About
the Book:
Editor
Craig
Pospisil
compiled this collection Outstanding
Short Plays: Vol. 3.
Inside these pages you will find authors from widely varied
backgrounds, some well known, others less so, but all immensely
talented. This collection of one-act plays represents some of the
best writing in the American theatre today.
The
collection Outstanding
Short Plays: Vol. 3
includes
the following plays:
52nd
To Bowery To Cobble Hill, In Brooklyn by Chiara Atik.
Halle hails a taxi after a party, when Alison, her aggressively
bubbly friend, pushes into the cab too. It's clear Halle didn't want
to ride with her, but she puts up with it until Alison asks if she's
mad at her, so Halle comes right out and tells her "I just don't
like you very much." (Cast: 2 women)
Anniversary
Season by Jenny Lyn Bader. Zoe and Matt got married during
hurricane season, and each year when their anniversary rolls around
they seem to battle each other or prepare for another storm. Will
their marriage last? Will they remember their anniversary? Will the
power be knocked out again? (Cast: 1 woman, 1 man)
Capturing
The Fort by Arlene Hutton. Carrie and Michael are US
Marines on security duty in a desert war zone. They would seem to
have little in common. Michael seems to be "one of the boys,"
and Carrie is married with a husband back home. But with little to do
but talk, these two soldiers begin to connect. (Cast: 1 woman, 1 man)
Carrie
& Francine by Ruby Rae Spiegel. Carrie, 13, asks her
friend Francine to help her get ready for a make-out session at a bar
mitzvah. Having seen too many Girls Gone Wild videos, Carrie thinks
she's the right age to go wild herself. These girls can be cruel and
talk like truck drivers, but there's an odd innocence to them as
well. And somehow, they may be okay in the end. (Cast: 3 women)
Dissonance
by Craig Pospisil. Tricia returns to the Berkshires to deal
with her mother's death following a battle with Alzheimer's, but at
the funeral home she collides with Fitz, a prodigy and former piano
student of her mother's, with secrets of his own, who challenges her
choices. (Cast: 1 woman, 1 man)
Into
You by Lee Blessing. A week after being drugged and raped
at a frat party, Molly brings home a drunken man from another party.
She doesn't know him. She doesn't know who raped her. But she plans
to exact her revenge on him. (Cast: 3 women, 1 man)
Mercury
Is Perpetually In Retrograde So Stop Worrying About It by Kara
Lee Corthron. Polly's life is great. Her mother just sent her two
tickets to Wicked. What could go wrong? Then her boyfriend breaks up
with her. And her best friend does too. And her mother changes her
phone number. And that's just the start of things… (Cast: 3 women,
1 man)
Napoleon
In Exile by Daniel Reitz. A single mother, sick with
cancer, struggles to talk to her low-functioning twenty-five-year-old
son with Asperger's about how he might take care of himself when
she's gone. (Cast: 1 woman, 1 man)
On
The Menu by Rob Ackerman. A mother tries to talk to her
fourteen-year-old daughter about sex before she goes off to culinary
camp for the summer. The daughter – of course – wants nothing to
do with this conversation. But her mother persists, until the
daughter finds a way to turn the tables on her. (Cast: 2 women.)
Rules
Of Comedy by Patricia Cotter. Caroline is really, really
not funny. Which is why she hires Guy, a stand-up comedian with some
hang-ups of his own, to teach her how to tell jokes. But it turns out
that they both have things to learn from one another, about life as
well as laughter. (Cast: 1 woman, 1 man)
A
Sweet And Bitter Providence by Julia Jordan. Late at
night, outside their father's hospital room, Molly, Grace, and Lucy
argue about which of them should tell their brother Sam to break up
with "that girl" they can't stand. It seems catty, but they
love their brother and their family. And they may be right. (Cast: 3
women, 1 man)
About
the Editor:
Craig
Pospisil is an American playwright, and musical bookwriter. He is
multiple award-winning author, six time Heideman Award finalist, and
received the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival's award
for Excellence in Playwriting.