by Eric Lane
WAYNE RAWLEY (The Scary Question) was the 2010 Faith Broome Playwright-in-Residence at the University of Oklahoma. Productions include Live! From the Last Night of My Life; Money & Run: An Action Adventure Serial for the Stage; God Damn Tom, a present-day adaptation of The Seagull; and an adaptation of 1984. His play Controlling Interest was produced by the Actors Theatre and is published in the collection Laugh Lines: Short Comic Plays.
THERESA REBECK (The Contract) is a widely produced playwright and novelist. Her work has been produced on Broadway and off-Broadway, and she has had several world premieres at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Humana Festival for New American Plays. She has won numerous awards for her work in theater, television, film, and fiction. For more information, please visit www.theresarebeck.com.
JACQUELYN REINGOLD’S (A Very Very Short Play) plays String Fever, A Story About a Girl, Acapulco, Girl Gone, Tunnel of Love, and Freeze Tag have been seen in New York, Los Angeles, across the country, and in London, Hong Kong, and Bosnia. Awards: NYFA, EST/Sloan Foundation, Kennedy Center. Published: Things Between Us; Women Playwrights: The Best Plays 2003; Best American Short Plays. Wrote for HBO’s In Treatment and Law and Order Criminal Intent. MFA, Ohio University. www.jacquelynreingold.com.
EDWIN SÁNCHEZ’S (Ernesto the Magnificent) productions include DIOSA at Hartford Stage; Unmerciful Good Fortune at Intar Theater (Princess Grace Playwriting Award in 1994); Barefoot Boy with Shoes On at Primary Stages; Icarus, produced by Fourth Unity, Actors Theater of Louisville (as part of their Humana Festival), San Jose Rep, and regionally throughout the United States; and Trafficking in Broken Hearts and Clean, both at the Atlantic Theater in New York.
LAURA SHAINE (formerly Cunningham) (The Whole Truth & Nothing but the Bluetooth) is a playwright, journalist, and author of eight books. Ms. Shaine’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New Yorker and the New York Times. She has seven full-length plays including Sleeping Arrangements, Beautiful Bodies, and Bang. She is widely produced and has several other short plays in the Vintage anthologies Take Ten, Take Ten II, Leading Women, and Laugh Lines.
NINA SHENGOLD (Double Date) has had short plays produced on five continents. Her seven-play evening Finger Food and the ensemble play War at Home: Students Respond to 9/11 are published by Playscripts. She multitasks as a novelist, screenwriter, journalist, and editor. www.ninashengold.com.
JANE SHEPARD (Long Distance) is the recipient of multiple awards for her plays and film writing, including a Writers Guild Award nomination for her Showtime original movie, Freak City. Two collections of her plays appear in print, including the popular Kickass Plays for Women. Full information can be found at www.Kickass-plays.com.
SAMARA SISKIND (Bar Mitzvah Boy) is a Florida-based playwright who simply adores the art of the short play, having penned several other shorter, faster, funnier plays, including Blind Date, I Was a Teenage Prom Queen, and Little Play of Horrors. Samara’s work has also been featured in Plays: The Drama Magazine for Young People and in volume two of Young Women’s Monologues from Contemporary Plays.
DARYL WATSON’S (Snap) works include Prime Time, The Blueberry Hill Accord, and the collaborative play Game On (“The Best” and “Signature”). He was also a cocreator and writer for the Disney TV series Johnny and the Sprites. Daryl holds a BFA in drama with a second major in English and American literature from New York University.
BARBARA WIECHMANN’S (36 Rumson Road) plays have been produced at theaters in New York City and at colleges and universities around the country. She is the creator of the television show for kids Naturally, Sadie, which aired on the Disney Channel for three seasons; a New Georges affiliated artist; and an alumna of New Dramatists and HARP. Barbara is a graduate of Hamilton College.
MARY LOUISE WILSON (Tirade) cowrote the award-winning play Full Gallop, which had a successful run off-Broadway and subsequently in London, Paris, Sweden, Australia, and Brazil. She has written articles for the New York Times, American Theatre, and the New Yorker. Her short plays have been published in Take Ten: New 10-Minute Plays and Take Ten II, and in her short play collection. Theatrical Haiku will be published by Dramatists Play Service.
GARTH WINGFIELD’S (Mary Just Broke Up with This Guy) plays include Flight (Lucille Lortel Theatre); 26 Dates … and Counting (Barrow Group); Dating Games (New York City and Los Angeles); Are We There Yet? (New York City and London); Daniel on a Thursday (New York City and Los Angeles). Lots of one-acts. Garth’s plays have been published by Samuel French, Vintage Books, Smith & Kraus, and Playscripts, Inc. Television: Showtime’s Queer as Folk and ABC’s Clueless.
GARY WINTER (I Love Neil LaBute) is a member of Obie Award winner 13P. His plays have been produced or heard at the Chocolate Factory, the Flea, the Cherry Lane Alternative, HERE, PS 122, defunktheatre, Playwrights Horizons, the Long Wharf, and Little Theater. From 1998 to 2008, Gary served as literary manager of the Flea Theater, where he currently helps organize pataphysics workshops for playwrights. MFA, NYU.
ELIZABETH WONG (Ripper Girl), playwright/director, was a sitcom writer for All American Girl, starring Margaret Cho; a Disney Studios writing fellow; and a recipient of the Tanne Foundation Award for artistic achievement. Her plays include Letters to a Student Revolutionary, Kimchee & Chitlins, and China Doll. She has written musicals for the Kennedy Center and Honolulu Theatre for Youth. Her short comedy, Finding Your Inner Zulu, premiered in Chicago in 2010.
DANA YEATON (Men in Heat) is the recipient of the Heideman Award from the Actors Theatre of Louisville and the New Voice in the American Theatre Award from the William Inge Theatre Festival. His plays include Midwives, Redshirts, Mad River Rising, and a new two-person musical comedy, My Ohio. He teaches at Middlebury College and was founding director of the Vermont Young Playwrights Project.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
ERIC LANE and NINA SHENGOLD have been editing contemporary theater anthologies for more than twenty years. Their other titles for Vintage Books include Laugh Lines: Short Comic Plays, Under 30: Plays for a New Generation, Talk to Me: Monologue Plays, Plays for Actresses, Leading Women: Plays for Actresses II, Take Ten: New 10-Minute Plays, and Take Ten II: More 10-Minute Plays. For Viking Penguin, they edited The Actor’s Book of Contemporary Stage Monologues, The Actor’s Book of Scenes from New Plays, Moving Parts: Monologues from Contemporary Plays, The Actor’s Book of Gay and Lesbian Plays (nominated for a Lambda Literary Award), and Telling Tales: New One-Act Plays.
ERIC LANE’S award-winning plays include Ride, Heart of the City, Floating, Times of War, Cater-Waiter, and Dancing on Checkers’ Grave. His plays have been published by Dramatists Play Service, Playscripts Inc., Applause Books, and the Foreign Language Press (Beijing). Eric wrote and produced the short films First Breath and Cater-Waiter, which he also directed. Both films screened in over forty cities worldwide. For TV’s Ryan’s Hope, he received a Writers Guild Award. Honors include the Berrilla Kerr Playwriting Award, the La MaMa Playwright Award, and fellowships at Yaddo, VCCA, and St. James Cavalier in Malta. Eric is an honors graduate of Brown University and artistic director of Orange Thoughts, a not-for-profit theater and film company in New York City.
www.ericlanewrites.com
NINA SHENGOLD writes in many genres. Her books include the novel Clearcut (Anchor Books, 2005) and River of Words: Portraits of Hudson Valley Writers (SUNY Press, 2010) with photographer Jennifer May. Shengold won the Writers Guild Award for her teleplay Labor of Love, starring Marcia Gay Harden; she also wrote Blind Spot, starring Joanne Woodward and Laura Linney, and three other TV movies. Her plays have been published by Playscripts Inc., Broadway Play Publishing, and Samuel French. She is books editor at Chronogram magazine, and her good twin has a thriving career as a pseudonymous young adult author.
INDEX BY CAST SIZE
ONE CHARACTER
ONE FEMALE
Gabrielle by Liz Ellison
Murderers (“Match Wits with Minka Lupino”) by Jeffrey Hatcher
Ripper Girl by Elizabet
h Wong
Thank You So Much for Stopping by Halley Feiffer
Tirade by Mary Louise Wilson
ONE MALE
Ernesto the Magnificent by Edwin Sánchez
Long Distance by Jane Shepard
Nine Point Eight Meters per Second per Second by Pete Barry
Sourpuss by Dan Berkowitz
TWO CHARACTERS
ONE FEMALE/ONE MALE
Bar Mitzvah Boy by Samara Siskind
Christmas Present by Amy Herzog
Curtain Raiser by Eric Lane
Funeral Parlor by Christopher Durang
Life Without Subtext by Michael Mitnick
Mary Just Broke Up with This Guy by Garth Wingfield
The Rental by Mark Harvey Levine
The Scary Question by Wayne Rawley
A Very Very Short Play by Jacquelyn Reingold
TWO FEMALES
The Anniversary by Drew Larimore
Sandchair Cantata by Nicole Quinn
36 Rumson Road by Barbara Wiechmann
The Whole Truth & Nothing but the Bluetooth by Laura Shaine
The Woods Are for Suckers and Chumps by Megan Mostyn-Brown
TWO MALES
Brotherly Love by Ean Miles Kessler
The Contract by Theresa Rebeck
Friendship by Peter Handy
Getting Home by Anton Dudley
You Know Who Else I Hate? by Mark O’Donnell
THREE CHARACTERS
Men in Heat by Dana Yeaton (3M)
Norm-Anon by Warren Leight (2F/1M)
PeopleSpeak by John Augustine (2F/1M)
Uncovered by Caleen Sinnette Jennings (3F)
You Have Arrived by Rob Ackerman (2F/1M)
FOUR CHARACTERS
The Blizzard by David Ives (2F/2M)
H.R. by Eric Coble (2F/2M)
I Love Neil LaBute by Gary Winter (1F/3M)
Mere Vessels by Mikhail Horowitz (4 flexible)
Three Guys and a Brenda by Adam Bock (4F)
FIVE OR MORE CHARACTERS
Double Date by Nina Shengold (3F/2M)
Nothing by Philip Dawkins (8+ flexible)
Particle Board by Elizabeth Meriwether (3F/3M)
The Rumor by Dan Kois (2F/4M, flexible)
Reunions by Billy Aronson (3F/2M)
Snap by Daryl Watson (1F/4M) 403
PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Rob Ackerman: You Have Arrived by Rob Ackerman, copyright © 2011 by Rob Ackerman. Reprinted by permission of Abrams Artists Agency on behalf of Rob Ackerman.
Inquiries contact: Peter Hagan, Abrams Artists Agency, 275 7th Avenue, 26th Floor, New York, New York 10001.
Billy Aronson: Reunions by Billy Aronson, copyright © 2001 by Billy Aronson. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Inquiries contact: Billy Aronson, [email protected].
John Augustine: People Speak by John Augustine, copyright © 2011 by John Augustine. Reprinted by permission of International Creative Management.
Inquiries contact: Thomas Pearson, International Creative Management, 825 Eighth Avenue, 26th floor, New York, New York 10019, [email protected].
Pete Barry: Nine Point Eight Meters per Second per Second by Pete Barry, copyright © 2010 by Pete Barry. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that Nine Point Eight Meters per Second per Second being fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America, the British Commonwealth countries, including Canada, and other countries of the Copyright Union, is subject to a royalty. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, public reading, radio, television, and cable broadcasting, and the rights translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved. Any inquiry regarding the availability of performance rights, or the purchase of individual copies of the authorized acting edition, must be directed to Samuel French Inc., 45 West 25th Street, New York, New York 10010, www.samuelfrench.com.
Dan Berkowitz: Sourpuss by Dan Berkowitz, copyright © 2011 by Dan Berkowitz. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Inquiries contact: Dan Berkowitz, [email protected].
Adam Bock: Three Guys and a Brenda by Adam Bock, copyright © 2007 by Adam Bock (first published by Playscripts, Inc. Three Guys and a Brenda was first produced at the 2006 HUMANA Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC.
Caution: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that Three Guys and a Brenda is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America and of all countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the Dominion of Canada, and the rest of the British Commonwealth), the Berne Convention, the Pan-American Copyright Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention as well as all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights, including professional/amateur stage rights, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound recording, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as CD-ROM, CD-I, information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved. Particular emphasis is laid upon the matter of readings, permission for which must be secured from the Author’s agent in writing.
Inquiries concerning the purchase of acting editions of the play, or to obtain stock and amateur performance rights should be addressed to Playscripts, Inc., http://www.playscripts.com, email: [email protected], phone: 1-866-NEW-PLAY (639-7529). Inquiries concerning all other rights should be addressed to William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC, 1325 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10019, Attn: Val Day.
Eric Coble: H.R. by Eric Coble, copyright © 2011 by Eric Coble. Reprinted by permission of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC.
Inquiries contact: Jonathan Lomma, William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC, 1325 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10019, email: [email protected].
Philip Dawkins: Nothing by Philip Dawkins, copyright © 2011 by Philip Dawkins. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Inquiries contact: Philip Dawkins, [email protected].
Anton Dudley: Getting Home by Anton Dudley, copyright © 2011 by Anton Dudley. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Inquiries contact: Anton Dudley, [email protected].
Christopher Durang: Funeral Parlor by Christopher Durang, copyright © 1995 by Christopher Durang. Reprinted by permission of The Carsey-Werner Company/Kalola Productions, Inc.
Inquiries contact: Dramatists Play Service.
Liz Ellison: Gabrielle by Liz Ellison, copyright © 2011 by Elizabeth Ellison. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Inquiries contact: Liz Ellison, [email protected].
Halley Feiffer: Thank You So Much for Stopping by Halley Feiffer, copyright © 2011 by Halley Feiffer. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Inquiries contact: Jessica Amato, The Gersh Agency, 41 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10010, 212-997-1818, fax: 212-391-8459, [email protected].
Peter Handy: Friendship by Peter Handy, copyright © 2011 by Peter Handy. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Inquiries contact: [email protected].
Jeffrey Hatcher: Murderers (“Match Wits with Minka Lupino”) by Jeffrey Hatcher. Copyright © 2008 by Jeffrey Hatcher. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission Paradigm Agency.
Inquiries contact: Dramatists Play Service.
Amy Herzog: Christmas Present by Amy Herzog, copyright © 2008 by Amy Herzog (Christmas Present was first produced at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York, in 2008). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC.
Caution: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that Christmas Present is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected und
er the copyright laws of the United States of America and of all countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the Dominion of Canada, and the rest of the British Commonwealth), the Berne Convention, the Pan-American Copyright Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention as well as all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights, including professional/amateur stage rights, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound recording, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as CD-ROM, CD-I, information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved. Particular emphasis is laid upon the matter of readings, permission for which must be secured from the Author’s agent in writing.
Inquiries concerning all rights should be addressed to William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC, 1325 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10019, Attn: Val Day.
Mikhail Horowitz: Mere Vessels by Mikhail Horowitz, copyright © 2008 by Mikhail Horowitz (Mere Vessels previously appeared in Vanguard Voices of the Hudson Valley, Actors and Writers: Odd Shorts, volume 3, issue 1, 2008). Reprinted by permission of the author.