A Christmas Carol by Tom Smith

A Christmas Carol

Drama with Music/ 5+ males, 5+ females (10-35+ performers possible)/ Full Length, Two Acts

Synopsis: An enchanting adaptation of Dickens’ classic tale of Ebenezer Scrooge and his redemption from a life of greed and sadness. When four ghosts visit Scrooge, he is forced to look at his life-past, present and future-and witness the effect he has on others. A “play with music,” the script includes four songs.

Most of A Christmas Carol may be read by clicking on the “Read It Now” button above. To obtain a complete reading copy, please see the Contact Information on this page.

Published by arrangement with YouthPLAYS

 

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Performance rights must be secured before production
Contact information:
Amateur and Professional Rights:
YouthPLAYS
7119 W Sunset Blvd #390
Los Angeles, CA
USA 90046
E-mail: info@youthplays.com
Website: www.youthplays.com

About the Playwright: Tom Smith’s published plays include The Wild and Wacky Rhyming Stories of Miss Henrietta Humpledowning, ESL, What Comes Around, A Christmas Carol and Johnny and Sally Ann… (YouthPLAYS);Marguerita’s Secret Diary (Baker’s Plays); Gray (Original Works Online); andThe Pathmaker, Comedy of Errors (editor), Much Ado About Nothing (editor),Two Gentlemen of Verona (editor), and Love’s Labour’s Lost (editor) for Encore Performance Publishing as well as Dangerous, The Odyssey and Drinking Habits, published by Playscripts. His other plays have received productions both nationally and internationally. Tom is the recipient of the Robert J. Pickering Award for Excellence in Playwriting, the ATHE Playworks Award, the Orlin R. Corey Outstanding Regional Playwright Award, the Richard Odlin Award, a Seattle Footlights Award, and has been a selected participant in numerous playwriting festivals across the country. He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild. Feel free to check out his website at www.tomsmithplaywright.com.

About the Composer: Roger Butterley has worked with artists ranging from Michael McDonald and Phoebe Snow, to Gavin DeGraw and Jill Sobule, and has appeared on more than 20 albums. He has a longstanding relationship with Sh-K-Boom Records, having music directed many of the Sh-K-Boom Room concert series, as well as music directing and co-producing the CD of Paul Scott Goodman’s Bright Lights, Big City. As a composer, he has written three full length musicals: Fallen Angel and Eagle Song (both with Justin Murphy), and Turandot: The Rumble For The Ring with Randy Weiner and Diane Paulus. Roger has also composed music for commercials and industrials for clients including Avis, Symbol Technologies, and Chase Manhattan. He recently completed music for a new ride at Hershey Park, The Reese’s Extreme Cup Challenge.

A Christmas Carol was first produced by American Southwest Theatre Company (Las Cruces, NM) in 2000.


A Road To Nowhere by David Earle

Drama / 7 Characters, 5 Men, 2 Women/ One Act

Synopsis: Lost and alone at night on an unfamiliar, desolate country road following an auto accident, Sam Kaufman, a middle-aged businessman, seeks help at an eerily unimpressive roadside motel. Its bleak and depressing ambience, however, is nothing compared to the bizarre behavior of the manager and his guests. Gradually, Sam comes to realize the macabre circumstances of where he is and that the road that led him to this motel was, in fact, a road to nowhere.

This stage version of A Road to Nowhere is the basis for the multiple award winning film:
A Road to Nowhere by David Earle

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Performance rights must be secured before production

Contact Information:
Amateur and professional rights:
David Earle
1027 Ridgeview Ct.
Indian Hills, NV
89705 USA
Email: ButADream@cs.com
Ph.: 775-220-9273

About the Playwright: Award-winning writer David Earle was born and raised in Anaheim, California, and lived 15 years in the Los Angeles area where he worked at various entertainment industry companies — Taft/Barish Productions, New World Pictures, Rogers & Cowan, Hollywood Records, and at Walt Disney in Creative Development at Disney Imagineering. In addition to A Road to Nowhere, his plays include Postnuptials, After the Wedding, and They’re Having a Deadly Good Time.

His screenplay adaptations of both A Road to Nowhere and Postnuptials (unproduced) have been nominated for or won several awards at film festivals internationally, as has his adaptation of his sci-fi novel Life Is But A Dream (available on Amazon). In total, his screenplays have earned 63 awards and nominations at film festivals and screenplay competitions worldwide.

The Inclusion and Equity department of the Writers Guild of America West chose Life Is But A Dream for a full cast industry reading at the WGAW building due to the ethnic diversity of its characters. His (unproduced) five-episode true story limited series, Pelée, has also won multiple awards internationally. His most recently completed screenplay is another true story drama, Searching for Michael. In addition, he has written a novelette, The Remarkable Travels of Billy Sparks, and short story, The Calla Lilies (both on Amazon). David Earle is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America and Writers Guild of America West.

A Road to Nowhere was first produced at The Group Repertory Theatre in North Hollywood, California, USA in June, 1983.

A Singular Man by Julia Britton

Drama/ 1 Character, 1 Man/ One act

Synopsis: English writer Christopher Isherwood relives and reviews his life at Cambridge University and in Nazi Germany, where he wrote the famous Berlin Stories (on which John Van Druten based his play I am a Camera and from which came the musical and film Cabaret). He is still suffering from the loss of his young German lover, Heinz, whom he failed to rescue from the Nazi authorities.

Also available in a full-length version as The Lost.

“Fascinating and brilliantly perceptive theatre.” – Jeff Jones, Stage Whispers

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A portion of A Singular Man may be read by clicking on the “Read It Now” button above. To obtain a complete reading copy, contact Simon Britton at simonbritton88@gmail.com

Production rights requests:
Simon Britton
simonbritton88@gmail.com

About the Playwright: Julia Britton (1914-2012) graduated at Manchester University (Hons, Classics, Hons. English) and worked as a journalist and university teacher before she became a playwright. Her plays have had productions at The Stage Company (Adelaide, Australia), The Blue Room (Perth), La Mama (Carlton), Performing Arts Productions (Melbourne), and Theatreworks (Melbourne). Her play Miles Franklin and the Rainbow’s End was chosen for performance at the San Antonio Festival, Texas, produced by The Stage Company of South Australia, and later performed at the Festival Centre, Adelaide.

She wrote and adapted numerous plays for Performing Arts Productions, including Lady Chatterley’s Lover (seven seasons nationally in Australia), Women in Love (Rippon Lea), Loving Friends (two seasons at Rippon Lea), An Indian Summer (Rippon Lea), Little Lord Fauntleroy (Rippon Lea), The Secret Garden (seven seasons including Adelaide), Anne of Green Gables (two seasons in Perth and Melbourne), and The Lost (two seasons in Melbourne at the Old Treasury Building).

Other plays include Hello, Last Page of My Life, Magdalena Amati, Somehow the Times Passes, and Internet Baby (all seen in readings at La Mama), The Children, The Professor (reading at Rippon Lea), Erotica in Black and White (reading Adelaide, Theatre 62, short version performed in Adelaide at Lion Theatre), and Mrs. Bloem.

Her music theatre includes Faith, Folk and Fun (at the National Gallery of Victoria) and The Music of Milhaud (two seasons at the University of Adelaide and the National University Canberra). Robbie Burns: The Farmer Poet and The Young Lord Byron were produced at the Scottish Festival at the Opera House, Omaru in New Zealand. Awards and Nominations include the AWGIE Award (Monte Miller Award) for Exit and Entrances, directed John Edwards; Best Play Award, ABC Radio, Queensland; and a nomination for the Victorian Green Room Award for In Transit.

A Singular Man was first performed at the Melbourne Fringe Festival in Melbourne, Australia on September 25th, 1996.

A Stranger on the Bus by Ed Shockley

Drama/ Flexible cast of 12-50, 7-25 males, 5-25 females/ Full Length, about 120 minutes

Synopsis:
A young African-American girl takes an epic fantasy journey set against the backdrop of the busing movement, as two families, one on each side of the racial divide, grow to discover their love for each other.

The audience experiences the landmark Swann v. Board of Education case that completed the integration of American schools through her dream. With Jim Crow appearing in the guise of a giant trickster bird to battle the forces of progress, this award-winning epic begins at World War II and journeys to the moment when two innocent children can sit side by side en route to a new era in our nation’s history.

A portion of A Stranger on the Bus may be read by clicking on the “Read It Now” button above. To obtain a complete reading copy, please see the Contact Information on this page.

Published by arrangement with YouthPLAYS

Read it Now
Performance rights must be secured before production
Contact information:Amateur and professional rights:
YouthPLAYS
7119 W Sunset Blvd #390
Los Angeles, CA
USA 90046
E-mail: info@youthplays.com
Website: www.youthplays.com

About the Playwright: Ed Shockley, MFA is author of more than 80 plays. His works have set five box office records and been honored with numerous awards, including the Stephen Sondheim Award for Outstanding Contributions to American Musical Theatre, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts and PA State Arts Council Playwrights Fellowship. He has received commissions for youth theatre plays from Seattle Children’s Theatre, Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, Dallas Children’s Theatre, Black Spectrum Theatre and the Harlem Renaissance Theatre. His historical short film, Stone Mansion, aired on Showtime television.

A Stranger on the Bus was commissioned and produced by Charlotte Children’s Theatre (Charlotte, NC), 1997.

A Weekend in Logatec by Evdokimos Tsolakidis

Comedy-Drama/ 4 characters, 3 Men, 1 Woman/ Short play, 15 minutes

Synopsis: Marcos takes a short vacation for a weekend, in Logatec, Slovenia, far from his home in Athens, Greece. He does so every year, right before his long vacations with his family on a Greek island.

This year, though, his wife surprises him with a visit, to find out what’s going on. She doesn’t find out much, but the audience does. Here, in Logatec, at the same hotel, in the same room, when he was a student, Marcos attempted to make love with his best friend . . .

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Performance rights must be secured before production
Contact information:
Amateur and professional rights:
Theater of Changes,
3rd Septemvriou 19a
104 32 Athens GR
Ph: +30 210 52 48 251
Email: info@toc.gr

About the Playwright: Evdokimos Tsolakidis was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1962. He studied in the Medical School of the University of Rome. He was awarded his diploma of the Drama School of Northern Greece with honors. He continued his studies in drama, acting and directing in New York (Actor’s Studio, H.B. Studio) funded by the American state (Fulbright Foundation). He has worked as an actor and director in Greece and abroad, for more than twenty years, working both on classical and modern drama. During the last nine years he has been teaching Improvisation, Acting, and Acting Technique, in various drama schools in Greece and abroad. His first play Athens-Moscow has been staged on his own direction for two years (2001-2002-2003) and has been published along with his second play Nothing (Athens, Greece: Dodoni Publisher, 1998). He has also published a book concerning ‘Acting’ (KOAN ed.). He is the founder and the artistic director of the Theater of Changes.

A Wolf By The Ears by Mattie Lennon

Drama/ 6 Characters, 5 Men, 1 Woman/ One Act (20 minutes)

Synopsis: Hughie Doherty is a young Irish farmer who makes up doggerel as a pastime. Those who don’t know any better call him a poet. He gets into conflict with the forces of law and order when he is arrested for a crime that hasn’t been committed. Because the cell in which he is detained is inadequately sound-proofed, he learns that, in fact, he has the upper hand. He uses this situation to the best advantage before the final curtain.

 

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Contact information:
Amateur and professional rights:
Mattie Lennon
E-mail: mattielennon@gmail.com
Playwright’s website: mattielennon.com

About the Playwright: Mattie Lennon writes the occasional humorous article and has contributed to The Irish Times, Sunday Independent,The Irish Post, Ireland’s Own, Ireland’s Eye, The Wicklow People, Kerry’s Eye, Leinster Leader and many more. He also writes for a number of on-line magazines, including irishpoetsworldwide.com. He has compiled and presented programmes on RTE Radio One and currently presents a ballad programme on Radio Dublin 100FM.

He has spent most of the past 30 years in Dublin; but whenever asked “Will you ever go back to Kylebeg?” he quotes James Joyce’s reply when asked the same question about Dublin: “I never left.” He is married, with a family, although currently his wife is wondering what sort of an eejit he is to be sitting at a computer, at this time of night, typing this with one finger.

A Wolf by the Ears awaits its first production.

Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, adapted by Lee Wilson

Drama/ 22 characters, all characters may be any race/ethnicity and gender, doubling possible and encouraged/ Full Length, Two Acts

Synopsis: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, adapted by Lee Wilson from Agatha Christie’s novel, is set in the tranquil English village of King’s Abbot, primarily at Fernly Park, the estate of the wealthy Roger Ackroyd. The story begins with the mysterious death of Mrs. Ferrars, rumored to have committed suicide after being blackmailed. Soon after, Roger Ackroyd is found murdered in his study. The local doctor, James Sheppard, discovers the body and narrates the events that follow. Sheppard’s sister, Caroline, is a curious and gossip-loving woman who contributes to the village’s speculation about the murder. The famous retired Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, is drawn into the investigation at the request of Flora Ackroyd, Roger’s niece, who is engaged to Ralph Paton, Ackroyd’s adopted son and the primary suspect, who has mysteriously disappeared.

As Poirot delves deeper into the case, he uncovers various secrets among the residents of Fernly Park. These include the housekeeper, Elizabeth Russell, who harbors a hidden connection to Charles Kent, and Ursula Bourne, the parlourmaid secretly married to Ralph Paton. Major Hector Blunt, a friend of Roger Ackroyd, and Geoffrey Raymond, Ackroyd’s secretary, also fall under scrutiny. The butler, John Parker, and Mrs. Ackroyd, the widow of Roger’s brother, add to the complex web of relationships and motives.

Poirot’s investigation reveals a series of deceptions and hidden truths. This adaptation maintains the suspense and drama of Christie’s original work, exploring themes of deception, justice, and the fallibility of perception, while challenging the audience with its narrative innovation and psychological depth.

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Performance rights must be secured before production
Contact information:
Amateur and professional rights:
Lee Wilson
wilsonle@tcd.ie
Ph.: 1-289-934-0154 (Ontario, Canada)

About the Playwright: Lee is an Assistant Professor in Acting at The University of Windsor, School of Dramatic Art, Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Mr. Wilson holds Canadian, British and Irish citizenship.

In 2019, his production of A Fear and Loathing Actor in Dublin by Mark McCauley premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Theatre@36 in Dublin, Ireland. While living in Ireland, he directed the world premieres of Running with Dinosaurs by Nadine Flynn (The New Theatre); The Eurydice Project by Joanna Crawley (The Project Arts Centre Main Space); Fray by Margaret Perry and Pork by Nadine Flynn (Smock Alley); and The Sea Brothers by Padraig Colum/Joanna Crawley (O’Reilly Theatre/The Lir). In addition, his critically acclaimed production of East of Berlin by Hannah Moscovitch played to sold out houses at The Project Arts Centre in 2014/15. Lee was the Associate Director to Joe Dowling on Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge at The Gate Theatre, Dublin for the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2015.

His Canadian work includes being the founding artistic director of Resurgence Theatre Company in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada where he directed critically acclaimed productions of Hamlet, Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet. In 2013, he was nominated by his peers for the Christopher Plummer Fellowship Award for his outstanding contribution to the classics and Shakespeare performance in Canada. This award is administered by the Globe Theatre in England (Globe Centre in Canada) and recognized Lee as one of the most exciting young directors of Shakespeare in his native home of Canada.

His Canadian work includes being one of a handful of directors who participated in the Inaugural Michael Langham Workshop for Classical Directors at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario, Canada. As part of this program, he was the resident director to Des McAnuff on The Who’s Tommy and The Tempest film and stage production starring Christopher Plummer. Other credits at Stratford include assistant director to Antoni Cimolino on As You Like It and to Leon Rubin on Measure for Measure. He was the apprentice artistic director/artistic associate at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario, Canada (2008/2009 season). In 2008, Lee was invited to The Old Vic in London, England to participate in a directing and writing workshop with the Peter Hall Company. He was an Intern Director at the Shaw Festival during the 2005/2006 season in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada; and the Resident Director in the Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre Training at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 2004/2005. In 2003/2004, he was awarded the Urjo Kareda Residency Grant to study directing/artistic direction with Richard Rose at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, Canada. Lee started off his professional career as a member of the Inaugural Soulpepper Training Company studying acting, design, and directing with his mentor Robin Phillips.

Lee is an associate member of ADA (Association of Drama Adjudicators) in Ireland and holds an MFA in Directing from The Lir, Irelands National Academy of Dramatic Art, Trinity College, Dublin; and a BFA in Acting from Ryerson Theatre School, Toronto, Canada.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd awaits its first production.

Albert Finney Doesn’t Live Here Anymore by John Chambers

Comedy-Drama/ 3 characters, 2 Men, 1 Woman/ Full Length, Two Acts

Synopsis: Steve is a disillusioned working class man. Liberated by the heady mix of music and radical politics in the ’60s and ’70s, the ’80s saw all his hopes of something better come to nothing. His teenage son “Lud” never held out any hope. He’s a Generation X-er — which adds to Steve’s frustrations. Steve’s wife Cath is caught between the warring factions. Her journey — and her direct action — becomes collective action. Can any of them see light at the end of the tunnel . . .

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Performance rights must be secured before production
Contact information:
Amateur and professional rights:
John Chambers
Email: artistan38@tiscali.co.uk

About the Playwright: John has had some 40 plays premiered in his native North West of England — ranging from a Number One tour to fringe. He has written for most Reps in the region and was Arts Council Resident Dramatist at Manchester LTC and Resident Writer at M6 Theatre. His plays have subsequently been performed around the UK and as far afield as Australia and the US. He’s also written over a hundred hours of TV drama, as well as plays for radio.

Albert Finney Doesn’t Live Here Anymore was first performed at Manchester LTC, 1997.

All Clear by Eugene Stickland

Drama/ 5 characters, 3 Men, 2 Women/ Full Length, 90 mins.

Synopsis (from Fast Forward Weekly): “Delaney and his family are trapped in their suburban home in the orange-alert aftermath of some devastating attack — perhaps nuclear, perhaps germ warfare — waiting for the ‘all clear’ that will let them re-emerge. The doors and windows are sealed with plastic sheeting and duct tape, the power has been cut, they have no way of communicating with the outside world, and all they can see of it through the living-room window is a shroud of orange fog.

“While Delaney sits sullenly at a table, trying to write poetry but mainly polishing off the last of the Scotch, the other family members wander in and out of the room aimlessly, seemingly wanting to connect with one another but unable to.

“Maddie, Delaney’s bitter wife, wants a divorce. Billie, their spoiled-brat adult daughter, wants her cell phone, CNN, and her boyfriend. Bobby, their teenage son, has been damaged mentally by exposure to the fog, his brain stuck absurdly on the last things he saw while standing in a 7-Eleven ogling a copy of Maxim when the attack hit. ‘Big Gulp,’ he says, over and over. And ‘orange.’ Complicating matters . . . is the presence of German architect Braun, whose affair with Maddie many years ago drove the wedge between her and Delaney . . . .”

At its best, the play functions as a dark satire of the North American nuclear family at its lowest ebb, a sort ofEndgame in suburbia. Everyone is self-absorbed and no one knows how to reach out — in one sadly telling scene, Billie tells her father she is scared. ‘Yeah. Me too,’ says Delaney and then, instead of hugging his frightened daughter, he merely pats her shoulder and walks away. And no one has a clue how to survive in these dire conditions — the kind in which the other half of the world too often finds itself. ‘I think we were in the Age of Certainty,’ says Delaney, and the phrase, stuffed with smug Western complacency, has a terrible ring to it.”

“Offers a stark and unforgettably moving requiem for the end of the world as we know it . . . . Simply one of the most honest, courageous, tightly written, best acted, and emotionally gripping plays to have graced Alberta Theatre Projects’ playRites Festival in recent years.”
– The Calgary Herald

“Perhaps [Stickland’s] darkest play yet. . . . . On the one hand, the play continues the theme that has run through most of Stickland’s playRites plays — contemporary people (usually adult families), in a world of eroding values and traditions, trying to deal with change. On the other hand, the playwright has refused to sugar the bitterness with comedy — unless it’s the bleak kind found in the likes of Samuel Beckett.”
– Fast Forward Weekly

“Bleakly funny.”
– Vue Weekly

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Performance rights must be secured before production
Contact information: Amateur and professional rights:
Eugene Stickland
1517 21st Avenue S.W.
Calgary, AB
Canada
T2T 0M8.
Ph.: (403) 244-8941
Email: eugenius@telusplanet.net

About the Playwright: Eugene Stickland began writing plays following the completion of his M.F.A. at York University in 1984. Ten years later, at Alberta Theatre Projects playRites ’94, his play Some Assembly Required received its premiere production. Since then, the play has had 15 productions around Canada and the US. It was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Drama in 1995. During his tenure as Playwright-in-Residence at ATP, Eugene went on to write Sitting on Paradise (1996), A Guide to Mourning (1998), Appetite (2000) and Midlife (2002).All Clear was first produced by Alberta Theatre Projects, Calgary, in January 2004.
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All I Ever Wanted by Frank Moher

Drama/ 4 characters, 2 Men, 2 Women / Full Length, Two Acts

Synopsis: (from the Times-Colonist [Victoria]): “The tale of a small Vancouver Island community disrupted when someone’s secrets are revealed by a newspaper reporter.

“Harmon is a good-hearted, middle-aged farmer . . . . Todd, a bald-pated alternative-rock aficionado, is Harmon’s hired hand. Life in their anonymous yet idyllic island community is disrupted with the arrival of Kim, a Calgary newspaper reporter who starts her own paper. Kim’s big city tactics (print and be damned) shake up this close-knit hamlet.”

From The Bulletin (Nanaimo): “Apparently Harmon has been taking in young offenders to work on his farm and purposely not telling people about the boys’ criminal pasts.

“It’s a story that forces its characters, as well as the audience, to examine their capacity for tolerance as they come to grips with Harmon and his latest farm hand Todd Horstmann, whom everyone likes until they find out that he was previously arrested.”

“Timely and powerful . . . . a strong play, and one worth seeing.”
– The Bulletin (Nanaimo)

“A thought-provoking and emotional play about betrayal and conflict . . . excellent.”
– Island Life Magazine

Read it Now
Performance rights must be secured before production
Contact information:
Amateur and professional rights:
Single Lane Entertainment,
650 Little Blvd.,
Gabriola Island, B.C.,
Canada,
V0R 1X3.
Ph.: (in North America) 1-800-811-7405; or 250-247-9216
Email: info@singlelane.com
Playwright’s website: FrankMoher.com

About the Playwright: Frank Moher’s plays have been produced internationally, at theatres including South Coast Repertory (Costa Mesa, Calif.), Detroit Repertory Theatre, Round House Theatre (Silver Spring, Maryland), the Canadian Stage Company (Toronto), the Wellington Repertory Theatre (Wellington, New Zealand), Workshop West Theatre (Edmonton, Alta.), the Asolo Theater (Sarasota, Fla.), Alberta Theatre Projects (Calgary), Dodona Theatre (Prishtina, Kosova), The Mingei Theatre (Tokyo), and OmaDa Theatre (Athens, Greece). He has won a Los Angeles Drama-Logue Award for Writing (for Odd Jobs), the Edmonton Sterling Award for Outstanding New Play (for both The Third Ascent and Prairie Report,), and is published by both ProPlay and the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Frank has taught at the University of British Columbia and the University of Alberta (where he was a Distinguished Visiting Artist), and is currently an instructor in scriptwriting and journalism at Vancouver Island University. He has also worked professionally as a literary manager and dramaturg, and written for publications including The Globe and Mail, The National Post, Saturday Night magazine, The Georgia Straight, backofthebook.ca and salon.com.

All I Ever Wanted was premiered by the Nanaimo Festival Theatre, Nanaimo, B.C., in November, 1995

Also by Frank Moher on ProPlay: