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Comedy
Full-length, 80-95 minutes
3 males (3 actors possible: 0-3 females, 0-3 males)
$75.00 per performance; $8.99 per book
Instead of performing Charles Dickens' beloved holiday classic for the umpteenth time, three actors decide to perform every Christmas story ever told -- plus Christmas traditions from around the world, seasonal icons from ancient times to topical pop-culture, and every carol ever sung. A madcap romp through the holiday season!
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| "Warning: If you see Every Christmas Story Ever Told, you'll never be able to watch Dickens' A Christmas Carol without laughing out loud." |
| --David Jacobson, Life Newspapers (Sacramento) |
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Farce
Full-length, 100-110 minutes
5 females, 3 males
$75.00 per performance; $8.99 per book
Accusations, mistaken identities, and romances run wild in this traditional, laugh-out-loud farce. Two nuns at the Sisters of Perpetual Sewing have been secretly making wine to keep the convent's doors open, but Paul and Sally, reporters and former fiancees, are hot on their trail. They go undercover as a nun and priest, but their presence, combined with the addition of a new nun, spurs paranoia throughout the convent that spies have been sent from Rome to shut them down. Wine and secrets are inevitably spilled as everyone tries to preserve the convent and reconnect with lost loves.
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| "...a delightful comedy with a touch of silliness...a zany and funny story with plot twists galore." |
| --Patricia L. Garcia, Las Cruces Sun-News |
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Farce
Full-length, 110-120 minutes
3 females, 4 males
$75.00 per performance; $8.99 per book
Two cops. Three crooks. Eight doors. Go. In a cheap motel room, an embezzling mayor is supposed to meet with his female accountant, while in the room next-door, two undercover cops wait to catch the meeting on videotape. But there's some confusion as to who's in which room, who's being videotaped, who's taken the money, who's hired a hit man, and why the accountant keeps taking off her clothes.
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| "A smash hit! Two hours of non-stop laughter. The plot weaves you through mix-ups and mayhem you won't believe. This is one funny show you don't want to miss!" |
| --Jim Fordyce, ABC 53 (Michigan) |
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Is He Dead? adapted by David Ives
based on the play by Mark Twain |
 
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Comedy
Full-length, 105-120 minutes
4 females, 7 males (11-16 actors possible: 4-6 females, 7-12 males)
$100.00 per performance; $9.99 per book
Jean-Francois Millet, a young painter of genius, is in love with Marie Leroux but in debt to a villainous picture-dealer, Bastien Andre. Andre forecloses on Millet, threatening debtor's prison unless Marie marries him. Millet realizes that the only way he can pay his debts and keep Marie from marrying Andre is to die, as it is only dead painters who achieve fame and fortune. Millet fakes his death and prospers, all while passing himself off as his own sister, the Widow Tillou. Now a rich "widow," he must find a way to get out of a dress, return to life, and marry Marie.
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| "A ripely enjoyable confection! An elaborate madcap comedy that registers high on the mirth meter and reaches especially giddy comic heights!" |
| --David Rooney, Variety |
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Farce
Full-length, 80-90 minutes
5 females, 4 males
$75.00 per performance; $8.99 per book
It's 1942, and two of Hollywood's biggest divas have descended upon the luxurious Palm Beach Royale Hotel -- assistants, luggage, and legendary feud with one another in tow. Everything seems to be in order for their wartime performance...that is, until they are somehow assigned to the same suite. Mistaken identities, overblown egos, double entendres, and a lap dog named Mr. Boodles round out this hilarious riot of a love note to the classic farces of the 30s and 40s.
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| "A rib-tickling good time." |
| --Hap Erstein, Palm Beach Post |
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Comedy
Full-length, 75-85 minutes
4 females, 2 males
$75.00 per performance; $8.99 per book
After years of traveling abroad, Avery Sutton is happy to return to the comfort of his home in Connecticut. Unfortunately, almost nothing is as he remembered it. The entire house is tilted at a distinct angle, the dog hasn't been fed in five years, and Avery's Grandmother, who everyone thought was dead, is still alive and kicking. Forced to either accept the oddities of his family, or leave them behind, 37 Postcards suggests that you can, in fact, go home again... You just never know what you're going to find.
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| "McKeever's writing illuminates not only insightful wit, but a disarming poignancy that, while poking fun at this dysfunctional family, also reveals a well-thought-out and emotional resonance." |
| --George Capewell, Backstage |
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Comedy
Full-length, 105-120 minutes
3 females, 3 males
$75.00 per performance; $8.99 per book
The best laid plans go awry when the cast and crew of a Broadway-bound play resort to manipulation, diva-like behavior, and chaotic abandon to get what they want. Fledgling playwright Jerry Przpezniak and his fiancee are a couple of Buffalo greenhorns suddenly swept up in the whirlwind of New York's theater scene when Jerry's play is optioned for the big money, ego-driven world of Broadway. It's a young playwright's dream, but the crazy characters and dilemmas they encounter are the things theatrical nightmares are made of.
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| "Drop-dead, scream-out-loud, tear-wrenchingly funny." |
| --The Buffalo News |
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Farce
Full-length, 90-100 minutes
4 females, 4 males
$75.00 per performance; $8.99 per book
Junior executive Brooke invites her boss and his wife over for dinner in the hopes of securing a promotion. While frantically getting ready, Brooke and her husband discover that the hired help is coincidentally the boss' ex-daughter-in-law. Just when it seems everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, Brooke's boss has an unfortunate announcement to make -- though not as unfortunate as the candlestick attack, appetizer toss, and general chaos that then ensues...
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Farce
Full-length, 110-120 minutes
4 females, 4 males
$75.00 per performance; $9.99 per book
Joe's mischievous weekend get-away with his would-be mistress at his lake cabin goes horribly wrong when his wife shows up and catches Joe with his new "French maid." As if this situation weren't sticky enough, Joe's parents have a weekend of their own planned at the cabin. With an inquisitive cop, a chef, a gardener, and a variety of young and old maids, how will Joe manage to sort everything out?
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| "Lassig's creative energy shines...the unexpected twists of humor in the plot keep you laughing all the way home." |
| --Sue Cwikla, West Fargo Pioneer |
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Comedy
Full-length, 110-120 minutes
3 females, 4 males
$75.00 per performance; $8.99 per book
Illinois schoolteacher Harmony Green has told her fourth grade class that Menard County's most beloved homegrown hero, Abraham Lincoln, was gay. When Honest Abe is "outed" in a reimagined Christmas pageant, controversy and chaos engulf the town. As the trial of the century begins, big-city reporters and Congressional candidates descend, and family skeletons are forced out of the closet. Top hats and beards abound in this hilarious, poignant, and timely look at prejudice past and present.
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| "An...ambitious mashup of burlesque anarchy, elaborate narrative intrigue, serious sociopolitical themes, and campy dance interludes. [...] It shouldn't hold together. Yet somehow this frequently ingenious, hilarious contraption does." |
| --Variety |
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Jeeves in Bloom adapted by Margaret Raether
from the stories of P.G. Wodehouse |
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Comedy
Full-length, 105-120 minutes
2 females, 4 males (6-7 actors possible: exactly 2 females, 4-5 males)
$75.00 per performance; $8.99 per book
The peaceful English countryside may never be the same after Bertie Wooster and his unflappable valet, Jeeves, pay a visit. What starts as a plan to pair tongue-tied, amphibian-loving Augustus Fink-Nottle and fanciful, poetry-loving Madeline Basset quickly goes awry. Soon, Bertie is fending off Madeline's amorous advances, reluctantly participating in an attempted burglary, and fleeing attacks from a homicidal French chef. With the stakes this high, the solution must lie with the one and only Jeeves!
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| "...about as delightful a respite as one could hope for. Margaret Raether has brought the old gang back together in Wodehouse's fantasy world, where one knows everything will work out, because Jeeves knows best." |
| --Chicago Tribune |
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Comedy
Full-length, 75-95 minutes
7 females, 4 males
$75.00 per performance; $8.99 per book
Mavis and the other employees of the Lost and Found department of the Paradise Bus Company are used to dealing with all kinds of strange things, from abandoned tubas to missing tiaras. However, their biggest challenge yet may be controlling a runaway rumor that big-shot B.F. Crandall is coming to visit. As they try to keep up the ruse for their by-the-book manager, crazy misunderstandings and confusion ensue -- and to top it all off they must figure out the mysterious reason why a nine-year-old girl has turned up at the bus station alone. Will the answers that they're looking for turn up at the Paradise Lost and Found?
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| Act A Lady by Michael Friedman and Jordan Harrison |
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Comedy
Full-length, 90-100 minutes
3 females, 3 males
$100.00 per performance; $8.99 per book
When the men of a small Prohibition-era town decide to put on a play dressed in "fancy-type, women-type clothes," the whole community is affected: gender lines blur, eyebrows raise, identities explode, and life and art are forever entangled. A thoughtful and exuberant Midwestern fable about the woman in every man, the man in every woman and the power of theatre to uncover both. Accompanied by accordion.
(This play is also available in the collection Humana Festival 2006: The Complete Plays.)
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| "The [2006 Humana] Festival's most uproarious comedy, a farce of outlandish proportions, takes on and celebrates the art of theater itself...Part Waiting for Guffman and part Dangerous Liaisons, Act a Lady's dizzying gender-bending explores the theater, the fallibility of stereotypes and the joys of accordion music with a deft wisdom..." |
| --Tony Brown, Cleveland Plain Dealer |
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Comedy
Full-length, 100-120 minutes
2 females, 3 males
$75.00 per performance; $8.99 per book
Richard Corbin is an architect with access to a posh skybox, and one evening he invites two couples who've never met: Marshall and Margo, who are well-off, suburban, and obnoxious; and Arno and Thada, who are struggling, bohemian, and obnoxious. By the end of Act 1, they have erupted into violent loathing, and one of them meets an untimely end. But in Act 2 we get to see everything the clueless Corbin missed when he was out of the room, giving us an astonishing new perspective -- it's an ingenious, unpredictable, hilarious farce wrapped inside a mystery.
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| "Like the best skits of the earliest Saturday Night Live episodes, What Corbin Knew satirizes society's mores and manners." |
| --Orange County Register |
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Said and Meant
Ten Short Plays About Language and Misunderstanding
by Randy Wyatt |
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Comedy
Full-length, 75-90 minutes
3 females, 2 males, 2 either
(6-52 actors possible: 2-50 females, 2-50 males)
$75.00 per performance; $8.99 per book
A fast-paced, witty compilation of ten short plays exploring how we use the same language to mean all kinds of different things, and the dangers therein. Whether it's a farce dressed up as a Greek tragedy, a soon-to-be wed couple seeking counsel-free counseling, a hapless suitor named Bob who's learning how complex a simple phrase can be, or four actors desperately trying to fit 32 awkward silences into ten minutes, this play has all sorts of hilarious surprises in store.
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| "Somehow playwright Randy Wyatt has found passage into your most private and devious thoughts. He's listened to all the things you've wanted to say to every unpleasant person you meet on a daily basis and took notes. Just imagine this tiny little man squatting on a short stool between your ears with a stethoscope pressed to your internal voice. There's a reason we think before we talk." |
| --Kalamazoo Gazette |
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Comedy
Full-length, 80-100 minutes
6 females, 6 males (12 actors possible: 6-8 females, 6-8 males)
$75.00 per performance; $8.99 per book
It's 1948, it's the dead of winter, and it's time for "Loving Lives," a radio soap opera on its last legs. A pompous romantic lead, an incapacitated announcer, an obnoxious kazoo-tooting child star, and multiple off-the-air seductions all contribute to the hilarious demise of the radio show.
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Comedy/Drama
Full-length, 60-85 minutes
3 females, 5 males, 8 either
(11-41 actors possible: 3-31 females, 5-33 males)
$75.00 per performance; $9.99 per book
NOTE: Each piece in this anthology can be licensed and performed separately.
A collection of five Christmas-themed short plays from New York City's acclaimed Flea Theater. From a family sitting down to read "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" with unexpected results (Not a Creature Was Stirring), to elves rapping about bloody films (Holiday Movies), to an irreverent take on the story of Jesus' birth (Away in the Manger), these comedies and dramas take on the holiday season like never before.
To purchase this book of 5 plays, click "Order this play" above. To perform an individual play, click on its title below:
Away in the Manger by Roger Rosenblatt
Before the Before and Before That by Mac Wellman
Christmas Song by Len Jenkin
Holiday Movies by Elizabeth Swados
Not a Creature Was Stirring by Christopher Durang
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| "[Len Jenkin's Christmas Song is] elegantly written... A brief snapshot of a few lonely individuals in a boarding house, it's tender and heartfelt." |
| --Dan Bacalzo, Theatermania |
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Comedy
Short, 25-35 minutes
1 female, 3 males (4 actors possible: 1-3 females, 1-3 males)
$35.00 per performance; $9.99 per book
NOTE: This play is part of an anthology called Great Short Comedies: Volume 6.
The narrator of a story dutifully chronicles the meeting of a couple in a small cafe in Paris, France, only to start losing control of his characters once they realize he exists. Blending the lines between fiction and truth, this hilarious play examines what should triumph: reality, or a good story.
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| "...the work is brilliant and comical... puts a funny and sometimes creepy twist on the art of storytelling." |
| --Adelina Anthony, AllBusiness.com |
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Comedy
Short, 45 minutes
5 females, 6 males
$40.00 per performance; $7.99 per book
Madcap, chaotic hilarity ensues when Jason hires a troupe of local actors to play the part of a perfect family to impress Sheila, his new girlfriend. This elaborate ruse nearly goes as planned, only to backfire when Jason's real family comes home unexpectedly. The actors remain in character and do their best to keep their act together, but things quickly unravel. From overhearing a murder plot to meeting the "ghost" of General Washburn, Sheila decides she's seen enough of Jason and his families.
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Comedy
Full-length, 65-75 minutes
3 females, 2 males, 1 either
(6-19 actors possible: 3-17 females, 2-16 males)
$75.00 per performance; $8.99 per book
An elf-narrator leads the audience through a musical journey, encountering Santa, Tinkerbell, a man named Ebenezer, a mysterious young magician, and a wonderful, stringless puppet. This original farce, which draws from many sources, including A Christmas Carol, The Comedy of Errors, and Barrie's Peter Pan, is full of mistaken identities, disguises, and unexpected twists.
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| "If farce at its best is a clever blend of the expected and the unexpected then True Magic deserves straight A's." |
| --William Menezies, Brattleboro Reformer (Vermont) |
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