9 Character Plays

After Tartuffe: A reimagining of Molière’s Tartuffe, set in a Christian Fundamentalist post-apocalyptic America. The population has been decimated by the super-strain of the Avian Flu – stolen from a lab, probably by Fundamentalists. Oral, a rich businessman, has opened his home to a former megachurch pastor, disgraced in sex scandals: the Reverend Chadwick Pusser. Oral’s son Daniel cannot be free with Tyler, the guy he loves, with Pusser around, planting hidden cameras. Daniel reads SF alternate histories and suspects his own world is an aberration. He asks the website oracle.net for the original draft of Molière’s play Tartuffe – the one that was banned, before Molière watered the play down. Daniel thinks if he can get a pdf of the original, the universe will shift back to what it should be. Tyler’s older brother Vaughn is engaged to Daniel’s younger sister Mary-Anne – but Oral decides to force Mary-Anne to marry Reverend Pusser, horrifying her. Pusser tells Oral to control his women; he cites Lot as the kind of upright man the Lord smiles on. Oral won’t listen to truth when Reverend Pusser makes a pass at Oral’s wife Alma, or hear the outspoken housekeeper, Doreen, who denounces Pusser and tries to get Mary-Anne to stand up for herself. Daniel rejects a pass from Pusser also … and it seems that there is no end to Pusser’s hypocrisy or to Oral’s gullibility … but the people who see through the evangelical con man keep on fighting for truth, and for change.

  • Cast Size: 5M 4W
  • Running Time: 90+ minutes
  • Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

BANKRUPT by Marshaline Letcher

Cast Size: 3M 6W

Running Time: 90+ minutes

Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

Ted’s family goes ballistic when he gets a $100,000 raise to and move to an upscale suburb in Kansas.  They think they are rich and adapt a rich life style.  Keeping up with the elite, all on credit cards.  Ted is going bankrupt while his family just keeps charging.  What is going to stop them? Will it be the blonde bomb shell, financial planner?

BLIGHT by John Bavoso

Cast Size: 3M 6W

Running Time: 90+ minutes

Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

Silvia and Cat Henson have just moved from a tiny apartment in Washington, DC, into their sprawling dream home in the small, affluent town of Greenville, Delaware. Their new house, however, was recently the home of a teenaged mass shooter and his single mother. Is this the right time and place for Silvia and Cat to bring a new baby into the world, or will the house create an irreparable rift between them and their new community?

CHILD’S PLAY by Kevin D. Ferguson

Cast Size: 3M 5W 1G
Running Time: 2 hrs.
Royalty: $60 per performance
Available for UIL: $40 per performance for contest use. 

How do you prepare a little girl to slay a dragon? A traumatized child who has stopped speaking is helped by a therapist who struggles to peel back the layers of mistrust by entering the internal world of this little girl to help her confront the dragon that has stolen her voice and now threatens to completely destroy her. 

Carly Weekes and her sisters, Lolly and Shirley, are witches. Determined to find Carly a mate, the three cast a circle to summon a popular recording artist from Colorado. However, Shirley casts what appears to be a dubious and deadly spell. Worried that Carly and her new family might now be cursed, Lolly endeavors to reverse the hex, but fails, resulting in her expulsion to an alternate world. Years later, twin sisters Tina and Rose Pacheco mysteriously drown. The case goes cold, but many believe Carly’s oldest son, Johnny, is responsible. Cold Rain is an account of a family bound by black magic, a dark and comical tale of ill-conceived machinations, misdirected resentment, and repressed desire.

  • Cast Size: 4M 5W
  • Running Time: 120+ minutes
  • Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

Third century, Arabia. Cosmas and Damian are Christians who serve Jesus by providing medical care for everyone in town, for free! They are passionate, enthusiastic, and bold. However, their medical practices are less than safe, and when they perform a limb transplant using the sawed-off leg of a cadaver, they provoke anger from the other town doctor, who wants to see them banished. With a hilariously tragic cast of suffering villagers, Cosmas and Damian is a historically inaccurate play that deals with eye gouging, rabies, gangrene, and religious persecution in a way that will make everyone smile. 

  • Cast Size: 5M 4W
  • Running Time: 90+ minutes
  • Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS by Jon Christie

Cast Size: 5M 3W 1M/F

Running Time 90-100 minutes

Royalty Rate: $60 per performance

In the (not so) distant future, a company of animals must endure daily misery in a rundown zoo operated by seemingly indifferent humans who only provide them with one meal per day. Hopelessness, cabin fever and terminal illness are regulars on the menu until our inmates are treated to mysterious visitors taking refuge in an abandoned cage. But are these creatures theirsalvation or merely message-bearers of their impending doom?

FAMINE PLAYS by Richard Caliban

A diverse group of characters struggle with survival as catastrophic climate change envelopes the US. and civilization unravels. Among them: A businessman setting out with Walt Whitman-like ideals; a wet nurse on her way to a job; and a young girl on the road with her desperate mother.

In Richard Caliban’s “Famine Plays,” the center of the country cannot hold. America’s heartland has become a disaster area. Facing unemployment and poverty, people move from street to highway, looking for a resting zone. Some grasp a livelihood in crime. No one has enough to eat, and there is no solace on the horizon. The once-sedentary become eternal nomads, as the Okies did in the 1930’s.

  • Cast Size: 5M 4W
  • Running Time: 90+ minutes
  • Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

THE GHOST OF DUNSFORD HALL by John F. Green

Cast Size: 5M 4W
Running Time: 90 minutes
Royalty: $60 per performance

Despite her daughter’s cautious advice, recently widowed Alva Burnside buys a badly neglected Victorian mansion with intentions of restoring it. She quickly learns that a 178-year old drunken Irish ghost also claims the house as his own. His persistent shenanigans keep Alva in a constant state of frustration. As if that were not enough, Alva also shares her new life with an admiring real estate agent, a nosey neighbor, a nervous contractor, and a half-mad Russian decorator. There’s no time to relax in this amusing jaunt into the supernatural. 

A bride visits her groom in prison… still in her wedding dress! Two women bury the body of their blackmailer. A composer returns home after an accident has taken away their talent and passion. Lucrezia Borgia, Aimee Semple McPherson, and the Devil rehearse a Nativity play in Purgatory.

Four visions of Hell: romantic, gothic, artistic, and theatrical.

In four short plays that can be performed as an evening or individually:

BULLETPROOF LOVE (1F/1M)

THE FALLOW GARDEN (2F)

O, FOR A MUSE OF FIRE (2A)

SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF BETHLEHEM (2F/1M(or A))

KIDNAPPED by Sean O’Connor

Cast Size: 5M 4W (With doubling)
Running Time: 2hrs
Royalty: $60 per performance
Mean Joe Buchanan has sexually abused his daughter, Marylee, for years, and as president of Pittston Coal, he’s treated young Tyrone and all the other miners horribly as well. Tyrone and Marylee meet, for the first time, in a bar. They each think that, in separate incidents during the day, they killed Buchanan. But this man never dies. They quickly fall in love, Tyrone confesses to being a descendant of Daniel Boone, and Marylee reveals she’s related to Betsy Ross. So with Joe and his boys on their heels, they flee across the country in search of knowledge of their ancestors and of “an America that used to be.” But when they arrive at Boone’s Carson City house exactly at the same time as Joe and his boys, all seems lost until a mysterious stranger points to a tree outside whose roots might lead them deep into the past…perhaps to a place where Daniel and Betsy are waiting for them. With Buchanan still on their heels, Marylee and Tyrone take the plunge in this (award-winning) dark, hysterical and very tender comedy.

It’s 1949, and Lucille Ball is starring in a hit sitcom on CBS Radio. When the network offers Lucy her own TV series, she has one condition. Her husband, Cuban-born bandleader Desi Arnaz, must costar. But CBS wants a more “All-American” leading man. This is the hilarious true story of how Lucy and Desi launched history’s most groundbreaking and influential sitcom: “I Love Lucy.” They challenged mid-century America’s social mores, including opposition to a Cuban American costar and showing a pregnant woman on television. The play is presented as an easy-to-produce 1950s-style radio broadcast, using recorded, radio-show-style music cues (supplied with the licensing of the script). Written by the son of “I Love Lucy” creator Jess Oppenheimer, this witty, fast-paced comedy has “as much heart and humor as the series itself” (SWVA Today).

  • Cast Size: 21M 6W 2 Any Gender (minimum with doubling 6M 2W)
  • Running Time: 65-70 minutes
  • Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

MAUI WOWEE! by Gene Kato

Cast Size: 5M 4W
Running Time: 2 hrs
Royalty: $60 per performance 

The Valley Isle serves as the backdrop for this tale of relationships attempting to navigate rough waters. When straight-laced Stanley takes his estranged wife, their recent college grad daughter and her milquetoast fiancé to Maui, what should be a celebratory trip quickly turns ugly. The group finds themselves rooming next to a homosexual couple who have traveled to Hawaii to have a civil union ceremony, but who soon find their relationship is starting to show cracks as well. It’s only with the help of an overbearing ex-Flamenco dancer, that the couple realize that it’s facing the challenges of relationships head-on that will steer them through rough seas and enable them to land on calmer shores. 

  • MOTHER OF GOD! by Michele A. Miller
  • Cast Size: 6M 3W (Doubling possible)
  • Running Time: 90+ minutes
  • Royalty Rate: $75 per performance
  • Miriam has a problem.  She’s engaged to an older, rich man but she’s with child despite the fact that she has “known not a man.” Her parents are no help and her betrothed, Joseph, for all his prayers, doesn’t believe in miracles.  Everyone insists he accept this child as ‘King of the Jews’ but is this the same King those three ‘Magi’ are looking for or are they just out for a buck?  As Miriam’s womb grows Joseph must make a decision — let wife and child die or believe the impossible and discover Love? A comedy written by a Jewish mother about the ultimate Jewish Mother, this play investigates the politics of sex and the politics of religion within the story of the coming of the new messiah.

NELL DASH by Doug DeVita

In the alternate London of 1820 during the reign of King Stanley V8, Elinor and Marianne Wood, the illegitimate daughters of Sir Henry Dashwood and his cook, have become Nell Dash and Nance. They find themselves whirling up against Fagin, The Artful Dodger, Miss Havisham, Celia and Polly Peachum, and a barber named Todd, among many others. Their vile half-sister-in-law, Lady Fanny Ferrars Dashwood, stops at nothing to keep them from getting a single penny of the fortunes accrued from the Dashwood Meat Packing Empire whilst at the same time tries to attain the two strands of pearls given the girls when they fled Devonshire years before, pearls which have mysteriously disappeared and have a strange history of their own.

  • Cast Size: 4M 4W 1GN
  • Running Time: 90+ minutes
  • Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

PORTLAND by Ruben Carbajal

Cast Size: 4M 5W
Running Time: 1 hour
Royalty: $40 per performance

Ed, a young man adrift in life, moves into a small apartment with Li, his ex-lover. Ed’s awkward encounters as a hotel room-service waiter punctuate the ambiguous intimacy with his roommate, as their murky past and true feelings become clear. A spare meditation on the indivisibility of love and loss.

SUFFER A WITCH by Donna Latham

Cast Size: 4M 5W
Running Time: 2 hrs
Royalty: $60 per performance

Independent, tart-tongued, and unorthodox, herbalist-healer Grace sticks out like a witch’s teat in a God-fearing community and stands accused of conjuring a late-term miscarriage, bewitching crops, and shapeshifting. When the court orders a trail by water, Grace is stripped and cross-bound in a burlap sack and ducked into the waters of Lynnhaven River. Will she sink or swim?

  • WOMEN AT A WINDOW, MEN ON A BENCH by Glenn Alterman (Available Feb 1)
  • Cast Size: Variable
  • Running Time: 90+ minutes
  • Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

THE SEALING OF CEIL (2M 2W)

There has been a bloody murder in Ceil’s apartment building. This terrifies Ceil, an abused, lonely housewife. She is befriended by a neighbor, Fran, who cares very much about Ceil. One day after taking a walk to Times Square, Ceil meets a handsome stranger, Hank, in a bar, who also begins to care for Ceil and wants to protect her. Ceils relationship with Fran, Hank and her abusive husband all lead her to discovering who the murderer is.

TIME WOUNDS ALL HEALS (2M)

Tom and his young assistant Ted are seated on a bench in a desolate part of a park at dusk. They are there on an important “assignment.” While waiting, their conversation turns to the subject of loyalty, karma and consequences. Eventually we discover what their assignment is and learn the truth about their relationship.

LIKE FAMILY (2M 1W)

Ron Henschel has just arrived at his sister and her husband’s home in Monroe, New York. It is a snowy winter night. He has just been in a terrible car accident. He reveals that both his and Helen’s parents were killed in the accident.  Naturally Helen and her husband are very upset. The scene is a set up for a series of revelations about both Ron and the Gorders. With each new scene we learn more about who these people are and what their relationship is to each other.

New York City, 1897. Christmas is almost here, and eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon is beside herself with excitement. Suddenly, though, she finds herself facing a crisis of belief when her friends tell her Santa Claus is a myth. Filled with doubt, Virginia asks everyone she knows to tell her the truth: Is Santa Claus real or not? Still unsure and dissatisfied, she finally takes her father’s advice and famously writes a letter to the New York Sun newspaper for a definitive answer to that most crucial of questions. Funny and heartwarming, this holiday play will delight audiences of all ages.

  • Cast Size: 2M 7F (3adults, 4 children)
  • Running Time: 90+ minutes
  • Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

The play takes place at a yoga retreat and reveals a variety of characters (including a blind woman and her dog) seeking love, peace, and friendship. They are all in love with the yoga teacher, who is present as a voice and only appears at the end when he adjusts each of them in a pose. The group succeed in becoming a community. 

  • Cast Size: 3M 6W
  • Running Time: 90+ minutes
  • Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

Review 9 Character Plays.

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