n/a

n/a

n/a

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Dramatists Play Service, NY

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Comedy

3

2

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Notes: -

Synopsis: revolves around a dedicated, if disorganized and demented, group of young radicals. These are the kids who protest. They protest arts funding and arms funding. They protest school cutbacks and AIDS cutbacks and welfare cutbacks. They march for gay rights and children's rights and Women Against Drunk Drivers. But their morality is put to the test one day when Sydney, a shallow, anorexic soap-opera actress, fires a gun into the hulking body of her sleeping boyfriend. Terrified, she looks to her brother, Ronald, the center of this merry band of radicals, for help. Ronald, a social worker, wants to aid his sister, but at the moment he's consumed with love. The object of his affection? A young runaway prostitute, Lance. It is Ethan, Ronald's cohort, who points out that they need Sydneywithout her money they can do no good in the world. After all, "firebombs don't grow on trees." And when Sydney pressures him, revealing her vulnerability and her real affection for the first time, Ronald acquiesces. He makes the ultimate sacrifice, that of his own happiness for the greater good. And this group of altruists frames Lance, never noticing the irony as they head off to protest the unjust outcome of a trial involving a young man who resembles Lance in every way.

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Dramatists Play Service, NY

2004

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Play/Drama

2

3

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Notes: -

Synopsis: How do we love someone who falls outside our moral code? BEAUTIFUL CHILD presents Harry and Nan, a couple whose marriage has become a comfortable battleground of witty barbs and infidelity. Everything they think they know, however, is called into question when their son, Isaac, an art teacher and painter, comes for lunch and asks if he can stay. The worlds no longer safe for Isaac, as his secrets are about to become publiche has fallen in love, and has been having an affair, with one of his students, an eight-year-old boy named Brian. Harry and Nan search for clues, desperate to make sense of this horror, alternately looking for exoneration and punishment for what must be their fault. They want to help their son, who was, as Harry ruefully recalls, a beautiful child. They want to love him. But how? And what is their responsibility to the world and to the children in Isaacs future? Magically, this tragedy brings Harry and Nan closer together as they arrive at a decision thats terribly painful and magically restorative.

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Dramatists Play Service, NY

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Comedy

One Act

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1

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Notes: part of The Eros Trilogy

Synopsis: CLAIRE, the first piece, finds a beautiful matron who might have walked out of a Noel Coward play. Claire is trying to recover from an incident that occurred in the morning, an incident that brought home, all too painfully, the reality that the beautiful world that she called home is gone forever. Shaken and frightened, she finds peace only while making love with a much younger man, a man who allows her to forget herself and retreat into a world where "we were children and easily pleased."

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Dramatists Play Service, NY

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Comedy Collection

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2

1

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Notes: Claire, Philip, Roger and Miriam

Synopsis: CLAIRE, the first piece, finds a beautiful matron who might have walked out of a Noel Coward play. Claire is trying to recover from an incident that occurred in the morning, an incident that brought home, all too painfully, the reality that the beautiful world that she called home is gone forever. Shaken and frightened, she finds peace only while making love with a much younger man, a man who allows her to forget herself and retreat into a world where "we were children and easily pleased." (1 woman.) PHILIP, Claire's son, addresses the audience next. Stylistically he is her polar opposite, a mass of anxiety and tension, who lives a life without intimacy or human contact. Fearful and full of self-loathing, Philip becomes fixated on a young man, whose name he doesn't know. Terrified of rejection, he lives his life for furtive glances. Finally conquering his fear, he attempts to make contactan act of bravery that leads to a terrifying and violent result. (1 man.) ROGER & MIRIAM follows the lives of a suburban mother and her awkward son for more than twenty years. From summer camp to finding new love after AIDS has robbed us of our innocence. Roger and Miriam confide in each other through a series of letters, often funny, sometimes tragic. While their paths are very differentMiriam experimenting with extra-marital affairs, Roger holding on to a childhood ideal of lovethey both, ultimately come to a similar conclusion. "We were two people, touching," that's what mattered. (2 men, 1 woman.)

Mammoth Theater, Washington, D.C

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Theatre Communications Group, New York

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

full legth

Comedy

2

2

flexible

Notes: -

Synopsis: After their plane crashes, Phyllis, and her son, Bishop, are stranded on a desert island for five years. During their stay, Bishop is transformed from a stuttering, Katherine Hepburn-obsessed little boy, in to a feral savage who eventually rapes his mother. Phyllis devolves from a glib, callused sophisticate to a helpless, addled shell. Left to fend for themselves, they dine on the bodies of those less fortunate and eventually become lovers. At home, we see Howard, Phyllis' husband and famous movie director, continuing life with his somewhat loopy, ex-porn-star mistress, Pam. Pam moves in with Howard and becomes pregnant. In Act Two, Bishop and Phyllis return to civilization, but their savage lifestyle is not easily shed. All four characters live together, walking on eggshells around Bishop, who now is barbarous beyond reason and has amassed an incredible shoe collection to impress his mother. Pam is reduced to pretending she is the domestic help and is rapidly growing tired of it. Howard is too burdened with guilt to act on anyone's behalf. Phyllis reaches out to Pam and confides that she and Bishop are lovers, but before Pam can convey this to Howard, she is killed by Bishop, who proceeds to eat her. When Howard discovers this, he too pays the price and becomes dinner for Bishop and Phyllis. In Act Three, Bishop is being treated in a hospital for the criminally insane. He is haunted by his mother's ghost and pursued by a demonically cheerful fellow inmate. He refuses to accept what the doctors know to be true, that he killed Phyllis. Finally, as the walls between past and present break down in Bishop's mind, he confesses to his matricide. We see the scene where Phyllis asks Bishop to murder her. Bishop remembers his mother's recurring dream about a three-hundred-pound transvestite. This monstrosity multiplied in her dreams and became several fat men in skirts, in cages. It is the acceptance of this memory that may allow Bishop to heal, moving forward and understanding the relationship between love and harm.

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Dramatists Play Service, NY

1997

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

full legth

Comedy

3

1

flexible

Notes: -

Synopsis: Arloc Simpson is fabulously wealthy but desperately lonely, living a solitary life for many years. When one day he reads the obituary of a former lover, he knows at once he's in trouble. "Pneumonia is a code word when you read it in the paper!" For the first time, he wrestles with the idea of his own mortality, and has a blood test, the results of which he cannot bring himself to read. The envelope sits, unopened, taunting him. "It's my enemy. And my apartment isn't big enough for both of us!" So he leaves, and walks, and walks, and walks&and meets HIM! Arloc meets someone he believes may be the great love of his life, Boyd, a young runaway with no family who is working as an angel at Radio City's Christmas Spectacular. Arloc invites him up for a drink, but when Boyd readies to leave, Arloc is terrified that his last chance for happiness will slip away, so he kidnaps him. At that moment, Arloc's mother, Nessa, descends upon him. A flamboyant, fast-talking, heavy-drinking promiscuous woman, Nessa has fled her loveless marriage and, with nowhere else to go, seeks refuge with her son. When she stumbles upon the angel, bound and gagged in the closet, she realizes her son is in trouble, and asks Boyd to stay by paying him, "I'll pay you&one pearl each day you stay and pretend to love him." Thus the three of them live together and form what turns out to be a fragile, wonderful "ménage à trios". It isn't until Carl, Nessa's husband, appears, and demands that his wife return, that our trio realizes the magic quality of their relationship. Nessa, uses her love for Boyd to wound Carl, but it is her willingness to give him up that surprises Arloc. She proves herself eager to sacrifice, to start again and to finally have the relationship she had avoided with her child. Knowing this, Arloc can finally live with the contents of that dreaded envelope, whatever it may be.

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, DC, USA >>>

1994

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Theatre Communications Group, New York

-

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Comedy Drama

Comedy

3

2

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Notes: Dramatists Play Services have now published the play with its original ending and the new ending written for the Westside Theatre New York 1995

Synopsis: Amanda, an anorexic poet of some pretensions, has been married for three weeks, but her husband, Ford, has been missing for two. She calls a crisis hot line and reaches Bea, a volunteer. Bea's answer to Amanda's problems is to diminish them by complaining about her own deceased husband's inattentiveness, her son's embarrassing nature, and also to dispense hilarious (but useless) advice. Just as Amanda nears her wit's end, Ford walks in so she simply hangs up on Bea. Meanwhile, across town, Serge, a completely vain runway model, paces as he waits for the arrival of his latest paramour. He is intruded upon by a former one-night stand, Otto, who worships him and who tips the scales at about three hundred pounds. Otto tortures, harangues and cajoles Serge while swilling Yoo-hoo, eating junk food and taking phone calls from his mother until Serge can take no more. Serge explodes but is interrupted by a phone callhis new lover will not be coming. This leaves Serge and Otto in the same state: Both are now victims of fickle romance. The scene shifts back to Amanda's at the crack of dawn. Serge is banging on the door, looking for his lover, surprising Amanda. It was with Serge that Ford had spent his lost two honeymoon weeks. Having followed Serge, it isn't long until Otto shows up, with breakfast, threatening suicide. Next to arrive is Bea, furious at Amanda for hanging up on her as Bea does not tolerate rudeness. As riotous chaos builds, we learn that Bea is Otto's mother, that Otto and Amanda are old school friends, that Serge will settle for both Amanda and Ford and that Ford has absolutely nothing to say. Bea takes charge and offers a solution. Although short on practicality, it is long on pleasure.

Mammoth Theater, Washington, D.C

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Theatre Communications Group, New York

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

-

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Notes: -

Synopsis:

Bush Theatre, London >>>

2000

Hope for Glory

Dramatists Play Service, NY

1998

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Comedy Drama

Comedy

3

2

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Notes: -

Synopsis: We open at the wedding of Taylor and Cynthia, a golden couple beloved by everyonealmost. Libby, Cynthia's hard-drinking sister, is in love with Taylor herself and she can take it no longer. "The hypocrisy, the bone-chilling grotesque hypocrisy!" Fleeing to the back yard she discovers Paul, Taylor's best friend, a charming fellow, who, since childhood, has harbored a secret love for the groom himself. As Libby and Paul are forced to deal with unrequited love, their lives change dramatically. Paul, promiscuous by nature, finds himself pursued by a young man, Andrew, who seems, at first, less interested in true love than in available real estate. And Libby, her career in a shambles, succumbs to a life without love, a life where sex is connected to monetary gain, rather than affection. When Cynthia gives birth to a still-born child, her marriage dissolves and Taylor sinks into depression and alcoholism. Surprisingly, Libby, who has viewed her sister as the enemy all her life, finds the strength to sacrifice her own desires to help Cynthia through her grief. While Paul, seemingly kind, always appropriate, betrays his dearest friend and secret love. He gambles with Taylor's life, hoping his friend will turn to him, at last, for comfort. THE MAIDEN'S PRAYER follows this quartet and Andrew as they struggle to learn the difference between loving someone and needing them.

Theatre Rhinoceros San Francisco, USA >>>

2007

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Drama

3

2

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Notes: -

Synopsis: -

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Dramatists Play Service, NY

-

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Comedy

One Act

1

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Notes: part of The Fros Trilogy

Synopsis: PHILIP, Claire's son, addresses the audience next. Stylistically he is her polar opposite, a mass of anxiety and tension, who lives a life without intimacy or human contact. Fearful and full of self-loathing, Philip becomes fixated on a young man, whose name he doesn't know. Terrified of rejection, he lives his life for furtive glances. Finally conquering his fear, he attempts to make contactan act of bravery that leads to a terrifying and violent result

Vineyard Theatre, New York

1993

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American Theatre Magazine, NY - February

1994

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

full legth

Comedy

3

2

-

Notes: -

Synopsis: An absurdist black comedy about the demise of the Duncan family, and, by extension, the species. Emma Duncan, a hypochondriac with memory problems, and her orphaned fiancé, Tommy, confront her mother, Grace, with the news of their intended marriage. Disapproving at first, Grace acquiesces and puts Tommy to work as a maid. Shortly after, Grace's son, Todd, returns home and announces he has AIDS which sets off a frenzy of denial-spurred activity. The father, Arthur Duncan, reaches out to his son who is more interested in assembling the dinosaur bones he discovers in the back yard. As the wedding approaches, Tommy falls in love with Todd and when confronted with this news, Emma goes quite spontaneously deaf. It is only during a frenzied wedding rehearsal, after Tommy is informed he's HIV positive and Emma shoots herself with a gun given to her by her brother as a wedding gift, does the possibility that Todd is destroying his family rear its head. As winter descends, the bottom falls out of the farce and the tone is replaced with a more ironic one. Tommy has died (although he's not been buried as "the ground is too hard"), Grace's glamour has been replaced with an alcoholic haze, and Arthur cannot remember that Emma has died. Only Todd remains unchanged. In a final manipulation, Todd accuses Arthur of being responsible for Emma's death, and provokes his father into attacking him. Grace has no choice but to banish Arthur from the house and into what now seems a lifeless tundra outdoors. Left alone with his mother, Todd pours her drink after drink as the months pass, until she too, at last, is dead. Finally, as Todd embraces his sister's ghost, we see the dinosaur skeleton, now complete. No one knows why the dinosaurs lived, or died, Todd told his mother. He suggests the possibility that their end was the natural order of things "and no tragedy. Or disease. Or God."

New York

1995

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

full legth

Comedy

3

2

flexible

Notes: -

Synopsis: Explores the guilt and redemption in the lives of two estranged siblings when they re-unite at their mother's funeral We meet Sebastian Bliss and his twin sister, Bernadette Dixon, at their mother's funeral, after she was killed by an errant shower head. It is a reunion for the siblings, having not seen each other in years. After the funeral Bernadette can barely stop weeping, while her brother is merely irritated by what he feels is her humiliating display of emotion. We follow Sebastian to a therapy session with Dr. Hillary MacMahon, an extravagantly needy woman, who, upon hearing that Sebastian is terminating his treatment, dissolves into a morass of self-recrimination, ending with her stabbing her hand. All the while, Bernadette's husband, Kip, responds to the funeral rather mystically, deciding to eschew his dental practice and become an artist. Bernadette, now pregnant, is reduced to being Kip's modelimmobile on the outside, raging on the inside. Sebastian's only real contact with people is in the form of letters he writes to a convicted murderer, Dylan. Attempting to form another human relationship, Sebastian brings home a prostitute and ends up with his throat cut. As he lies bleeding, he is visited by his mother's ghost. Mother and son reveal secrets they couldn't tell while Mother lived: Her children are the progeny of a rapist; and Sebastian had, indeed, loved. Sebastian goes to his sister's home to recuperate and while there becomes obsessed with Dylan. As Bernadette and Kip prepare to leave for Africa with their new baby, Sebastian finally receives a letter from Dylan. In it he explains that his punishment has not alleviated his guilt, but that charity might, and thus he sets Sebastian free from his obsession. The lesson is learned again as Bernadette sets her husband free to pursue life with Sebastian's doctor, Hillary MacMahon, who had visited Sebastian at his sister's. As the play ends, Sebastian, who has decided to stay and be the baby's father, finally weeps for his lost lover, his mother and everyone he misses.

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-

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Dramatists Play Service, NY

-

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Comedy

One Act

1

1

-

Notes: part of The Fros Trilogy

Synopsis: ROGER & MIRIAM follows the lives of a suburban mother and her awkward son for more than twenty years. From summer camp, to finding new love after AIDS has robbed us of our innocence. Roger and Miriam confide in each other through a series of letters, often funny, sometimes tragic. While their paths are very differentMiriam experimenting with extra-marital affairs, Roger holding on to a childhood ideal of lovethey both, ultimately come to a similar conclusion. "We were two people, touching," that's what mattered

Playwrights' Horizons Mainstage, NY, USA >>>

2008

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-

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

-

Play/Drama

3

2

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Notes: -

Synopsis: Nate and Laurel are a comfortably married, Upper West Side coupleuntil Nates wayward brother Hal arrives from Hollywood. What at first seems a casual visit, a chance to reconnect, is quickly revealed as something more ominous. Hal may have had success, but human connection is all that matters, and he intends to make connectionsno matter who pays the price
- press release