Dramatists Play Service is pleased to announce the publication of:
BREATHING CORPSES by Laura Wade4 men, 3 women: 7 total“BREATHING CORPSES has a clever circular structure in which a succession of people discover a body before becoming corpses themselves.” —Time Out (London). “Events flow backwards in time—before a slight forward hop — in an intriguing fashion, allowing puzzlers in the audience to gather further pieces of the jigsaw, as well as additional characters, at each stop…[Wade is] an arresting writing talent.” —Evening Standard (London). “Laura Wade’s play is like a crossword puzzle where all the clues have to do with death. This is a tight, tense play: you can’t miss a single word, a single gesture…Wade uses the play’s shifting structure to make you feel disorientated, almost scared…The tension, the emotions and the sense of absurdity and fear are brilliantly handled…A terrifying tour de force.” —The Sunday Times (London)
COLDER THAN HERE by Laura Wade1 man, 3 women: 4 total“Laura Wade’s play is set in the limbo between a death sentence and the death itself. How does knowledge of one’s imminent demise, or that of a loved one, affect the living of one’s life?” —Guardian (London). “The play is an astute and humorous portrayal of a family pulling together in the face of impending grief. It takes a timely look at society’s changing attitude towards the process of dying and the ceremonies associated with death.” —This Is London. “Laura Wade’s play is a ninety-minute masterpiece, a jewel, dark but translucent. It is a play of love, death, and grief: The grief that is hardest to bear, because it begins before the loved one dies.” —Sunday Times (London).
DEFLOWERING WALDO by Adam Szymkowicz2 men, 4 women: 6 totalWaldo is having a bad day. He’s afraid of crowds, spiders, skyscrapers, flowers, brown soap and sex. His father won’t stop being Scottish. His therapist wants to seduce him. His ex-girlfriend could spontaneously combust at any moment. And the new woman in his life seems to want something else completely. Will he manage to find true love—or at least mow the lawn?
EMBARASSMENTS book by Laurence Klavan, music by Polly Pen, lyrics by Laurence Klavan and Polly Pen, additional text by Polly Pen5 men, 4 women (doubling): 9 total“A lively, funny, and very smart musical…Klavan’s clever book is well matched by Pen’s music.” —Variety. “An inventive musical…features Pen’s explosive score and Klavan’s exceptional book…EMBARRASSMENTS is the rare double treat. Whether you’re seeking intellectual stimulation or just an entertaining evening out, this beautifully designed, written, and performed production is bound to satisfy.” —Philadelphia Weekly. “An offbeat, original, and enjoyable musical…[a] witty and knowing book…concise and imaginative songs.” —Philadelphia Inquirer. “A breathtaking 90-minute chamber musical…cannot help but to redefine the artistic boundaries of the musical theater.”—Reading Eagle. “Terrific fun.” —WRTL Radio.
FINDING CLAIRE by Kim Merrill4 women: 4 total“…lovely, sensitive and engrossing…remarkable…takes theatergoers along for the roller-coaster ride that a woman might go through in meeting her biological mother for the first time. With plays like this and films like Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies…adoption certainly looks like a superior option for the child involved. For the mother, it’s another story.” —NY Times. “…engaging new play…moody, wrenching and often touching look into the emotional lives of four women…filled with moments that all families will recognize, and lessons we all need to learn.” —nytheatre.com.
JUMPING FOR JOY by Jon Marans 2 men, 1 woman: 3 total“Unforgettable…Captivating and beautiful, JUMPING FOR JOY is something wondrous…Marans demonstrates a masterful ability to balance humor and horror on a knife-edge.” —Orange County Register. “There’s good reason for the anticipatory stir greeting Jon Marans’ JUMPING FOR JOY…a delicately zany, yet poignant slice of a thoroughly dysfunctional family’s life…The writing is excellent…with numerous flashes of brilliance.” —CurtainUp.
KITTY KITTY KITTY by Noah Haidle5 men, 1 woman (doubling, flexible casting): 6 totalKitty, a suicidal housecat, finds his true love in his clone, the first successfully cloned housecat, Kitty Kitty. They give each other hand jobs, but Kitty Kitty doesn’t love Kitty back. So Kitty decides to make another clone of himself, the title character Kitty Kitty Kitty. But something goes wrong in the cloning process, and he makes more copies of himself, each one more retarded than the last. The final clone, Kitty Kitty Kitty Kitty Kitty, communicates in nothing but grunts and yells and drool. KITTY KITTY KITTY is a comedy about love, unrequited love, regret and hand jobs.
THE LADY WITH ALL THE ANSWERS by David Rambo1 woman: 1 total“…a warmhearted play…highly entertaining, frequently moving…” —Chicago Tribune. “…folksy, funny, straightforward and validating…a smile-inducing, tear duct-activating reunion with a woman who might have been a stranger but seemed like family…engaging from beginning to end.” —L.A. Times. “David Rambo’s new one-woman play…[about] the witty, bubbly, frank, and slightly eccentric writer…provides a compelling portrait of her.” —BackStage West. “LADY is surprisingly crisp and loaded with detail. The first act is breezy, funny and gossipy…The second act is darker and more touching.” —North County Times.
MADAGASCAR by J.T. Rogers1 man, 2 women (doubling): 3 total“MADAGASCAR lures you into its tale of reflection, recrimination and regret with captivating power…wondrous, elegiac, unforgettable drama.” —Miami Herald. “J.T. Rogers is a major new American talent and MADAGASCAR is a play to cheer.” —Miami New Times. “Rogers’ circular storytelling style, full of poetry, poignancy, wit and hard-won wisdom, never fails to fascinate.” —Salt Lake Tribune. “MADAGASCAR is a subtle, beautifully written, sad, and disturbing play.” —Edward Albee. “I haven’t been so impressed by a new play since the early works of Wallace Shawn and Tennessee Williams.” —André Gregory. “With gorgeously wrought, resonant prose, J.T. Rogers has fashioned a singular and haunting detective story.” —Doug Wright.
THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO BY BEAUMARCHAIS, translated and adapted by Joan Holden7–9 men, 4 women (doubling, extras): 11 total“For the sprightly new American Conservatory Theater production…credit must go to translator/adaptor Joan Holden for sending new shafts of light through the play…The characters, especially the women, seem freshly inspired in their resourcefulness…vernacular that might have been coined yesterday…” —San Francisco Chronicle. “In commissioning a textual face lift for the eighteenth-century farce immortalized by Mozart’s opera, American Conservatory Theater has struck gold…a joyous piece of stage frippery whose social bite is never far below the surface.” —Variety. “FIGARO gets a new lease on life…Where better to find somebody to bring new life to this play, which is widely regarded as helping to provoke the French Revolution?” —Marin Independent Journal. “Takes justifiable liberties in replacing Beaumarchais’ eighteenth-century jibes with up-to-the-minute substitutes…the adaptor hasn’t so much rewritten Beaumarchais to suit her own taste as returned our attention to the essence of his dissent…” —San Francisco Examiner.
THE PULL OF NEGATIVE GRAVITY by Noah Haidle2 men, 2 women: 4 total“…gut-wrenching scenes.” —Time Out. “Jonathan Lichtenstein’s ninety-minute drama is simple in its conception yet elemental in its themes…it packs a wallop.” —NY Post. “Jonathan Lichtenstein beautifully portrays how the war destroyed one rural Welsh family.” —NY Times. “A carefully crafted, powerfully emotive drama…the play’s anger sears itself into one’s mind.” —Sunday Herald (Scotland). “…[a] harrowing, heartbreaking play.” —Guardian (London). “…brings the subject of war close to home and handles it with a terrifying intensity.” —The Scotsman (Edinburgh).
PYRETOWN by John Belluso1 man, 1 woman: 2 total“…Belluso’s play works.” —Chicago Tribune. “Far too many playwrights these days either jump on a popular political bandwagon or simply contemplate their slacker navels; Belluso has real fire.” —Chicago Sun-Times. “John Belluso’s blistering PYRETOWN…crackles with heat. I don’t say it lightly: This play is worth braving the cold to see.” —NY Sun. “PYRETOWN has none of the flashy emotional pyrotechnics that animate many comparable stories; Harry and Louise’s romance expands and contracts naturally, like the beating of a heart…Belluso gives his characters an inchoate touch of poetry, which they must guard against the icy bureaucracy of American health care.” —Time Out.
RAG AND BONE by Noah Haidle5 men, 2 women: 7 total “Haidle is an engaging writer who creates startling theatrical conceits, intriguing themes and offbeat characters…his nonrealistic style is bold and imaginative…” —Variety. “…vividly bold, wildly imaginative and utterly charming…Its humor and poignancy are genuine…” —CT Central.To read about these titles and purchase acting editions, click on the links above.
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