About the Play:

Pillow Talk has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male/Male Scenes.

The volume Stay Carl Stay, Best Half Foot Forward and Pillow Talk contains three one-act comedies by Peter Tolan. Written while he writing for the hit sitcom series Murphy Brown, they deliver stressed-out characters into hilarious situations about the contradictions and pitfalls of relationships. In each of the three plays, one-liners and laughs abound as men and women stumble toward coming to terms with modern relationships – and with each other. The plays may be presented separately or as an evening of entertainment. Included are:

Stay Carl Stay is about a young woman who drops her demeaning boyfriend for a dog named Carl. Dominated and taken for granted by her live-in boyfriend, she seeks help from a rather whacked-out therapist and is advised to get a dog for company. Pandemonium ensues when Carl (the dog, played by a human actor) arrives and is far better behaved than the boyfriend. He soon learns to dance and talk and wins his mistress' heart. She trades in her crummy boyfriend for a perfect male dog. A brilliant comedy with a tiny little bit of moral bite! (First presented in 1991 at Manhattan Punch Line Theatre; Cast: 3 female, 3 male)

What people say:

"If all else fails, have an affair with your dog. That's the joke in Peter Tolan's Stay Carl Stay. And it's a very funny joke indeed." — Los Angeles Times

Best Half Foot Forward is about a group of four buddies in their late twenties, stir crazy at the end of a week-long vacation in a cabin located in the wilds of New Hampshire. Far from women and civilization, their neuroses and insecurities about friendship and masculinity drive them to outrageous acts of competition, culminating with a very frank and funny examination of their anatomical attributes. (First presented in 1988 at Manhattan Punch Line Theatre; Cast: 4 male)

Pillow Talk is about two men, Aaron and Doug on the first night of their auto odyssey across the country, who are forced to share a bedroom and a bed in the mobile home of Aaron's grandmother. Doug has never slept in the same bed with another male. Hampered by Doug's phobic fear of physical intimacy, the characters are forced to examine their feelings about friendship and each other. As the battle lines are drawn, they get little sleep and a night full of surprises. Based on a cross-country trip taken by two of Tolan's friends, it is filled with potholes and detours, macho insecurity, wry bonding and some gentle jabs at what being male means to both. (First presented in 1989 at Manhattan Punch Line Theatre; Cast: 2 male)

What people say:

"The dialogue [in Peter Tolan's Pillow Talk] is incisive, revelatory and full of wit, without a wasted word, and each moment vibrates with humor that derives from character rather than situation. A gem of a piece." — Los Angeles Times

Stay Carl Stay, Best Half Foot Forward and Pillow Talk were first presented during the Manhattan Punch Line festival of one-act comedies. Stay Carl Stay and Pillow Talk were performed 1993 as an evening of entertainment at Solebury Theatre during the New Hope Performing Arts Festival. The play has Pillow Talk has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and Stay Carl Stay and Best Half Foot Forward have been performed by community theatre groups at one-act festivals.

About the Playwright:

Peter Tolan is an American television writer-showrunner and screenwriter. He is probably best known as co-creator of TV shows The Job and Rescue Me, and co-writer of Analyze This, and its sequel, Analyze That. After graduating from the University of Massachusetts, he wrote and performed in off-Broadway plays. He started his career on the writing staff of television sitcoms and then became a writer and producer on Murphy Brown and The Larry Sanders Show. From there, he made his foray into movies with the screenplays for My Fellow Americans, Bedazzled, and America's Sweethearts.