Visiting Sam
A romantic comedy in two acts
SYNOPSIS Here’s a gal with a great job on Wall Street and a guy who has a part-time job writing copy for The Princeton Community Paper. Rhoda is from Princeton society. Ed is from a messed up low class family. They met at Princeton University when he was a scholarship student there and she was the most popular girl on campus. They have remained friends ever since graduation, but would she even consider him as a lover? Should he risk this friendship to find out or just bluster on as a wise guy full of fun to stay in her life? He accepts an invitation to a play reading seminar at Samuel French Publishing Company and asks Rhoda, who is now living a couple of blocks from there, to tag along. Stopping at a local bar afterwards they learn more about each other than about plays as their real relationship is brought into focus by a bunch of offbeat neighborhood characters.
CAST
Two women, four men.
SET
ACT I; Interior. A New York City neighborhood bar.
ACT 2: Interior. A nearby one-bedroom apartment.
Accidentally Wealthy
A comedy murder mystery in two acts.
For these ultra rich social animals life is just one party after another. All laughs and fun. They have more money than anyone needs. But there are secrets. Reggie lost two wives to accidents. He got richer every time. His new bride, Grace, lost her husband to suicide. She inherited a fortune. Accidents? Suicide? Or was it murder? Returning from a month-long honeymoon abroad it appears that someone’s life is in danger. Is it Reggie or is it Grace? Could one of these seemingly carefree people be a murderer? Or, are they just accidentally wealthy? Their nearest and dearest are waiting in their family room to welcome them home.
CAST: Four women, three men.
SET: The living room of a luxurious Main Line Philadelphia mansion.
Saint Georges Blues
A comedy/drama in two acts.
This play is a tribute to Joe Michini and his wife Marge, and to their success, working with Gary Gogdell and Gene Fontana, in bringing Rhythm and Blues to Saint Georges Country Store. This is a true story. It relates the events that turned a country store into a recognized East Coast music venue and then created a nationally recognized yearly Rhythm and Blues music festival in a small Delaware town. The relationships, words and thoughts of the characters are theatrical fiction. The behavior and dialogue of local characters are inventions of the author, but the characters and events are real.
CAST: Four women, five men.
SET: Interior, Sain Georges Country Store
Orlando Rising
A drama in two acts.
Wally, a college professor, and his wife Ruth play host to the family matriarch, Nana. She lives with his parents, but they are away on a well-deserved trip. Set in November 1963, this high-tension drama unravels when events surrounding the Kennedy assassination open a festering family secret, a secret that has lay hidden in Wally’s subconscious since childhood. Nana has hidden it for three generations. Why is Wally’s Uncle Orlando kept in a mental hospital? Why does no one ever discuss it or visit him? Wally remembers visits to the hospital with his mother and Nana when he was very little. He remembers Orlando’s uncontrollable rage about the government and his anger with Nana; his threats to kill her. Wally harbors a disquieting memory of Orlando rising like a specter in the darkened living room of his childhood home following an escape from the hospital. Wally lives with the suppressed fear that one day Orlando will once again appear to threaten their lives. In the distraction of the assassination confusion, Orlando has disappeared from the hospital.
CAST: Three women, Three men (plus two walk-ons), Two eight- to ten-year-old boys.
SET: Interior, A middle class suburban southern New Jersey home.
Hitched
A comedy in two acts.
Hitched is slang for getting married. The dictionary defines it as loosely tied.
Millie, who is divorced, is hosting family members at her home in Phoenix for the wedding weekend of her brother Harry’s son Jim. Jim is marrying well above his family’s social sphere, so the wedding is to be a dignified and formal affair. The event proves to be a clash of cultures.
The groom’s dad, Harry, is divorced from Jim’s mother and is flying in from Philadelphia with his latest wife who is half his age. Millie is unaware that her son Bruce, a professor at Georgia State University, is gay. Bruce is bringing his lover, Spike, to introduce him to the family. Millie’s outspoken obnoxious Aunt from Pennsylvania is among the guests and Millie’s sophisticated niece from New York City is invited. Millie’s ex-husband, now running a mission for orphan boys in New Guinea, shows up uninvited asking Millie to take care of him while he recovers from minor surgery. Though the mix is not cohesive, we get to know and marvel at the relationships that make this crazy family care about and love one another.
CAST: 5 women, six men.
SET: A middle-class Phoenix, Arizona living room, plus one scene in the desert.
A Brief History Of Man
A Farcical Comedy in three acts.
This script makes fun of the human predicament It asks the unanswerable questions, how did we get here and where are we going after AI?
CAST: Three women, or one woman and one They. four men.
SET: Heaven, the garden of Eden, A bar and a high-tech laboratory, Moveable set pieces and rear projection.
Miracle
A family drama in two acts.
John, married with grown kids out of the house, is cleaning his attic when he comes across a picture of an older cousin, Betty, who he was close to in his childhood during the Second World War. He totally lost touch after his college years. He remembers her boyfriend came home from the war badly disfigured, but she married him anyway. They had a retarded son which the dad wanted to institutionalize but the cousin’s sister, Dorothy, fought for custody and took the child away to raise him. The husband left over the battle for custody and Betty was left to live her life alone. She effectively disappeared. John becomes obsessed with finding her, involving his wife in the search and revisiting his memories for clues to find Betty.
CAST: Six women, four men.
SET: The attic of a middle -class Philadelphia home with steps leading down to the living room. The living room also converts quickly into both Betty’s and Dorothy’s living rooms.
The Following Scripts Have Had Public Staged Readings But Have Not Yet Been Produced.
The Chevy’s At the Levee
A comedy in two acts.
Three old, widowed guys, Bob, Carl and Ben, have known each other their entire lives, growing up in the same town. Carl has a “girlfriend”, Myra, who he sees one week out of every year at the Florida timeshare were Bob and he have vacationed since their wives died. Now Ben, recently widowed, is joining them as they are setting off to revive their youth on a one-week vacation to the Florida Gulf. Bob’s niece, Debbie, asks him to escort his niece, her sister Laurie, on the flight from Philadelphia to Tampa. Laurie has been living with her brother in New Jersey and is, well, unusual and should not travel alone. Her sister Debbie will get her when she arrives in Florida. Uncle Bob, however, misses the plane, leaving his two friends responsible for the niece, which complicates matters in an unforeseen way. Carl is convinced that Myra, and now Bob’s niece Laurie, who he was paired with on the flight, are both in love with him. Once Bob arrives, the three buddies are reunited and the events of the week continue to spell disaster in this hilarious but often touching story.
CAST: Four women, four men.
SET: The living room of a time-share condo on the Florida West Coast.
Tinker Street
A drama about gender transition.
“I’m a woman”, Jimmie’s / Jamie’s courageous confession to Harry, her best high school friend, ignites a series of events that impacts the lives of everyone Jamie knows. Her mother, Mary, doesn’t know how to help. Her father can’t accept the situation, and their marriage disintegrates. Mary’s search for knowledge and acceptance leads to a local bar where she finds every woman there is coping with something in their life. From these friendships comes growth and understanding. Jamie’s need for support from Harry, who she has trusted her whole life, holds them tenuously together as their lives develop and change through college years and into their careers. Then Harry marries into a very right-leaning family, challenging whether his friendship is real?
CAST: One boy/woman, four women, four men.
SET: What’s left of a kids fort in an upper west side New York City brownstone backyard, plus a tiny one room Woodstock, New York apartment, and a New York City local bar.
