Playscripts

Dream of Perfect Sleep is the story of an aging couple, Mary and Gene, and their adult children - recovering-addict Robert and new-ager Melissa. Mary suffers from severe vertigo and just wants to watch her TV show. Gene's busy organizing a very special holiday dinner, but party planning isn't exactly his strong suit. When the estranged kids come home for the holidays, Gene reveals some unexpected news that threatens to destroy the family's already strained bonds.

Marriage. Divorce. Alcoholism. Stillbirths. Illness. Bacon. The Marriage of Bette and Boo follows the zany, turbulent, heartbreaking marriage of Bette Brennan and Boo Hudlocke. Bette and Boo marry and set about having the large, happy family that Bette always dreamed of. The arrival of their first son, Matt, is soon overshadowed by a succession of stillborns. Bette is heartbroken. Boo starts to drink; Bette starts to nag. Amongst the chaos fighting, both must deal with their wacky families: Bette’s mother and father, who suffered a stroke and now speaks in unintelligible gibberish; Boo’s sadistic father, fond of calling his long-suffering wife “the dumbest woman in the world”; Bette’s sister, ridden with anxiety and constantly apologizing for everything; the family priest, fond of impersonating bacon. Playwright Christopher Durang’s most autobiographical work, The Marriage of Bette and Boo finds humor and compassion in unhappiness, as Matt comes to terms with the love⏤and pain⏤that families are made of.

Russia, Freaks and Foreigners is a collection of three thematically linked plays set against the backdrop of a fractured, post-Soviet Russian society. Written by acclaimed playwright James MacDonald, who is cerebral palsied, these performance texts critique accepted notions of normality within authority, offering various models of difference - physical, cultural and moral - and their stories of dislocation. Their themes, contextualized here by companion essays, expand the boundaries of British drama and connect to the comic grotesque tradition by giving the 'abnormal' a broad appeal

The story of 4 mentally handicapped men live under the supervision of an earnest, but increasingly "burned out" young social worker named Jack.

After three years in the Peace Corps, James, a young speech therapist, joins the faculty of a school for the deaf, where he is to teach lip-reading. He meets Sarah, a school dropout, totally deaf from birth, and estranged both from the world of hearing and from those who would compromise to enter that world. Fluent in sign language, James tries, with little success, to help Sarah, but gradually the two fall in love and marry. At first their relationship is a happy and glowing one, as the gulf of silence between them seems to be bridged by their desire to understand each other's needs and feelings, but discord soon develops as Sarah becomes militant for the rights of the deaf and rejects any hint that she is being patronized and pitied. In the end the chasm between the worlds of sound and silence seems almost too great to cross, but love and compassion hold the hope of reconciliation, and a deeper, fuller understanding of differences that, in the final essence, can unite as well as divide.

A star football player -- a pro prospect, one of the most graceful runners in the world, and a man in love with a teammate -- struggles to move forward in the wake of a catastrophic spinal cord injury. With full-contact choreography, this play about love, ability, and extraordinary feats of strength tackles definitions of masculinity and the male body as vehicles for language, violence, and silent expression through dance, football, and disability.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning play that powerfully explores the realities of living with physical disabilities.

The heart is a lonely hunter explores a universal longing for connection. At its center is John Singer, a lonely deaf man, who becomes the confidant to a constellation of disparate souls--an angry carnival worker, a crusading physician, the owner of a failing cafâe and a fifteen-year-old girl in love with music--all seeking understanding and compassion from a man desperately in need of understanding himself. Each pours their heart out to Singer, and he in turn changes their disenchanted lives in ways they could never imagine.

The turbulent relationship between struggling writer Milton Klonsky and his mentor, the brilliant poet Delmore Schwartz, is the basis of this engrossing drama. Warm scenes of their deep friendship alternate with vaudevillian routines and bold theatrics, ultimately painting a harrowing portrait of Schwartz’s unnerving descent into madness.

Can a working class mother save her troubled son when her cries for help go unheard? Angela Cady is determined to get her son Andy through high school and on to community college. But mental illness threatens to destroy his future and tear the family apart. When Andy's volatility leads to hospitalization, and Angela's former addictions return to haunt her, she must summon strength to draw out help from a neglectful, poverty-stricken town. The Mental State explores the human story behind the newscasts, and asks how we as a national community can address the urgent issue of teenage mental illness. All net proceeds from Amazon sales will be donated to The National Alliance on Mental Illness, and March For Our Lives.

A darkly funny, touching play about life, death, and the way in which a father's stroke paralyzes an entire family. The writing unfolds in a variety of tones and styles, including slapstick comedy, documentary realism, and surreal plunges into a kind of schizophrenic viewpoint, giving the audience a multifaceted look at a single crisis.