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

Synopsis:
Five women imprisoned following the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1942 await their tribunal before the Nazis. Each is given an opportunity to speak up for her fellow prisoner but only Seena chooses not to remain “in silence.”

Winner of the Webster Groves Playwriting Award

His works for the stage have been produced by the New Works Theatre, Dallas Theater Center, Nashville Academy Theatre, Theatre Atlanta Off Peachtree, and the Project Arts Center, Dublin, Ireland. His radio play, Dynamite Hill, was aired over National Public Radio and BBC Radio 3.

In Silence was first produced by the SIU-C Dept. of Theatre in 1982.

Drama/ 1 Character, 1 Man/ One Act

Synopsis:

A one-act monologue structured around an imagined conversation between the middle-aged evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin and his (unseen) dying 10-year old daughter, Annie. Facing crushing grief, he is tormented about whether he should reveal to the world his life’s work, which has led to his conviction that all life on earth was the result of an evolutionary process rather than a divine act of creation.

His much loved wife has very strong religious beliefs and so his inner conflicts are heightened . . .

John has written three epics for Lancaster Dukes Promenade Seasons – Tales of King Arthur, Jungle Book and The Three Musketeers, and several pieces for/with young people at Manchester Youth Theatre and M6 where he was also Resident Writer.

Co-written theatre work includes: Scandals – The Life & Liver of Frank Randlewith Keith Clifford (which John also directed); Crazy People with Marvin Close (LTC); I’m Marrying Ryan Giggs (Robbie Fowler in Liverpool!) with Dave Simpson (Liverpool Playhouse & national tour); Koff with Brian Morgan (One Step).

He has written around 100 hours of television including: The Bill (Thames);Emmerdale (Granada-YTV). Working on it during BAFTA Best Soap year 2001); Eastenders; Runaway Bay (YTV / Lifetime); 14 episodes of Children’s Ward (Granada. Including RTS Best Children’s Drama Series); 3 fifteen minute films for BBC Education’s Turning Points, (which won BAFTA and RTS awards, 1999); Away From Home and Grease Lightning – 30 minute plays for BBC2 (Northwest); Dramarama (ITV).

In the Nature of Things awaits its first production.

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

Synopsis: Mrs. Bloem, a baby sitter with a Sydney family which is about to break up, becomes devoted to their twelve year old daughter, Emerald. Mrs. Bloem’s mother, Eva, was, during World War Two, a test pilot with Hitler’s Luftwaffe and came to Australia after the war ended. Emerald is mad about flying and sees Mrs. Bloem as the one stable factor of her life and someone to whom she can talk about her passion to fly. Behind them is the cult figure of Eva, now in her seventies and wandering in her mind, living again the heady and tragic last days of the Third Reich.

A portion of Into The Clouds 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.

Into the Clouds (under its original title Mrs. Bloem) was first read at Theatre 62, Adelaide on September 23, 1989. It was then workshopped by the Playbox Theatre Company, Melbourne directed by Malcolm Robertson, followed by a workshop week and a single performance in a week of new Australian plays at the Griffin Theatre Company at the Stables, Sydney.

Drama/ 2 Characters, 1 Man, 1 Woman/ One Act

Synopsis:

Jack Shone was once a radical, optimistic playwright on the verge of recognition. Now middle-aged, he’s probably the most cynical misanthrope on the planet. His slightly younger wife, Abi – an actress whose career never took off — now feels she is the sole audience for his bile.

Then he gets a chance offer – to write a one-act play which a prestigious theatre company wants to tour. It could change everything, for both of them. But is Jack still up to the task?

John has written three epics for Lancaster Dukes Promenade Seasons – Tales of King Arthur, Jungle Book and The Three Musketeers, and several pieces for/with young people at Manchester Youth Theatre and M6 where he was also Resident Writer.

Co-written theatre work includes: Scandals – The Life & Liver of Frank Randlewith Keith Clifford (which John also directed); Crazy People with Marvin Close (LTC); I’m Marrying Ryan Giggs (Robbie Fowler in Liverpool!) with Dave Simpson (Liverpool Playhouse & national tour); Koff with Brian Morgan (One Step).

He has written around 100 hours of television including: The Bill (Thames);Emmerdale (Granada-YTV). Working on it during BAFTA Best Soap year 2001); Eastenders; Runaway Bay (YTV / Lifetime); 14 episodes of Children’s Ward (Granada. Including RTS Best Children’s Drama Series); 3 fifteen minute films for BBC Education’s Turning Points, (which won BAFTA and RTS awards, 1999); Away From Home and Grease Lightning – 30 minute plays for BBC2 (Northwest); Dramarama (ITV).

Jacked Off awaits its first production.

James Joyce on the Witches’ Sabbath
Compañía Teatral Quinto Piso
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Drama/ 13 Characters, 9 men, 4 women, doubling possible/ Full Length, Two Parts

Synopsis: 1934. Kusnacht, Switzerland. Herr Dr. Gustav Jung’s clinic for the mentally ill. One of the patients is Miss Lucia Joyce. In a nightmarish atmosphere, her father, the Irish writer James Joyce, is pressed by the ghosts of his past to revisit his life, and his relationship with a daughter lost to madness and love for him.

The ghosts gradually become the protagonists of the drama. In song and word, they reconstruct the fragments of Joyce’s love-hate bond with Lucia, as well as his resentment towards Ireland, which ultimately led him to wander in exile.

They also become a Greek chorus in honor of the black bard William Blake, god of metaphysics. Drawing on the 16 engravings that illustrate his poem “The Gates of Paradise”, the poet opens up Joyce’s whole life, past, present and future.

Blake’s prophecies and Lucia’s phobic anguish plunge Joyce into his own Walpurgis Night. As the ghosts of his unconscious dance before him, to the sound of Monteverdi’s “Addio terra, addio cielo”, he lives out his own death and the heartrending anguish of having to abandon Lucia to her madness.

About the Playwright: Giuseppe Cafiero lives in the Tuscan countryside, in Lucignano, in the province of Arezzo, Italy.

Born in Naples, he spent his childhood in several Italian cities. In Bologna, he frequented the intellectual circles at Roberto Roversi‘s renowned bookstore, Palma Verde. The first part of his novel James Joyce — Rome and Other Stories was initially published in one of the bookstore’s influential magazines.

Cafiero later worked for various radio producers, including Radio Capodistria and Italian Swiss Radio. Moving to Tuscany, he was finally able to devote himself to reading and pursuing his literary work.

Other work for radio includes collaborations with the RAI, Radio Sveringes, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He has also written re-editions, free adaptations, and translations based on the work of an extensive spectrum of authors, from Shakespeare to O’Neill, Raspe to Daudet, Toller to Brecht.

In addition to James Joyce — Rome and Other Stories, Cafiero has published the bio-fictions Vincent van Gogh and Gustave Flaubert: The Ambiguity of Imagination.

Drama/ 5 Characters, 3 men, 2 women/ Full Length, Two Acts

Synopsis:
(From Theatremania.com): “Even death fails to reconcile a young man to his father’s sexuality in David Lohrey’s Jigsaw Confession. One of the four plays in Lohreys “Sex Talk(s)” series, this piece centers around a couple faced with the task of settling the husband’s father’s estate. They hope to find a manuscript in which the son believes his father has explained his determination many years earlier to leave the family to live with another man.”

Jigsaw Confession takes place in the attic of a university chancellor who has just died. Dennis, the Chancellor’s son, and Lisa, Dennis’ fiancée, have come in search of certain personal possessions the son wishes to keep for himself before the estate is passed into the hands of the university, which owns the property. Among other things, Dennis is looking for a long-lost manuscript, a once-promised novel that his father is said to have written. While searching for the novel, Lisa finds a cachet of personal letters, which she proceeds to read.

Meanwhile, the late-Chancellor’s male lover, Chris, shows up. Dennis and Chris now set about trying to make sense of the Chancellor’s life. The play moves across several years as the two men reminisce, but finally the conflict takes place as they grapple with their memories of this once-powerful man. When the manuscript is finally found, it shows that Dennis’ assumptions clash with the reality of who his father actually was. The play ends with the question of forgiveness left unresolved.

Betterland was first produced by the Long Beach Playhouse, Long Beach, California in 1999.

Drama/ 5 Characters, 3 Male, 2 Female/ Full Length, 90 mins.

Synopsis:
A young woman, Ana, arrives at a rundown shack for an appointment to be tattooed. She meets “The Captain” and his lover, Isabel — heroin addicts united by passion and their memories of better days. The Captain at first refuses to do the work, until Ana’s manipulative boyfriend convinces him to brand her with the image of a mysterious woman named “la negra” — the same tattoo The Captain carries on his own chest. Does The Captain agree in order to create his final masterpiece — or to free himself of the dark legacy that haunts him? Either way, the results are both brutal and inevitable.

Advisory: contains explicit language, violence, and sexuality.

La Negra was first produced by Galileo Teatro, Madrid in January, 2003.