O RUMBLES OF JOY! (40 min.) 5-7 roles depending on doubling (2M; 3-5M/F). Also opt. percussionist. Drama with comedy. Middle-aged sculptor discovers his creativity within a block of Tennessee marble. Historical fact/fantasy. One character is the Spirit in the stone. Others (incl. Public Opinion and Washington) are thoughts that intrude on Mr. Potter's attempt to focus on the work he wants to design. Order from JAC Publishing www.jacneed.com or jacneed@aol.com.
QUEEN FOR A DAY. (45 min.) 2M; 1F. Drama. Twelve-year-old boys deal with a mother who is more childish than either of them and find an unlikely friendship in the bargain. Multiple award-winner. Young women play the roles of the boys well. Order from Bakers Plays www.bakersplays.com .
DAVID'S DISAPPEARANCE. (15 min.) 2M. Drama. Old-timer mailman rescues a young man bent on a bizarre means of self-destruction. Funny, sad, strange and hopeful. Multiple award-winner.
ROSES TO PLAN. (20 min.) Realistic comedy/drama. 1 M; 1 F. Love brings strength to an elderly Jewish couple. No
where near as grim as it sounds! Multiple award winner. Order from ArtAge Publications at www.seniortheatre.com.
SITTING DUCK SEASON. (approx. 40 min.) Drama. 1 M; 1 F. Compulsively precise, successful businesswoman Roberta
is an inside trader hiding from the law in an isolated cabin in Vermont. Her guilty conscience in the form of an unpleasant
young man shows up. Who's the sitting duck? Strangely current. Heavy-hitting. A challenge for a serious director and
actors. Available from JAC Publishing & Promotions www.jacneed.com (jacneed@aol.com)
EMBRACING THE UNDERTOAD. (115 min.) 3F. Drama. A waitress, her lesbian lover, and her tuned-into-the- aura-of-the-universe sister who is not quite of this world struggle for love, life after death and sanity one stormy evening in North Carolina. Secrets are revealed. Humor, anger, beauty, hope. One-act version premiered at Bailiwick Rep. (Chicago) as winner of Lesbian Theatre Initiative. Named a Finalist for the
Jane Chambers Playwriting Award. Workshop productions: NYC, Seattle. Equity premiere available.
HUMANS REMAIN. 5F, 2M (plus 1F dancer). Full-length drama. African-American
cast. A well- meaning "foreigner" attempts to rescue the White Cliff Kinfolk - a
mixed-race family isolated by choice from civilization in the hills of New Jersey
for over 200 years. Love. Death. History. Magic. Nature. Belief. The Spirit of Africa.
Winner: Steppingstone Theatre's 2007 New Millenium Competition. Chosen for Lark residency (NYC), Karamu House (Cleveland) Reverie and Moondance International Film Festival finalist; Reva Shiner semi-finalist. "A big play with a big heart." World premiere in 2008, directed by Steven McKinley Henderson.
TUGBOAT LOVE . (15-20 min.) Comedy. 1F; 2M. No depth of plot or subtle subtext in this one. Written to be performed in a swimming pool or body of water ( works on dry land too). Li'l Toot, the tugboat, is in love with the Statue of Liberty, but is so tongue-tied he can barely "toot." His lady love - passionate, frustrated, and fed up with immigration quotas , wants to return to France. A cholesterol- ridden Gull wants to go with her to experience French cuisine. Will Toot get up his nerve to speak? Will he tow the Lady to France? Will Gull ever get a healthy meal? Will the Lady and Toot find true love? Performed in the rooftop swimming pool at the Holiday Inn in New York City and in Dallas, TX. Order from Brooklyn Publishers - www.brookpub.com ("A scream!" - audience member, Texas.)
SEDUCING RAMONA. (10-15 min.) Comedy. 1M; 1F. Prehistoric married couple brought to the brink of divorce, then closer than ever when a mysterious producer sends a request via stone-mail for the playscript the wife has scratched on the wall of their cave. Productions from NYC to NC to MI to TX to Kennedy Center. Couple may be any age from teens on up. "Moving and very, very funny." - audience member - Paw Paw, MI. production.)
EVENING PRIMROSE IN OHIO. (30 min.) Comedy/drama. 1M; 1F. Two very-different college-age people come together in a laundromat. Every-thing doesn't come out clean. Multiple award-winning. Quirky comedy. Order from Bakers Plays www.bakersplays.com .
LOLA AND THE PLANET OF GLORIOUS DIVERSITY. Comedy/drama. 5F; 4M. Music, movement and imagination-infused allegory. What if the world was devastated by war and only six individuals survived? What would each contribute to rebuilding? They succeed only after splitting into separate planets. Lola, three-personed God, and a baby are instrumental in creating a new world. Opportunity for a creative director with musical sensibility. Premiere available.
THE FORTIFICATION OF MISS GRACE WREN. (30 min.) 1M; 1F. Drama with laughs and a lot of heart. New York City
elementary school teacher is traumatized by 9/11. She wants to retreat into the past. A statue of Peter Stuyvesant
comes alive to her, offering love and helping her find strength. Humor. Magic. Sweetness. Love. Multiple award-
winner. Samuel French finalist. Order from www.jacneed.com (JAC Publishing and Promotions) - or jacneed@aol.com.
BRONCO BUSTER. (10-12 min.) 2M; 1F. Comedy. 1885 - The Arizona Territory. Sculptor Frederic Remington sends worn-out, hung-over cowboy Gabby to find a horse for a model. Gabby offers his own old horse, Betty. Remington is aghast. Gabby doesn't live up to his prettified vision of the Old West. In the end, the cowboy and horse reunite and Remington is off to preserve the Wild Wild West elsewhere. ("I fell out of my chair laughing." "Smart, funny, fantastic language, distinct characters - all with dramatic arcs, historic and yet contemporary - not to mention I learned a bit of art history." - audience members at various shows. )
QUICK-LIST OF ALL AVAILABLE PLAYS
FULL-LENGTH PLAYS:
Embracing the Undertoad.....................................3F
Harmony................................................................4F; 4M
Humans Remain....................................................5F; 2M + F African dancer
Lola and the Planet of Glorious Diversity.............5F; 4M
Necessary Geography...........................................4F; 2M
Play Nice!..............................................................3F; 1M
Women w/o Walls..................................................4F
Frontier..................................................................2M; 1F; 1M/F
Hide/Seek..............................................................1F
Grannie Bird..........................................................3F; 1M
ONE-ACT PLAYS (15 minutes to one hour long):
Allie's Appendix.....................................................4F; 1M
Blood Sisters.........................................................3F
Escape in a White Toyota.......................................2F; 1M
Evening Primrose in Ohio.....................................1F; 1M
Feathers Fly...........................................................7F; 4M
The Fortification of Miss Grace Wren....................1F; 1M
The Great All-Dominican Championship Playoff Game...3M
The Length of a Dream...........................................3F; 2M + 1M non-speaking
Listen! The River....................................................1F/M
O Rumbles of Joy!..................................................2M; 3-5 M/F
Queen for a Day .....................................................1F; 2M
Roses to Plan ........................................................1F; 1M
Saint Anthony and the Appendix......................... ..2F; 3M
Sitting Duck Season...............................................1F; 1M
Stand Strong, Miss Wren........................................1F
Tugboat Love..........................................................1F; 2M
SHORT PLAYS (less than 15 minutes long):
Bronco Buster...........................................................1F; 2M
Cutie Pie and the Queen............................................2M
Deja Vu All Over Again.............................................1F; 1M
David's Disappearance.............................................2M
Gloom, Doom and Soul-Crushing Misery..................1F; 1M; 1F/M
Life 101......................................................................1F; 1M
Poetic License...........................................................3M
Purity and the Prince.................................................1F; 1M
Save the Turkey!........................................................2F; 2M
Seducing Ramona.....................................................1F; 1M
Squeezing Papayas...................................................1F; 1M
The Straight and Narrow............................................2F; 1M/F
Take a Load Off..........................................................2F; 1M
MONOLOGUES (collection):
Marching on High - Audition and Performance Monologue Collection
NECESSARY GEOGRAPHY -- The Early Years of Marjory Stoneman Douglas. (approx. 2 hours) 4F; 2M with double-casting (w/o doublecasting, roles for many more). Drama. Based on the first 24 years in the life of Marjory Stoneman Douglas who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993 for saving the Florida Everglades from extinction. Brand new script. World premiere available.
SAVE THE TURKEY! (10 min.) 2F; 2M. Comedy with not-so-subtle anti-war subtext. On the day before Thanksgiving, Tom Turkey wants to let Mr. Farmer "draft" him into service. Tom's mother, Henrietta, does everything she can to dissuade him. When Martha Stewart shows up to cook the Farmer's holiday feast, Tom finally realizes it's not that Farmer wants him to serve, but to wants to serve him. Tom comes up with an alternate ending which will bring glory to Farmer. A hit at NJ Rep's Theatre Brut.
PURITY AND THE PRINCE. (10 min.) 1F; 2M. Comedy/fable. Purity, who bears a strong resemblance to Snow White, is a virgin (maybe) who has been saving herself for a tall, handsome prince. When he finally arrives, not all that hansome, she is has doubts. Once she gives him that first kiss, there's no turning back. He is at first is insistent, but eventually he has doubts too. If this isn't really true love, they could be stuck with each other. ("The play sparkles!" - Jewel Seehaus-Fisher, Artistic Director, Teachers Theatre of NJ.) Premiered at Estrogenius, NYC.
SCRIPTS and MONOLOGUES
PLAY NICE! Comedy-drama. 3 F, 1 M (teens to early 20s, though may be cast older). A look at the power
of imagination as used by the Diamond siblings to cope with the Dragon Queen - their mother. Chosen
Chosen for a workshop at Cleveland Public Theatre. "Challenging and rewarding theater." (Michele
Travis, NYC director). Opportunity for wide-ranging acting skills and a creative director. World premiere
available.
FULL-LENGTH PLAYS
PAGE LAST UPDATED 7/07
HARMONY. Comedy-drama. 4F, 4M. Winner Maxim Mazuumdar
International New Play Competition. Music vs musicianship. A
violinist mother struggles to put aside her career to raise her
son with the odds stacked against her, realistically (community)
and surrealistically. Infused with music and imagination. Sections
of dialogue may be sung if desired. Equity premiere available.
LIFE 101. (10 min.) 1F; 1M. Comedy. Finally, the answer to who created the world. A showdown between an artist who creates and a research scientist who observes. Creationism vs evolution. A whirlwind trip that takes Earth from a dry, dead place to Adam and Eve.
WOMEN WITHOUT WALLS. (80-90 min. approx.) 4F. Drama with laughs and a fierce
underbelly. Absurdist plot weaves around death, love and a breakthrough. A ride
on the White Light Express subway train turns out to be not only a journey to the
other side, but a frightening and eye-opening trip for a tightly-laced music student,
a music-obsessed punk, and a one-legged lesbian beggar with a philosophy PhD. The metaphorical boatman for the journey is a nurse who is older than time. Brand new script developed from a one-act presented by MadLab in the Ohio Fringe Festival in the summer of '05. Lots of room for directorial/production input. Surreal, elemental set. World premiere available.
HIDE/SEEK (~90 min.) 1F. Play being developed with actress Jennifer Loryn and director Hillary Adams about the life of a woman from a small New England town. Stories flow through the '50s and '60s, including awakening sexuality, the Civil Rights movement, the Peace Corps, and a first marriage ruptured by mental illness. If interested, please query the playwright and see www.hideseek.org.
GRANNIE BIRD. (~70 min.) 3F; 1M. Comedy with heart. Grannie wants to join the spirit of her dead husband, but her daughter-in-law wants to put her in a nursing home. What happens when Grannie's granddaughter hides her in a treehouse? Two of the characters are a 12-year old boy and girl (may be played by youthful teens). One scene is in Dramatic Publishing's "Classroom Scenes and Monologues" (available from www.dramaticpublishing.com). As a one-act, the play was a winner in the 2005 Kernodle International Competition.
ONE-ACT PLAYS
The comedies all have an underlying drama. The dramas all contain laughs.
ST. ANTHONY AND THE APPENDIX. (45 min.) 3M; 2F or, shorter version with a sex-switch titled ALLIE'S APPENDIX:
1M; 4F. Surreal comedy with heart. Wally goes to St. Anthony"s hospital to get his appendix removed and finds that
the Powers That Be have more in mind. What's a good Presbyterian boy to do when his alter-ego is a statue of a
Catholic saint? (multiple award-winning/much produced). Published in an anthology: "8 Plays from the Mae West
Fest 8: New Theatre by Women" (available from www.MaeWestFest.org) or the playwright.
FRONTIER. (approx. 90 min.) 2M; 1F; 1 M/F What if Mother Nature is finally fed up
with the way humans are treating the planet? What if an environmental activist gives
up and refocuses her energy into building a marriage? What if a messianic wolf is out
to save the human race by stealing their babies and starting a new family of man that
will respect the earth? Very current. World premiere available.
SQUEEZING PAPAYAS. (10-15 min.) Comedy. 1M; 1F. Based on real people and events. Ex-President of Mexico, Jose Lopez
Portillo, and his wife, Sasha Montenegro, former porn star, struggle over possession of his mansion and discover the love
which has been buried beneath french fries, sex, and greed. Excellent for senior theatre. At Senior Theatre Conference in
Columbus, OH, noted for best use of a metaphorical fake breast. Don't ask.
FEATHERS FLY. (60 min.) Comedy. 4M; 7F. So what's the true story behind the headline-making uproar about Lola and Pale Male, the two redtail-hawks who were dispossessed from the swanky Fifth Avenue apartment building in New York City last year? This play answers all questions, pitting Mary Tyler Moore against Paula Zahn in a knock-down, drag-out battle for the rights of the common man and birds. The main characters are Hispanic. The play is a parallel look at haves and have nots in today's America.
BLOOD SISTERS. (15 min.) 3F. Dramatic. Based on headlines from 2003. Three Dominican
nuns have been arrested, tried and convicted of vandalizing a nuclear missile silo in Colorado.
In this play, at their sentencing hearing, the nuns ask the judge for mercy - or, they don't.
POETIC LICENSE. 3M. (10-15 min.) Comedy. In rural Arizona, a man has returned home every
year for 10 years on his wedding anniversary, but hasn't gone inside where his wife and daugh-
ters wait for him. Instead, he spends the evening in a local bar, where the bartender has had a one-night stand with one of the daughters
and a very unexpected out-of-towner reveals his grudge against women. The three plan how to get back at the women who have done
them wrong.
THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW. 2F; 1M/F. (10 min.) Absurdist. Lots of laughs, but philosophical underpinning. Two nuns have been banished to
an icy nowhere place. They travel on a single ski (which has a personality of its own), searching for The Straight and Narrow Path so they
can be redeemed. A suspiciously solicitous penguin with a red suitcase appears and all hell breaks loose. Written for Groove Mama Ink's
24-Hour Play Marathon.
LISTEN! THE RIVER. 1 M/F - any age. (35 min.) Deals with the subject of death in a very unique and sensitive way. A true story. A woman gives
her older sister her precious cat for safe-keeping when she gets sick. The cat must leave Vermont and adjust to living in an apartment in New
York City with a woman who cares more about working at her computer than the cat. "She has a priority list and I'm nowhere near the top,"
says Turbo, the cat, who narrates the story. As his mistress' health fades far away in Vermont, Turbo encounters a plethora of disturbing
and frightening situations in New York. The story is told through to the death of the sister in Vermont and final bonding of the cat and his
new mistress. A play which could be cutsey, cloying and sentimental is instead alternately funny and heart-wrenching. Slides and a sound-
scape will add depth, but aren't necessary. First presented at Emerging Artists Theatre's One Woman Standing Festival in New York in 2007.
TAKE A LOAD OFF. 1M; 2F. (10 min.) Off-beat comedy. Written by The Lark Underground Writers. Strange goings on in a southern laundromat
on Christmas Eve.
THE GREAT ALL-DOMINICAN CHAMPIONSHIP PLAYOFF GAME. 3M. (20+ min.) Based on a true story. In 1937 Dominican Republic dictator
Rafael Trujillo pays American Negro League pitcher to play for him in a championship baseball game. The stakes are literally life and death.
Trujillo is a murdering mad man. Premiered at Teatro del Pueblo in St. Paul, MN.
DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN. 1F; 1M. (10 min.) Yogi Berra has turned 31 and he's in a slump. His usual upbeat outlook on life has disappeared.
The Oracle of the Yankees tries to help him, finally finding the answer to his bad batting streak. Yogi doesn't want to accept the solution, but
finally he gives in and the rest is history. NJ Rep has the 2008 premiere.
STAND STRONG, MISS WREN. 1F. (~ 30 min.) Dramatic. Compiled from "The Fortification of Miss Grace Wren" (see above). The following reviews
a production in "Women for Women" at HERE in New York (director, Heather Guthrie): "...it is one of the most touching pieces relating to 9/11
that I have seen, told with the simplicity and earnestness of a grade school history lesson." - Julie Sharbutt for Off Off Broadway Online.
ESCAPE IN A WHITE TOYOTA. 2F; 1M. (~ 10 min.) Essentially a one-woman monologue (the other woman has one line only). As an elderly
woman painstakingly makes her way across a parking lot, escaping from a hospital, her thoughts are voiced by a younger version of
herself. Visions of her husband at increasingly young ages block her progress and she becomes increasingly angry, finally realizing that
she'll never escape unless she deals with him. Absurdist but frighteningly real. Chosen for Mid-Atlantic Theatre Conference in 2008.
NOTE: Published plays should be obtained through the publisher - even perusal copies. See Prices and Ordering for details.
CUTIE PIE AND THE QUEEN. (10 min.) 2M. Comedy/fable. Gay version of PURITY AND THE PRINCE (above).
"Robin has a habit of building suspense within the plot, allowing the characters to just be themselves. She creates the exact kind of work that I look for both as an artist and as an audience member." - Bryan Kenneth (producer/director, NYC) ***
MONOLOGUES
There are two long monologues, LISTEN! THE RIVER and STAND STRONG, MISS WREN. See above under one-act plays.
Both short and long monologues are available in a collection; MARCHING ON HIGH -- AUDITION AND PERFORMANCE MONOLOGUE COLLECTION. This collection contains 49 monologues, ranging from short audition pieces to performance pieces that run over two pages long. There are
monologues for men and women, girls and boys. Many may be used by either sex and a range of ages.
GLOOM, DOOM AND SOUL-CRUSHING MISERY. 1F; 1M; 1M/F. (8-10 min.) A depressed Russian couple wants to maintain their dark mood, but a cheery dream keeps cropping up. A disgustingly happy travel agent offers to make the dream come true, much to their horror. (Optioned for publication by Smith & Kraus.)
THE LENGTH OF A DREAM. 3F; 2M (plus one M non-speaking; room for additional, optional non-speaking females) . (~30 min.) In ancient Ithaca the Trojan war ended recently. Greek women are fed up with having no say in how Greece is run as well as getting no credit for their contributions to society. An unnamed woman steps forward to reveal that she is the creator of sculptures attributed to Anonymous. Kyamites, a god descended from Olympus to mess around in typical Greek-god fashion, calls on Zeus who strikes the woman dead before she can announce her name to the world and for posterity.
