About the Play:

Something In The Basement and Other Plays is a collection of one-act plays by Don Nigro. This volume includes one of the author's best known short plays, Scarecrow, a compelling erotic Gothic tale set on a remote farm where a young girl discovers lust and sexuality in the form of a stranger out in the cornfield. It also includes a couple of his popular two-handers Something in the Basement and Lurker as well as The Devil and Bible.

Something in the Basement: A young couple moves into an old house where they are torn apart by the fact that they can't have children. She's lost interest in intimacy – with him at least – and he's hurt by the chilly reception he gets every night when they go to bed. She becomes afraid of – and then drawn to – unexpected noises or "something" in the basement and insists that he investigate. How far can either be pushed? So far as to consider foul play? Their fear turns into an obsessive struggle and a strange erotic triangle, the third member of which lurks in the darkness beneath them. An unusual play, funny and terrifying, about women and men and things that go bump in the night. (Cast: 1 female, 1 male)

Scarecrow: A lonely girl lives with her eccentric mother in an old farmhouse on the edge of a cornfield. She meets a strange man under a tree by the creek and is led into a web of lust and betrayal. Scarecrows are supposed to frighten crows, but the scarecrow in this cornfield is something more. (Cast: 2 female, 1 male)

Lurker: A chilling tale of a man who catches a glimpse of a girl undressing in her bedroom window and gradually becomes obsessed with her. He lurks in her bushes and spies on her as she sunbathes in her garden. One night he finds an unlocked window in her house. Unfolding simultaneously from the points of view of both characters, this tale of obsession and terror was produced in New York by Manhattan Class Company. (Cast: 1 female, 1 male)

The Devil: An old woman is hired to sit with a peasant's dying mother, agreeing to take a lump sum and stay as long as the mother lives. Perversely, the mother refuses to die until the old woman, losing money by the minute, employs a strategy to ease her along to heaven. Suggested by Guy de Maupassant's dark and funny story, this parable about greed introduces the Devil in its own strange way. (Cast: 2 female, 1 male)

Bible: A park bench. In this Victorian primer gone berserk, Papa is a Christian censor. Mama has taken Annabel and Harry to the park to read them edifying passages from the Bible. The Old Testament story of lust, incest and murder she stumbles on is not what Mama had in mind, but it holds them all spellbound. This play will infuriate people like Papa, but its madness and witty irreverence reveals the unexpected beauty buried in a complex book that hypocrites who would control what we read are too blind to see. This unusual play would make an excellent pairing with God's Spies. (Cast: 2 female, 1 male)

About the Playwright:

Don Nigro is a prolific American playwright with over 400 works touching on a wide variety of themes including murder mysteries (the Inspector Ruffing series), American history (the Pendragon County plays), Russian life and culture, art and artists, and more. His work has been produced around the world and translated into ten languages. He has twice been a finalist for the National Repertory Theatre Foundation's National Play Award, and has won a Playwriting Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as grants from the Ohio Arts Council.