The play takes place on a stage in an unknown theatre in 1990. 5 actresses from different backgrounds with there own personalities are putting on the play “Planted in Pain, Blossomed in June” which is about a young black woman (Addie) who wants to escape her poverty stricken southern home and jump into adulthood with her new husband Sylvester. Her family wants other things for her. Especially her mother. The writer of the play has left instructions that all the characters of the play must be played by women, even the male roles. As the actresses rehearse and get closer to opening night they find that the play is causing them to remember painful memories of their own, especially the actress playing the main role Sasha. Sasha is a new Actor and this play is her big break but in order for her to truly find out who Addie is. Sasha must first find the pain that is inside her and use it to tell this story. As the days get close to opening night the actors break out in conversations about love, abuse, racism, and womanhood, and what it means to be a Black Actress in the world and the sacrifices you have to make.

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

In the sleepy little cattle town of Bagwell, Colorado, childhood sweethearts Sheriff Gene Ranger and Nurse Becky Trueheart are on the fast-track for marriage when evil darkens their doorstep. Beautiful con artist, Sally West, is found unconscious and feigns amnesia. Her secret ally, snake oil salesman and self-proclaimed healer, Bodkin Shamley, appears. He discredits the town doctor and surreptitiously takes over with the goal of wooing Becky for her inherited cattle land. The villainous pair secretly introduce a concoction of love potion, and all the wrong people start falling head-over-heals for each other. There is only one hope for Gene, Becky, and all of Bagwell…true love.

• Cast Size: 5M, 3W, 2 Any Gender
• Running Time: 90+ minutes
• Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

Everyone’s a suspect in the brutal murder at close quarters of Aurora Printemps, familiarly known to one and all as Grandma. The lead detective sometimes sports a tail, as does her most recent–or was he the most recent–paramour? Her granddaughter Red Rida loved her, hated her, wished her dead, but has an alibi no weaker than any of the others. Will this be sorted or will it join the 63% of cases that go into permanent cold case status (according to a statistic that may have been made up on the spot)?

(A modernized reworking of Little Red Riding Hood)

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

A righteous rabbi tries to honor the memory of her scheming father without betraying her core beliefs. 

Samantha Marcus is a progressive rabbi who wants to live a good and decent life.  She and her three sisters – a real estate developer, a struggling tennis pro, and a spiritualist – have been out of touch for years.  Following the death of their father, who was a hard-drinking, hard-driving union activist, Samantha is impelled to bring them together to re-calculate their shared legacy and divide his estate.

Divided Among Themselves is a dramatic comedy that explores America’s differing views toward money, charity, and self-reliance – while examining the relationship of a grown child to a deceased parent.

• Cast Size: 2M 4W
• Running Time 80 minutes
• Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

We first encounter Edna at ninety-six, alone in her apartment in the small town where she has always lived. Like many others her age, she is awash in memories, appearing to await the end of her life. As we meet her best friend Margaret, and travel back in time through a handful of moments from Edna’s past, her very human journey unfolds. With good humor and the strength it takes to survive nine decades, Edna reminds us everyone’s story is full of dreams, some met and some lost, challenging our perception of the elders among us.

• Cast Size: 2W
• Running Time: Over an Hour
• Royalty Rate: $50 per performance

Three pregnant women of varying backgrounds and demographics bond during a weekend retreat that focuses on preparing for parenting. The weekend is led by an eccentric new age earth mother and a gen z doula who are both passionate about helping new mothers discover their life path. As they explore the “How to be a Mother” curriculum they learn there are no hard and fast rules to parenting, though some experiences are universal. 

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

Addressing a group of incarcerated teenage female offenders, Edna, the donut lady of Hayward, CA,shares her story of survival. How, through stubbornness, creativity, a capacity for love, and God’s peculiar care, she escaped her would be destroyers and found salvation in, of all things, donuts. Herhome and donut shop have provided abused and neglected youth safe haven for years. After listening to her speak, one of the young inmates was overheard saying, “I feel like I just spent an hour listening to the sun talk about darkness.”

• Cast Size: 1W
• Running Time: About an Hour
• Royalty Rate: $50 per performance

Brian Richard Mori’s critically acclaimed play is set in an adult bookshop and movie arcade in Times Square on a scorching summer day in 1979.  The story revolves around Earl, the middle-aged manager of the shop, who feels a weary disappointment on how his life has evolved, and his young friend, Mikie, a naïve and inexperienced nineteen-year-old.  Despite the seamy surroundings, Earl has a strong sense of basic morality, and he wants to help Mikie achieve a better life than his own.  When Earl sets up Mikie on a date with a waitress friend of his, the story takes a hilarious turn.  The play explores themes of morality, friendship, sexuality, and the yearning for love.  Therein lies much of the irony and comedy and timeliness of ADULT FICTION.

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

A Godawful Small Affair: A Play in Two Rooms

Jodie and Nessa, a twentysomething lesbian couple, are put in an unexpected U-haul situation; their neighbor Luca, a touch-starved, non-binary stoner, is visited by the alien angel ghost of David Bowie. A pandemic rages outside. A wall separates them, but they’re all about to be connected, sort of. Can a relationship become routine if there’s nothing else? Can life? And can a change in routine become a blessing? A relatably messy, kind of sad, kind of hopeful, and deeply intimate play exploring touch, longing, time, and routine in the age of Corona, and what the pandemic has done to us. And also David Bowie.

It’s Confusing, These Days: An Election Week Companion

After a summer full of tumult, time passes more normally again for neighbors-turned-throuple Jodie, Nessa, and Luca. When the pandemic hits close to home on the eve of the most important political week of the year, an unexpected road trip to maybe say goodbye is in order. Capturing the messiness of Election Week 2020, this short play functions as a bonus third act to “A Godawful Small Affair” and explores anxiety, hope, fear, and the generation gap between millenials and their boomer parents during a politically-fraught week in a year unlike any other.

Based on stunning true events, CASTLE ON THE HILL weaves together the lives of a Polish immigrant, a psychiatric hospital’s patients, and a woman following the clues of her past. Their experiences are intimately connected to the Binghamton State Hospital in upstate New York and unfold over the course of six decades. Drawing from personal accounts and historical documents, the movement infused drama gives rise to unique expressions of humanity, buoyed by courage and love. We meet Joseph, a transgender man fighting to live freely, Bennie, a wonder-filled natural science enthusiast, and Will, who dares to question ‘what’s normal’. Mysteries unravel as these remarkable stories, once silenced, are given voice. Diverse and flexible casting.

• Cast Size: 3M 7W 1GN 2NB
• Running Time: 90 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

Young, married couple Kate and Ron return home to find a large box of pornographic videotapes in their living room. Kate wants it out but Ron thinks he can crack the mystery and discover from whence the mysterious portmanteau originated. But Kate is increasingly unnerved by not only the smut but also its effect on their lives. As their neighbor Sherlock notes, this stuff is not meant to be in the open. But Kate’s own sister (Vanessa) seems to think it may be healthy. As the cassettes pile up around the apartment, uncomfortable truths surface as Kate and Ron are forced to be honest with each other about what they really want out of their lives.

• Cast Size: 2M 2W
• Running Time: 90+ minutes
• Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

Set in 1968, the play is a poetic homage to the style of Tennessee Williams. Brother Linus is a monk who has been exiled to a remote monastery on an island, where he has lived alone in quiet contemplation for the past 20 years. Then, during a huge thunderstorm, a young man named Christian washes up on the beach with memory loss, and in giving succor to him, Linus begins to question to what exactly he is truly devoted, and if he has allowed his life to be wasted.

• Cast Size: 2M
• Running Time: 90+ minutes
• Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

Set in the year 2047, Sue, a bored and lonely retirement home resident takes a begrudging maintenance worker (Walter) with her on a raucous trip down memory lane as she recalls the holidays of her past. Along the way Sue and Walter discover that they have much more in common than they ever could have imagined.  Although the play is filled with laughs, it leaves a warm spot as the relationship between Sue and Walter fully develops and presents a powerful example of the impact of the Covid pandemic on the life of a promising black teenager.

• Cast Size: 3M 4W
• Running Time: 90+ minutes
• Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

INLAND EMPRESSis a full-length play set in California’s High Desert or Inland Empire that deals with many contemporary themes and issues. Louise is a career criminal who finishes her seven year stretch in Chowchilla Women’s Prison and comes home to find that her position as head of the family and the family business has been filled by her niece. The family believes that Louise has come back to take her place, but Louise reveals to them that in prison she had a spiritual enlightenment, and her life has changed. Louise explains that she has converted to the Muslim religion and at the same time reveals the answers to many, deep, family secrets. Louise tries to make amends and help the girls through their personal problems, but must confront the eldest girl, Sierra, who believes that Louise is trying to dethrone Sierra and take away the power that she has held over the last seven years.

• Cast Size: 1M 5W
• Running Time: 90+ minutes
• Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

Joey may be scheduled to die tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean he has to reverse a life of rebellion by adhering to the traditional “last meal.”  Besides, he’s just not hungry.  Joey’s refusal to “go along” has clogged the smooth running wheels of justice and has angered a lot of folks.  Al, his cellmate on death row, is angry with him for not at least taking the meal, a nice thick steak, and passing it to him; Harry, the guard, is angry with him for disrupting his schedule; Sarge, who is in command of the death row cellblock, is angry because not being able to control his prisoners could prevent him from getting a promotion; Warden, who runs the prison, is angry because he doesn’t want to acknowledge to the Governor he can’t control his prisoners; Betty, Joey’s wife, is angry with him because his being in jail prevented them from fulfilling her dream of a family;  Mother, Joey’s Mom, is angry because not eating could affect Joey’s health. Chaplain is the only character not angry with Joey because, belonging to the Church of Sacred Men, he just loves his work environment.  

• Cast Size: 6M 2W
• Running Time: 90+ minutes
• Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

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

A fellowship of five thirtysomething friends have been playing Masters of the Dark Realm (a Dungeons & Dragons type roleplaying game) since high school. One night, their Game Master, Joel, and his wife, Nicole, announce that they’re going to have a baby, so it’d be a good time to end their game. Forever. Seeing how upset their friends are, Joel and Nicole decide to help them each find new, personal quests in their lives. Things don’t go as planned and bad feelings grow between them. Then when the fellowship is confronted with an unexpected tragedy, they must choose between giving up on reality, or pulling together to slay their personal dragons.

• Cast Size: 3M 2W
• Running Time: 90+ minutes
• Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

A teen aged girl with an over active mind (Monkey Mind played by three characters) tries to get her father out of depression by winning a singing contest.  A singing teacher notices her brain is running her life and tries to teach her to control it by “staying in the now”. The stubborn girl thinks, “Ya Ya” and doesn’t try.  She falls for the teachers nephew but worrying about her father, (in the hospital) maybe not being good enough to win, and a fight with the boy, drive her to near suicide before she realizes her mind is, indeed, ruining her life and is ready to try  to “stay in the now”.  A serous subject done with a lot of humor.

Cast Size: 2M 2W 3GN

Running Time: 90+ minutes

Royalty Rate: $75 per performance

Wyn, a newly-minted “wizard” with a brand-new wizard badge, recruits a tall dwarf, Hilda, and a forest elf, Acetaminophen (“Ceta” for short) to go on a quest to defeat the evil queen by finding the orb of Mags Guffin. Along the way they encounter a swamp lion, have to traverse the Lair of Nozid (whatever that is), deal with some very rude bully wizards, and come face-to-face with a dragon, among other things. Not to mention those strangely familiar-looking tavern workers in each town…

A loving homage to classic fantasy novels and role-playing games, Orb Quest: the Quest for the Orb features a cast of 8 (with doubling) and so, so many bananas. The final installment of the Banana Trilogy (whose stories are unrelated except for using bananas as props). 

• Cast Size: 2M 2W 4GN
• Running Time: 90+ minutes
• Royalty Rate: $75 per performance