jean Lenox Toddie . Characters: 3 female. Bare stage. . It's October. The beach is deserted. A woman appears, flowered parasol raised and long skirt sweeping the sand. She has come to make a decision, but will she make it alone? The middle aged matron she was argues for the comfort of a retirement home. The child she was urges her to sit again and eat blackberries, to lie under the brambles and study ants, and to arise at long last and go to Innisfree.

And Go to Innisfree

And Fat Freddy's Blues

(11/30/-0001)

Full Length Comedy / 2 m., 2 f. / Interior / Fat Freddy Caputo, a "reformed" mobster, faces a crisis in Jericho, R.I. in 1952: the reuniting of his daughter and her former boyfriend who married another but is now separated. His schemes, including a million dollar bribe, backfire with hilarious and heart warming results. / "A standout!" Forth Worth Star Telegram.

And Fat Freddy's Blues

Anastasia Trials In the Court of Women

(11/30/-0001)

Interactive drama / 9 f / Simple set Audience participation in this courtroom drama creates a profoundly engaging excursion into a world of women who are survivors and abusers. Actually a farcical play within a play, the drama opens as members of a radical feminist theatre group, the Emma Goldman Theatre Brigade, are about to implement their innovative lottery system aimed at insuring equal opportunity for all. They each draw the role they will play on this evening from a hat, putting sisterhoo...

Anastasia Trials In the Court of Women

An Inspector Answers

(11/30/-0001)

Mystery / 3m, 2f / Interior / The play opens with the seemingly innocent disappearance of Lady Fitzbuttress whose husband, Sir Reginald, is tricked into confessing to her murder by the implacable Inspector from Scotland Yard. From then on, the plot twists and turns as Reginald plans to take his wife's fortune and run off with his mistress. The Inspector, who of course "knows too much," is duly shot. But bodies fall and come to life again as intrigue upon intrigue is revealed. Lady Fitzbuttress r...

An Inspector Answers

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