Second Sight by G. Scott Eldredge

Drama/ 7 Characters, 3 male, 4 female/ Full Length, Two Acts

Synopsis: In the history of Jonathan’s family, the eldest child in each generation develops second sight on their 13th birthday. But for unknown reasons his mother didn’t receive the sight, and the last person who did abandoned the family 40 years ago, after being released from a mental institution.

His father isn’t sure what to make of all this, his grandfather assures him he is fine the way he is, and his mother hopes he will receive the gift she didn’t.

Tomorrow is Jonathan’s 13th birthday.

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Performance rights must be secured before production
Contact information:
Amateur and professional rights:
G. Scott Eldredge
P.O. Box 311
La Honda, Calif.
USA 94020
Playwright’s website: www.lifetimesinc.com
E-mail: seldredg@comcast.net

About the Playwright: Scott has over 25 years of experience as a writer and editor. His writing background includes technical, instructional, and marketing content distributed via print, Web, CD, and online.

Scott has completed three full length plays, Second Sight, The Last Point Of View and Denial, as well as two screenplays, Blindsided and New Age.

Other recent work has included instructional design, writing, and editing for Apple, Cisco, Gap, Google, HP, Kaiser, Network Appliance, Palm, and Savi Technology.

Second Sight was first presented at the Playwrights Center, San Francisco, CA in 2007.

Seeds by Donna Hoke

Seeds by Donna Hoke at The Road Less Travelled Theatre, Buffalo, NY

Drama/ 5 Characters, 1 Man, 4 Women/ Full Length, Two Acts

Synopsis: Single mom Josephine has three children from different dads; identical and infertile twin Marjorie wants to be childless — until Jo offers to be her egg donor surrogate …

From The Buffalo News: “Seeds is the very personal and intimate story of Marjorie and Aiden, two thirtysomethings once called DINKS – double income, no kids – pondering parenthood. He’s obsessed with being a dad, needs to be one.

Marjorie’s not so sure. She’s a scientist and lives in a world of research and grants, long hours, cutting-edge stuff. She’s seen countless doctors about her apparent infertility, ultrasounded and probed ad infinitum. Marjorie likes her life as it is and motherhood is not a first choice.

Marjorie’s twin, Josephine, on the other hand, has three children by three different fathers. She can get pregnant with a handshake. So, the topic of Jo as a surrogate mother arises, is argued and agreed upon . . .

From this point on, Seeds is full of crises, some foreseen, some not. Baby Joseph’s premature birth is complicated and prior arrangements – Who’s the aunt? Who’s the mother? – surface. There are blowups and meltdowns. ‘Babies can ruin relationships,’ observes Kay, the twins’ caustic but wise mother. ‘Look at Josephine. Look at me. Look at Woody Allen.'”

“Simply put, the instructional, observant and insightful Seeds is Hoke’s best work to date . . . Hoke is at work exploring decision-making, societal expectations and perceptions in this important play . . . suggesting that even looking for love in all the wrong places may turn out fine.”
– The Buffalo News

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A portion of Seeds may be read by clicking on the “Read It Now” button above. To obtain a complete reading copy, contact the playwright at donna@donnahoke.com

Contact Information:
Amateur and professional rights:
Donna Hoke
donna@donnahoke.com
Ph.: 973-919-2038
Playwright’s website: donnahoke.com
Representation: Patricia McLaughlin, Beacon Agency
beaconagency@hotmail.com
212-736-6630

About the Playwright: Donna’s work has been seen in 47 states and on five continents, including at Barrington Stage, Barrow Group, Celebration Theatre, Gulfshore Theatre, Queens Theatre, The Road, Writers Theatre New Jersey, Phoenix Theatre, Atlantic Stage, Purple Rose, Skylight, Pride Films and Plays, New Jersey Rep, Hens and Chickens (London), The Galway Fringe Festival, and Actors Repertory Theatre of Luxembourg. Plays include BRILLIANT WORKS OF ART (Kilroys List), ELEVATOR GIRL (O’Neill and Princess Grace finalist), SAFE (winner of the Todd McNerney, Naatak, and Great Gay Play and Musical Contests), and TEACH (Gulfshore New Works winner). She has been nominated for the Primus, Blackburn, and Laura Pels prizes, and is a three-time winner of the Emanuel Fried Award for Outstanding New Play (SEEDS, SONS & LOVERS, ONCE IN MY LIFETIME). She has also received an Individual Artist Award from the New York State Council on the Arts to develop HEARTS OF STONE, and, in its final three years, Artvoice named her Buffalo’s Best Writer—the only woman to ever receive the designation. 

Donna also serves on the Dramatists Guild Council, is an ensemble playwright at Road Less Traveled Productions, blogger, moderator of the 12,000+-member Official Playwrights of Facebook, New York Times-published crossword puzzle constructor; children’s and trivia book author; and founder/co-curator of BUA Takes 10: GLBT Short Stories. Speaking engagements include Citywrights, Kenyon Playwrights Conference, the Dramatists Guild National Conference, Chicago Dramatists, the Austin Film Festival, and a live Dramatists Guild webinar. Her commentary has been seen on #2amt, howlround, The Dramatist, the Official Playwrights of Facebook, Workshopping the New Play (Applause, 2017), and at donnahoke.com.

Seeds was first produced by the Road Less Traveled Theater, Buffalo, NY in March 2013.

Shave ’em Dry by JG Simmons


Drama/ 1 Woman, 5 Men, and 1 character who could be male, female, or nonbinary/ Full Length, Two Acts

Synopsis: Based on real people and real events, Shave ‘em Dry is about liberty and libertinage, copyright and copulation, and human rights in the flesh. In 1935, Blues singer Lucille Bogan arrives for a recording session in a Manhattan studio, accompanied by Spenser, a white man she met the night before. Egged on by her piano player, Walter, she confronts her producer about the terms of her contract, and spontaneously introduces Spenser as her manager. He’s as surprised as the producer.

Alone in the control room later, the producer and his engineer discuss Lucille’s demands and her prior offer to record a version of her song “Shave ’em Dry” in its bluest, dirtiest version. Joined by a promoter of illegal “party songs,” they decide to negotiate with her by insisting she “wax” it at the end of the session.

Meantime, it turns out Spenser was more than a little shocked when Lillian exposed him to the seedier side of life the night before. At the same time, he reveals his own dark background, as a soldier in the Jewish brigade in Palestine during World War I. As more truth is uncovered, we learn he has been fired from his job as an English professor because of an affair with a student, and is destitute. He had gone to Harlem to buy a gun to kill himself with, when he met Lucille.

Spenser clings to courtly ideals learned from the chivalric tales he once taught, but Lillian will have none of it. In Mississippi, she tells him, white people were always talking about knighthood and such, but all she saw as a young girl was vicious hypocrisy and violence. Mortified by her story of the lynching of Luther Hobart and his wife, Spenser literally genuflects before her. Lillian takes advantage of his sudden allegiance to restore him mentally and physically, by entrusting him to negotiate the terms for “Shave ’em Dry.”

He succeeds. And in the late afternoon, 5 March 1935, Lucille and Walter create what is known in the dusty files of the American Record Corporation as “Alternate Take One” – the most graphically sexual and uncompromising blues song ever recorded, and perhaps the last by this taboo-defying artist who has been called, along with Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, one of “the big three of the blues.”

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Performance rights must be secured before production

Contact Information:
Amateur and professional rights:
John Galbraith Simmons
Email: jgsimmons@jps.net
Phone: (718) 524-6345
Playwright’s website: jgsimmons.com

About the Playwright: John Galbraith Simmons has broad range and versatility as a writer. He is the author of four published novels, including the well-received The Sharing. He has also written several works of nonfiction, including The Scientific 100, a work in the history of science that has been translated into more than a dozen languages. His work in television includes episodes of “Tracker” (Lion’s Gate Entertainment); “Queen of Swords” (Fireworks/M6);” Poltergeist: The Legacy” (MGM/Showtime); and “Highlander: The Raven” (PanzerDavis/Gaumont). His feature-length screenplay Nobody’s Business was a runner-up for the Herbert Beigel Screenplay Award. Shave ‘em Dry! draws on his long experience with black music and the blues. Simmons studied philosophy at Northwestern University, graduating with honors, and he is also a graduate of Long Island University. He is a member of the Authors Guild, the National Association of Science Writers, the New York Academy of Sciences, the Writers Guild of America, and the Writers Guild of Canada. He lives in New York and Paris.

Shave ’em Dry was first presented at the Gershwin Hotel, New York, NY in Jan., 2007.

Shelf Life by Phillip C. Wagner

Comedy-Drama/ 27 Characters, 10 Men, 11 Women, 6 Indeterminate (doubling and tripling possible)/ Full Length, Two Acts

Synopsis: A Christmas dream play for ages 13 and up, combining parody, social comment, and fantasy. An old toymaker is visited by a collectible doll on the run from three “Brats” Dolls. The bad gals recruit Darth Vader, Freddy Krueger, and a not very threatening troll to take on the collectibles’ protectors, who include Popular Pirate Bob, Jack in Box, and a talking dog. The play culminates in a battle royale between the two sides, and a heartwarming Christmas surprise for the old man.

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Performance rights must be secured before production
Contact information: Amateur and professional rights:
Phillip C. Wagner
Artistic Director
Tragically Comic Players
1552 Creighton Valley Road
Lumby, BC, Canada
V0E 2G1
E-mail: phillipcwagner99@hotmail.com
Ph: (250) 547-6045

About the Playwright: Actor, director, musician, and playwright Phillip C. Wagner studied playwriting at the University of Iowa, and both playwriting and directing at the University of Alberta. His other plays include Murder at the Empress and the family musical (with Beth DeVolder) Ichabod and the Headless Horseman, which toured to 14 schools in the Greater Victoria area, and most recently was seen at the Powerhouse Theatre in Vernon In 2009. Currently the artistic director of the Tragically Comic Players in Lumby, BC, Canada, Phil is also a screenwriter and story editor.

Shelf Life was first performed by the Tragically Comic Players, Lumby, British Columbia, in 2009.

Shyllag by Miriam Gallagher

Drama/ 1 Character, 1 Woman/ Full Length, 90 minutes

Synopsis: A Travelling Player, waiting for her train, tells tales to the unseen stationmaster, opening a Pandora’s box of love, struggle and confusion. To Allwych (or Everywoman), life is one long train ride. She spins tales of real and imagined journeys: Happy seaside trains with her daughter Shyllag. Exciting tours as a Travelling Player. Romantic and tragic trains.

Her story spans three generations of women and their lives, from Allwych’s mother, who was a young woman between the two World Wars, to Allwych in the present, after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Although partly inspired by real life events, the play concerns itself with Everywoman’s search for freedom.

Shyllag (or “Once upon a Train in Hungary”) lasts 90 mins — without an interval — and can be staged as a one woman play or performed with more players. Some scenes, e.g. station scenes, the wedding and pub scene would lend themselves to group interaction with perhaps dance/mime/music and a soundscape created by the actors.

The setting is a railway station in Limbo.

“A beguiling piece of writing.”
– The Irish Times

“A beautifully told story and Allwych is a memorable narrator. The play has great verve and energy.”
– Max Stafford-Clark, theatre director

“A vibrant and moving piece of theatre.”
– Hampstead Theatre, London

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Contact information:
Amateur and professional rights:
Miriam Gallagher
E-mail: gallaghermiriam@eircom.net
Playwright’s website: http://www.miriamgallagher.ie/
Address: 53 Upper Beechwood Ave.
Ranelagh, Dublin 6
Ireland

About the Playwright: Miriam Gallagher, Irish playwright, novelist and screenwriter, studied drama in London (LAMDA). Her work, staged and screened in Ireland, London, Paris, USA, and Canada with Irish, Dutch, Finnish and Russian translations, is included in the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing and profiled in Irish Women Writers: An A-Z Guide (Geenwood Press). Her plays have been published in Fancy Footwork and 12 Other Plays (Soc. Irish Playwrights) and Kalahari Blues & Other Plays (2006). Commissions include The Ring of Mont de Balison (Ranelagh Millenium Project); Kalahari Blues (Galloglass Theatre Co), which toured nationwide; The Gold of Tradaree (Clare Arts Award); The Mighty Oak of Riverwood (Betty Ann Norton Theatre School 40 years celebration) performed at the Gate Theatre; and Fancy Footwork (Dublin Theatre Festival). Recently her play The Parting Glass was an international prizewinner of the Near & Far Playwrighting Contest (USA).

Miriam’s other books include Let’s Help Our Children Talk (O’Brien Press) and a novel, Song for Salamander (Trafford). She received Arts Council and European Script Fund Awards for her feature length screenplay Girls in Silk Kimonos (celebrating the Gore Booth sisters), and her film Gypsies has been screened at Irish Film Centre, Galway Film Fleadh, Foyle Film Festival, New York’s Lincoln Center, Plaza cinemas, San Francisco and at the International Children’s Film Festival at Hyderabad, India. A member of Irish PEN, Miriam has served on its committee and as vice president. She has also served on the Irish Writers Union committee, the council of the Society of Irish Playwrights, as a judge for the O.Z. Whitehead Play Competition, and on the Awards Panel for Arts and Disability Forum. She has been a guest lecturer at universities in Dublin, New York, Boston, and Pretoria, and her manuscripts are in the National Library, Dublin and film work in the Irish Film Archive.

Shyllag was first produced at Andrews Lane Theatre, Dublin, in 1993.

Silver Lining by John Chambers

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

Synopsis: Silver Lining looks at what happens when the rhythms of a life — to many, a life that is mundane, decidedly unglamorous, usually unappreciated — are disrupted by catastrophic events. Though written in the 1990s, it is set in the late ’60s during the first Foot and Mouth epidemic, and anticipates more recent outbreaks. Beyond the apparent lack of hope and (literal) shit of life for poor farmers, we find courage, humour, poetry and love.

 

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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’s stage plays include: Stiff Stuff; Shouting at the Radio; Raw Material; Albert Finney Doesn’t Live Here Any More; Robin Hood – The Raven’s Revenge – all at the Library Theatre Company where he was Arts Council Resident Dramatist; Two Wheel Tricycle (Contact Theatre); Silver Lining (Oldham Coliseum); Yoiks Oiks (Bolton Octagon); The Marigold Trilogy (Real Life Theatre. M.E.N. Best Fringe Award); Balling the Blues (One Step); City of Gold (Arden).

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).

Silver Lining was first produced by the Oldham Coliseum Theatre, Oldham, UK, 1995.

Simply Selma by Jonathan Joy

Comedy-Drama/ 3 Characters, 2 Women, 1 Man/ One Act

Synopsis: Selma is a young woman keeping two full time jobs — working as a stripper at a local club, and taking care of her mother at home. Mama is a loving, but overbearing, woman in her sixties determined to convince Selma to stop stripping and to find a mate. When Michael moves in next door, Mama is convinced that he is the perfect man for her daughter. Simply Selma is a touching comedy/drama about family, relationships, and sexual politics.

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Contact information:
Amateur and professional rights:
Jonathan Joy
9604 SR 7 #35
Proctorville, Ohio
USA 45669
Ph.: (740) 886-7223
E-mail: joyjonathan@yahoo.com

About the Playwright: Jonathan Joy is theatre artist-in-residence at the Paramount Arts Center in Ashland, Kentucky. Annually, he works with over two thousand students (K-12) in educational theatre classes at the Paramount and at the Huntington Museum of Art and Huntington Renaissance Center in Huntington, West Virginia. His first play, Simply Selma, was published in 2003 by the One Act Play Depot. A Match Made in Heaven is now available at Brooklyn Publishers. His full length, American Standard, won two regional awards for playwriting including the 2003 Wallace E. Knight Excellence in Writing Award. His written work will also be included in three upcoming theatre books: Millennium Monologues 2, Shakespeare Festivals Around the World, and 60 Seconds to Glory: 220 Monologues for Women. His new play, The Princess of Rome, Ohio, was a 2004 Finalist for the Seven Devils Playwriting Conference in McCall, Idaho and a Semi-Finalist at the Dayton Playhouse Futurefest. Professional acting and directing credits include work with the Phoenix Theatre Circle in Columbus, Ohio; Virginia Stage Company in Norfolk, Virginia; Huntington Rep in Huntington, West Virginia; and the Backstage Players in Ashland, Kentucky. Since 1998, Mr. Joy has served as Director/Manager of Free Spirit Productions, a regional theatre troupe located in Kentucky and West Virginia. He holds an MA in English (Drama/Creative Writing emphasis) and a BFA in Theatre (Acting/Directing emphasis) both from Marshall University, where he is currently an adjunct professor teaching Theatre Appreciation.

Simply Selma was first produced by Free Spirit Productions at the Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, West Virginia in August, 2001.

Small’s World by John Chambers

Drama/ 2 Characters, 1 Man, 1 Woman/ One Act, 30 minutes

Synopsis: Jamie has a secret fixation, and every Tuesday evening he amuses this fetish by wearing his mother’s skimpiest undergarments. He presses “play” and dances his way into another world, a happier world. Every week he looks forward to his one-man party, but one evening his mother comes home early and finds her son in mid-enjoyment. She is less than pleased.

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Performance rights must be secured before production
Contact information:
Amateur and professional rights:
John Chambers
E-mail: 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.

Small’s World was first presented by the Real Life Theatre Company, Manchester, in March 2009

Stiff Stuff by John Chambers

Drama/ 6 Characters, 3 Men, 3 Women/ Full Length, Two Acts

Synopsis: Ranging from a back street Manchester pub to an Oxford dinner table, Stiff Stuff melds an audacious array of characters, including a salesman on the edge, a celebrity footballer, and a professor of nonsense verse, into a wildly inventive collage of modern life. 

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Performance rights must be secured before production
Contact information:
Amateur and professional rights:
John Chambers
E-mail: 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.

Stiff Stuff was first presented by the Library Theatre Company, Manchester, U.K., in July, 1988.

Stuff by Jim Reyland

Drama/ 2 Characters, 2 Men/ Full Length, Two Acts

Synopsis: (from The Tennessean [Nashville]): “Two former Army buddies are hired to clear out the, well, stuff that has accumulated on the stage of an old vaudeville theater.

“As the evening progresses, the audience discovers that there’s a violent and, until now, unspoken history shared by the two men. Years earlier. Milton, a gay man, was the victim of a savage beating that he suspects his friend of having failed to prevent — or worse.”

Character Notes

“Entertaining, fast-paced and emotionally fearless”
– The Tennessean (Nashville)

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Performance rights must be secured before production
Contact information: Amateur and professional rights:
Jim Reyland
1102 17th Avenue South
Nashville, Tennessee
USA 37212
Ph.: 1-800-726-3612
Email: jreyland@audioproductions.com

About the Playwright: Jim Reyland is the writer of many poems and seven one acts. He studied English at a small liberal arts college in North Carolina, hosted a national radio talk show, and for the past seventeen years has owned a recording studio/production company, Audio Productions on Music Row in Nashville.His writing career began with thirty-second commercials and evolved to longer form network radio shows. Jim has written hundreds of programs for top country and pop artist like Garth, Vince, Reba, Hootie, and Creed.

Stuff was first produced by b. scott productions at the Belcourt Theatre, Nashville, Tennessee in March 1999.