Musical comedy/ 1 Characters, 1 Woman, 1 Female Voice/ Full Length, Two Acts

Synopsis (From The Globe and Mail [Toronto]): “Somewhere in Calgary, some time in the mid-1960s, a little girl tuned into ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ and was transported by the glamour of Motown Records’ premiere female stars, The Supremes. Twenty years later, this same girl — a white girl — became a Supreme, singing backup for Mary Wilson as the former Supreme played dives, cruise ships, and lounges across Canada and the United States.

“That, in brief, is Rhonda Trodd’s story as told in Supreme Dream.”

(From The Daily News [Halifax]): “The first half details Trodd’s rather average childhood and adolescence, cleverly planting the seed that she, like all other girls who saw The Supremes on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ in the ‘6Os, secretly wanted to be part of the most glamorous female singing group in history. She even auditions for acting school by performing a hilarious rendition of “Stop! In the Name of Love, accompanied by a torturously out-out-tune piano. A series of coincidences lead to a dinner theatre gig in a play about the music of the 1960s. Mary Wilson, the last remaining Supreme has been brought in to beef up the star power. The two hit it off and Trodd convinces Wilson to take her on as a backup singer for her Supremes revival show. It’s as simple as that: Trodd realizes her lifelong dream of becoming a Supreme … sort of, anyway.

“The second half of the play is a sobering tale of disillusion. Mary Wilson’s career has been in slow decay since the early 1970s, an endless circuit of cheap hotels, cruise ships, and lousy clubs. The majority of her musicians are black, except, ironically, for her two white back-up singers. Her manager is an exploitive creep. Welcome to the music business.

“Worse, the black musicians are openly discriminated against, especially on the cruise ships, much to the horror of the naive Calgary actress. Hard lessons are learned, but nothing can take away the one true fact that, for a the period of almost one year, Rhonda Trodd could call herself a Supreme.”

“Hilarious . . . Glinting with insights . . . beautifully written.”
– The Edmonton Journal

“A sure-fire hit . . . Funny, engrossing, and completely entertaining . . . It stays with you long after you’ve left the theatre.”
– The Daily News(Halifax)

“A fascinating picture of the joys, absurdities, and indignities of life on the fringes of fame.”
– The Globe and Mail(Toronto)

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) 1-855-757-9216 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.

Supreme Dream was premiered by Theatre Network, Edmonton, in April, 1996.

Also by Frank Moher on ProPlay:

• All I Ever Wanted
• Big Baby
• Kidnapping the Bride
• McLuhan: The Musical (with Gerald Reid)
• Moonbound!
• Odd Jobs
• Run in Fields
• The Third Ascent
• Tolstoy’s Wife
• Weather

 

“Engrossing and highly entertaining.”
– CBC Radio

“Entirely disarming . . . magic.”
– Winnipeg Free Press

“A supreme hit.”
– The Edmonton Sun

“It’s easy to understand why Supreme Dream strikes a chord in so many of us.”
– Winnipeg Sun

Musical/ 8 Characters, 4 Men, 4 Women/ Full Length, Two Acts

Synopsis: It’s Singin’ in the Rain meets Hollywood Babylon. On a farm in Walnut, Iowa, the abused but ambitious Ellie Ash aspires to screen immortality. Elmo Green, a scenarist from NYC, bicycles by. He’s immediately smitten by Ellie, who jumps on his bike — Hollywood bound. Soon they work with characters reminiscent of Ethel Merman (brassy Bertha Powell), Gene Kelly (fleet Danny Burke), Mario Lanza (lumpy Tony Toscanni), Edward Von Stroheim (producer-director Norman G. Neinstein), & Joan Crawford (vamp Lulu Beauveen). Ultimately, Ellie triumphs at N.G.N. Productions — the “Girl of a Thousand Sounds” — until columnist Adele DeRale exposes unseemly events. Separately, Ellie & Elmo climb up to the Hollywoodland Sign — about to jump — but instead decide to try Broadway.

The first act of Tales of Tinseltown may be read by clicking the Read It Now button. For a complete reading copy, please see the contact information on this page.

“DAMN NEAR PERFECT! Attention Messrs. Shubert, Azenberg, Schoenfeld, et al. While Broadway bemoans the fact that ‘there just aren’t any new musicals will run forever and make millions for everyone involved,’ composer Paul Katz and librettist Michael Colby have come up with what could be the new Fantasticks, Dames at Sea or other long-running, money-making, mega-hit. A musical extravaganza.” — Ron Mullen, Backstage (NY)

“DELICIOUS SATIRE! An ambitious pure Hollywood musical. Numbers that are laughter from the first syllable to the last.” — D.R.J. Bruckner, New York Times

“WATCH FOR IT! This is a crowd-pleaser packed with talent. Paul Katz’s music captures the schmaltzy and plunkety-plunk early movie tempo, never falsifying the clever libretto of every false value Michael Colby could conceive of. You will leave the theatre wreathed in smiles.” — Marjorie Gunner (President, NY Outer Critics Circle), On and Off-Broadway

“WACKY FUN! Suggests Dames at Sea crossed with Carol Burnett’s entire oeuvre. Delicious, tuneful, winning.” — David C. Nichols, Los Angeles Times

Contact information:
Amateur and professional rights:
Steele Spring Theatrical Licensing
3845 Cazador St.
Los Angeles, CA 90065
(323) 739-0413 / fax (818) 232-9158
http://www.steelespring.com

About the playwright: Michael Colby is the librettist/lyricist of such musicals as Charlotte Sweet (Drama Desk Award nomination), Tales of Tinseltown (Coconut Grove Playhouse), North Atlantic (Show Business Award), Mrs. McThing (Goodspeed), and Ludlow Ladd (New American Theatre). He was chief writer for the Drama Desk Award-winning New Amsterdam Theatre Company, and has written special material for numerous celebrities and Theatre by the Blind. He is a member of the BMI and The Dramatists Guild.

About the composer: About the composer: Paul Katz has written music and lyrics heard on television, stage, and radio. He is the composer of Dirty Dreams of a Clean Cut Kid, which won San Francisco’s prestigious Cable Car Award (1991) for “Outstanding Achievement in Theatre,” as well as Chicago’s After Dark Award. His other musicals include the acclaimed Seduction and The American Beat Nightclub. In collaboration with Michael Colby, he wrote the musical scores to Slay It With Music and Tinseltown. Tinseltown was showcased off-off Broadway, then presented in a revised version at the George Street Playhouse, the Gaslamp Theatre (San Diego), and, most recently, the Coconut Grove Playhouse (Miami) to great success. Accompanist to such stars as Andrea Marcovicci, Marilyn Michaels, and Vicki Stuart, he was musical director/arranger for Forbidden Broadway Presents Mr. President and This Life: A Tribute to Portia Nelson, winning the prestigious Bistro Award.

Tales Of Tinseltown was first produced by The Directors Company at Musical Theatre Works (New York, NY): August, 1985.

 

Musical / Multiple Characters, 2 Female, 2 Male, other characters can be played by males or females / One Act

Synopsis (From The Philadelphia Inquirer): “Tasca’s play is narrated by Lt. Jovan Vlaco, a Serbian officer in the women’s camp run by Col. Branislav Herak, who’s recovering from a shrapnel wound before being returned to the front. The camp, Vlaco reports, is located in ‘what they call Southern Bosnia and we call Greater Serbia — all wars begin with the changing of words and phrases.’ As the action begins, we meet the camp’s newest inmates — Amina and Samira Jusic, a Bosnian mother and daughter suspected of igniting a fuel-depot explosion that killed 16 Serbs.

“The explosion, we soon learn, was in fact perpetrated by Samira, working for a Bosnian guerrilla force. A bitter, hate-filled young woman, she’s egged on by the play’s fifth main character, a camp firebrand named Jela, and refuses to confess even when tortured. Fearful for her daughter’s life, Amina intercedes with Herak, with whom she was friendly back when Bosnians and Serbians lived together in peace, and arranges for Samira to work days as the commandant’s housekeeper.

“Although Samira assumes her new role reluctantly, she slowly begins to recognize this complex soldier-philosopher as a human being as well as a Serb. But old hatreds die hard, and wars assume an unstoppable momentum all their own.”

“Theatrically bold and politically moving.”
– Variety

“The title obviously evokes Euripides’ The Trojan Women. . . . It takes guts to challenge the all-time champions of hugely-scaled drama on their home court, but Tasca not only does so but pulls the feat off. . . . The remarkable thing about The Balkan Women is that although it’s written and staged in a deliberate, even formal style, its four principals emerge as people of substantial depth, their innate decency evident beneath the rote viciousness of their antagonisms. We’re kept in suspense by their dilemmas and ultimately touched by their fates.”
– The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Thought provoking and extremely powerful. . . . the characters are crafted with wonderful complexity.”
– Bristol Pilot

Performance rights must be secured before production
Contact information: Amateur and professional rights:
Jules Tasca
1029 Sunset
Blue Bell, Pennsylvania
USA 19422
E-mail: tasca.j@gmc.edu

About the Playwright: Jules Tasca has taught playwriting at Oxford University in England and he has performed with a Commedia dell’arte group in Central Italy. He is the author of 105 (13 full length, 92 one act) published plays that have been produced in numerous national theaters from the Mark Taper Forum to the Bucks County Playhouse, as well as abroad.He has also written for radio and television. He scripted “The Hal Linden T.V. Special.” His La Llorona and Maria were produced on National Public Radio. Other one-act pieces were broadcast in Los Angeles and abroad in Germany.

He was the national winner in New York’s Performing Arts Repertory Theater playwriting contest for his libretto, The Amazing Einstein, which toured the country and played at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. His libretto for C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe had its world premiere in California and played in London and New York and is currently touring nationwide.

For his play, Theater Trip, he was the recipient of a Thespie Award for Best New Play, and Old Goat Song won a drama critic’s award in Los Angeles. His play, The Spelling of Coynes, has been included in The Best American Short Plays Anthology. His tragic piece, The Balkan Women, won the prestigious Barrymore Award for Best Play. His play The Grand Christmas History of the Andy Landy Clanwas broadcast on 47 National Public Radio stations.

Most recently, his tragedy, Judah’s Daughter, received the Dorothy Silver International playwrighting award. The author is a member of New York’s Dramatist Guild.

The Balkan Women was first produced at The Bristol Riverside Theatre, Bristol, Pennsylvania in 1998.