MONKEY IN THE SHADE
by Steven Haworth
In Harvey, Louisiana, 1978, a derrick man named Monkey works the oil patch and lives at Clay and Minnie’s, a boarding house / bar run by ex-con and charming mobster Clay Boudreaux. One day a teenage boy named Sean arrives, just kicked out of his home in Minnesota. Monkey takes Sean under his wing, shielding him from Clay’s criminal operations, and from Janny, Clay’s 16-year-old niece. Discovering what everyone already knew about Clay and Janny, Sean convinces Monkey to get Janny out of Harvey. Forty years later in 2018 Sean is back to find out whatever happened to his old friend. What he discovers alters everything he understood about his life, as Monkey’s mysterious death threatens to converge with his own.
- Cast Size: 7M 2W
- Running Time: 90+ minutes
- Royalty Rate: $75 per performance
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About the Playwright
Little Fishes was produced off-Broadway by Abingdon Theatre and is published by Next Stage Press. Fernando opened the Obie Award-winning Ice Factory Festival 2017 at the New Ohio Theatre (New York), was also a winner of the Ashland New Play Festival (Ashland, OR), and the First Look Festival (Los Angeles), and is published by Next Stage Press. Also in New York, Dark Age was produced by Project III Ensemble Theatre, and The White Cave by Jesco Productions. Steven was Writer-in-Residence at the 2018 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference working on his play Monkey in the Shade, which was also included in the PlayLab Series at The Great Plains Theatre Conference 2019, was an Ashland New Play Festival finalist in 2020, and will be published by Next Stage Press in June, 2024. Red River Fallswill be included in the PlayLab at Valdez Theatre Conference in June 2024 and is a finalist for the Live Arts Waterworks Festival. The Pain Before was presented by the ProEnglish Theatre Drama School in Kyiv, Ukraine, January 2024. Something Holy In Croatia was performed in the Santa Cruz Actors Theatre 8Tens @ 8 Short Play Festival in Jan/Feb, 2023, and the Seoul Players Short Play Festival in Seoul, South Korea. Four New Years in Japan won the Jury Prize in the Think Fast Festival in March 2019 and is published in Applause Publications Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2020. [home] or The Quest for the Lost Tablet of Ur was commissioned and produced by Zoo District in Los Angeles, receiving five LA Weekly, a Garland, and Ovation award nominations. Also commissioned to write the free adaptation of Mikail Bulgakov’s Flight for the Open Fist Theatre, produced in 2003, and to be published by Next Stage Press in 2024. Time and Tony Oliva, commissioned for the Seventh Inning Stretch at Mile Square Theatre, is included in the Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2018 published by Smith and Kraus. Monologues from Steven’s plays also appear in Smith and Krause’s The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2018, and The Best Men’s Stage Monologues 2018, as well as Applause Books The Best Men’s Monologues From New Plays 2019. In New Zealand he was one of four playwrights contributing to the Big Kahuna project directed by Christine Sang. Blue/Whitney was a winner of Stage Left Theatre’s 10th Leapfest New Play Festival in Chicago. Steven was a founding member and Associate Artistic Director of the Project III Ensemble Theatre in residence at the Ohio Theatre, Soho, NYC, where he wrote Dark Age, directed The Grand Ceremonial, and performed in many productions. As an actor he has performed in New York, Los Angeles, and regional theatre. MFA in playwriting from Carnegie Mellon University. www.StevenHaworth.com
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