The amateur, stock and professional rights to these works are controlled exclusively by the playwright without whose permission in writing no performance of it may be given. Royalty fees are negotiated individually by the playwright. Royalty must be paid every time a play is performed whether or not it is presented for profit and whether or not admission is charged. For definition purposes, a play is performed anytime it is read or acted before an audience. All inquiries concerning performance rights should be addressed to:
All plays are fully protected by copyright. With the exception of the works for children, No alternations, deletions or substitutions may be made inthe play with the prior written consent of the author. No part of thisplay may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, videotape, film, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. It may not be performed either by professionals or amateurs without payment of royalty. All rights, including but not limited to the professional, motion picture, radio, television, videotape, foreign language, tabloid, recitation, lecturing, publication, and reading are reserved by the author.
Scripts are not complete. I have included one act from each of the full length scripts and approximately one half of all of the other works.
Type: Drama - Two actsStoryline: As the play opens, Houdini is revealed to us as a spirit who waits at the window of a different séance each Halloween eve hoping to escape into the world of the living.Concept: Houdini escapes from the Netherworld
Setting: The barn of a suburban hobby farm
Time: The present
Characters: 4m, 2f
Length: Two hours
The séance is held at midnight in a barn at the suburban home of the protagonist, Sam Blanchard, a professor of Parapsychology, after one of his annual Halloween parties. Vinnie, a manic-depressive with delusions is used to seeing that which is not there and is able to see and to contact Houdini even before the séance begins. As the play progresses, "The Master of Mystery," using Vinnie as his medium, gains in strength and ability. Eventually, he emerges and traps the participants in his own world. In order for them to gain release, one of them must replace Houdini in the spirit world. Houdini is both the antagonist and the catalyst around which the action of the play revolves.
Dramatis Personae:Houdini: We see him as he was in the prime of his life. He is a proud, determined and forceful egomaniac with the values and outlook of his times searching in the void for his wife Bess so that he can tell her the password and return to her as he promised.
Sam: Mid thirties, recently divorced University professor, an expert on parapsychology and Houdini. He bears a secret, which is revealed, at the end of the play. Both Maggie and Pauline desire him.
Vinnie:Mid forties, a manic depressive schizoid gardener. He has a cast of characters that dwell in his electric mind and provides much of the comic relief in the play.
Maggie: Mid thirties, a successful actress who grew up in a satanic cult, practices white witchcraft and was Sam's lover while they were in University.
Pauline: Mid thirties, a neurotic television journalist who recently lived with Sam and wants him back.
Roger: Mid-seventies, a columnist with the Globe and Mail, mentor to Sam and former English teacher who once had a brief interlude with Maggie while she was one of his students.
Type: Drama - Two actsStoryline: Max Farber, was twelve years old when he was taken to Auschwitz. Forty years later, on the evening of a severe ice storm, he incarcerates his French-Canadian waitress, Monique Dubois, 20, and her ultra-nationalist boyfriend, Rejean Poulin, 23. Rejean denies the Holocaust and states that he would like to banish all the English and the Jews from Quebec in order to end the oppression of his people. Farber, 52, owner of Farber's Delicatessen, now Delimax, lives with Nathan Epstien 72, his fellow survivor. With Nathan's help he decides to teach them the meaning of oppression. The lesson gets out of hand. Yetta Mandlebaum, 50 is the fifth character in the play. A native Montrealer who has moved to Florida, she has just come to town for her grandson's bar mitzvah. Max is a widower. His former wife, also a survivor recently took her own life.Yetta wants to bring him back to Florida with her.Concept: The Jewish owner of a Montreal delicatessen, a survivor of Auschwitz, believes that the French separatist movement in Quebec is the holocaust revisited.
Setting: A Jewish delicatessen in Montreal during a winter storm
Time: 1984.
Characters: 3m, 2f
Length: Two hours
Dramatis personae:Max Farber: Early fifties.Literate, intelligent but psychologically damaged widower, delicatessen owner and survivor of the concentration camps.
Nathan Epstien: Mid-seventies. Former olympic athlete and fellow survivor from Auschwitz. He and Max share a dark secret from the camps. Max takes care of him. Nathan will do anything for his friend.
Monique Dubois: Twenty. Pretty, efficient and in love. Monique works as Max's waitress and has since she was seventeen. She looks after her parents and is loyal to Réjean.
Yetta Mandlebaum: Fifty. An old friend of Max and his late wife Molly. She has left Montreal and currently lives in Florida. Yetta is back in town to attend her grandson's bar mitzvah. She hopes to convince Max to go back with her to West Palm Beach.
Réjean Poulin: Twenty-three. Good looking, passionate young man. Rejean denies the Holocaust and states that he would like to banish all the English and the Jews from Quebec in order to end the oppression of his people.
Type: Monodrama - Two actsStoryline: The first act takes place in May of 1898. The artist has achieved his greast success and is beginning his downward spiral. We learn about Lautrec's youth, his work at the ateliers and meet some of his friends including : Jan Avril, La GoulouAristide Bruant, Van Gogh, Degas and his agent and greatest friend, Maurice Joyant. Bad reviews on a major show in the spring of '98 drive him into a punishing alchoholic journey.Concept: Two days in the life of Toulouse Lautrec
Setting: Le Moulin de la Gallette, the artist's studio
Time: 1984.
Characters: The actor plays a variety of roles
Length: 1 hour and forty minutes
Act two takes place just after his release from the sanatorium at Neuilly. He is being watched over by Paul Viaud and painting again; trying hard not to slide back into the bottle. Through a series of flashbacks we watch his deterioration and recovery.
Dramatis Personae: Lautrec is the only character but the actor who portrays the artist will play a wide variety of roles. Lautrec himself is charming , brilliant and self-destructive.
Type: Drama - Three actsStoryline: My Music is a love story. This is the odyssey of Yossel Zaiger who came to Canada, as a twenty year old, in 1910 with his young bride Hilda and outlived his family. In the first act, Yossel and Hilda arrive as "greeners" to stay with Cousin Avrum in Montreal. Yossel, a violinist, finds work with the Montreal Symphony.Concept: A ninety four year old man outlived his family. A social worker comes to take hime to a home. He becomes stuck in the past.
Setting: At the home of Yossel Zaiger in Montreal, Canada in America
Time: 1910 - 1985
Characters: 7m , 2f (The play is designed so that four actors 3m and 1f can play all of the roles)
Length: Two hours
In the second act, Hilda has just died of cancer He and his thirty-eight year old son, Sonny, are sitting shiva with the Rabbi and discussing the care of Yossel's" retarded grown daughter Dora. Sonny wants to send her to a home.Yossel refuses and to appease Dora, sets up the illusion that Hilda is coming home.
In the final act, Yossel, now ninety four, has outlived everyone. His grandaughter has sent a social worker to wrest him away from the home he has lived in for the past sixty-five years and not left for the past thirty. He is stuck in time. It is 1909 and he is a musician in the village of Zhitomir courting his bride to be. He cannot leave because he is waiting for Hilda.
Dramatis Personae:Yossel Zaiger: Two actors play Yossel whom we meet when he is in his twenties, fifties and nineties. He is a talented musician and incurable romantic. He gets into trouble after playing at a concert in Kiev and has to leave his country or be arrested by the Cossacks. After his wife dies in 1950, he sets up the illusion that she will return in order to appease his retarded daughter. he begins to believe the lie and when we meet him in his nineties. He is convinced that Hilda will come back to him.
Hilda Zaiger: She is eternally twenty. We meet her in the first act as a young and fearful immigrant and in the third as a vibrant vision of Yossel's joy. She is strong despite her trepidations and her charm is ethereal.
Avrum Rubenson: Twenty-five. He has red hair and is a fastideous man sports a straw boater. He welcomes Yossel and Hilda to his home and extolls the virtues of assimilation.
The Conductor: An elegant man in his late forties.
Sonny Zaiger: Thirty-eight, darkly handsome with a pencil thin moustache. He was said to resemble the actor Tyrone Power. He is in mourning.
Rabbi Beilis.: Mid-thirties. He is kind but misguided.
Dora Zaiger: Dora, at thirty-five, has the mind of a nine year old. She loves her parents with a child-like desperation. Her clothing is drab. Her smile is beatific.
Richard Stien: Thirty-four, a social worker. He is a clean cut man in a non-descript gray suit.
Type: Drama - One actStoryline: The play contrasts the fates of Esther Birnbaum ,the typical Yiddische bubbeh and Clara Penner a sixty-something realtor on the move.They meet in the semi private room they share in the ICU after both have suffered heart attacks. Clara is in denial about aging and refuses to admit that she is now a grandmother while Esther dotes on it. Both harbour secrets which are revealed during the play. The third characteris Jocylyn their nurse.Concept: An archetypal bubbeh meets a modern grandmother in the ICU after both have suffered heart attacks.
Setting: A cardiac ward in an urban hospital
Time: The present
Characters: 3f
Length: 50 minutes.
Dramatis Personae:Esther Birnbaum: She admits to eighty five years. Her white hair has streaks the colour of yellow parchment and is worn in a bun. She has a pretty face with rimless glasses and when she smiles she becomes the archetype of the Yiddish Bubbeh, round, kind, caring.
Clara Penner: She is 60 but looks 40. She jogs and exercises frantically to keep up her youthful appearance. Clara is a realtor with a voracity for getting the job done. Her daughter Audra has recently adopted a new baby which she refuses to see and she treats her fifteen year old nephew like a friend.
Jocylyn Goldenberg: She is twenty-five and perky with red hair and a bubbly personality.
Type: Drama - One actStoryline: Eli Golden has not seen his harsh and unforgiving father for seventeen years. The Zaideh is living in a home and suffering from the beginnings of Alzheimers. Eli brings his son, Dylan, a modern teen who is into heavy metal and punk to meet the Zaideh for the first time. It is a difficult and revealing meeting.Concept: An errant son wants to take his own son to meet the Zaideh who lives in an old folks home and is beginning to succumb to Alzheimers.
Setting: A visiting room in the Maimonides home for Jewish golden agers.
Time: The present.
Characters: 3m
Length: 50 minutes.
Dramatis Personae:Eli Golden: A bearded man in his early fifties wearing designer jeans and a black tee shirt with an Escher print. He is a successful wildlife artist recently divorced and has been estranged from his father for seventeen years.
Dylan Golden: Eli's seventeen year old son. Dylan's movement has economy and grace. His hair has recently been dyed bright blue. He, too, is dressed all in black. Jeans, a Marilyn Manson tee shirt, a black belt with silver buckle, and trim and dusty army boots. He has been working out and looks it.
The Zaideh: He is eighty-seven and seems weak. He is wearing a checked bathrobe and worn slippers. There is about four days of stubble on his face but his sparse hair has just been wet down and combed. He refuses to speak to Eli and has some dementia.
Type: Children's Theatre One act.Concept: A female football star quarterback has moved to a sexist town.
Setting: Multiple simple sets. Dean's bedroom; a classroom; a practise field.
Time: The present.
Characters: flexible.
Length: 40 minutes.
Dramatis Personae:Narrator:
The Guys
Dean: A high school football playerJoey: His best friend and member of the team
Jim: One of the guys and member of the team
Scott: The quarterback
Darren: Dean's kid brother. A real hanger on
The rest of the guys: Shane, Gord, Jason, Kyle and Justin
The Adults
Coach: A shop teacher and coach of the football teamMr.(s) Hemple: The Social studies teacher
Gloria: Dean's mother
The Girls
Julie: The new girl in town; a teriffic athleteMichelle: Number one cheerleader
Jennifer: Michelle's best friend. She has a generous nature
Terri: A cheerleader and the follower of the group
Jill: A cheerleader who would one day like to be miss America
Lisa: A reluctant cheerleader
Erin: She thinks that chearleading is demeaning
The rest of the girls: Kathy, Carolyn, Suzie and Dawn
Type: Children's Theatre One actStoryline: The Ices, an ultra-cool family move to a small town after Joe Ice, the father is transferred there by his boss. The two teen-aged boys at first put down the town, thwe school and all of the occupants. They agree to go on a bird-watching hike with the scoutmaster/mayor and most of the kids in town. One of them gets lost and needs to be rescued. They find out the true nature of the townspeople and learn an important lesson in tolerance.Concept: A "cool" family moves to a town where nerds are the norm. "It's okay to be different."
Setting: Multiple simple sets. Bare stage, six drama blocks and two chairs are required. The office, The Ice bungalow, a Nerdville street, a classroom, the new home of the Ice family, the mountain trail.
Time: The present
Characters: All roles are flexilble.
Length: 40 minutes.
Dramatis Personae:Narrator:
Joe Ice:, The cool father. Sets up dance clubs
Slick Ice: the cool son
Jazz Ice: the other cool son
Roxy Ice: the cool mother, a novelist.
Popsicle: The cool dog.
The boss.
The nerds: Clarence, Charlie, Ellie, Franklin, Karl, Shelly, Marvin, Melvin, Wilma, Lucy.
The teacher: Mrs. Twit
The mayor:
Type: Children's Theatre One act.Concept: A poor family finds happiness in the circus.
Setting: Various simple settings; the Jonas household, the street, the dressing room; the big top
Time: The fifties
Characters: Flexible
Length: 40 minutes.
Storyline: The Jonas family is suffering from the unemployment blues. The two children, are found by their long-lost uncle who is the ringmaster of the Flying Tiger Circus caravan and is playing in town. They join the circus, have a happy Christmas and they all live happily ever after.
Dramatis Personae:The narrator
Harold Jonas: The father
Emily Jonas: The mother
Amy Jonas: The youngest child
Peter Jonas: The oldest child
**Circus cast may be expanded at will.**
Peter Jonas: The uncle and the Ringmaster
Bobo and Booboo the clowns
Igor the strong Man
Gerald the Juggler
Terrence the tightrope walker
Concept: The son-in-law of An old toymaker, who has always made toys by hand, threatens to take over and computerize the toy shop.Storyline: Grampa Schpieler has always made his toys by hand. When his son-in-law threatens to computerize the toy shop, the toys led by Anitra the magical princess doll come to life and save the day.Setting: Various simple settings; the toy shop, the Stolfe household, the street, the lawyers office.
Time: The past
Characters: Flexible
Length: 40 minutes.
Dramatis Personae: The people:Once again, the cast is expandible. There could be several more toys and three or four more bullies could be onstage in the little Sammy Wang scene
The narratorGrampa Schpieler the toymaker
Laurie-Anne Stolfe his granddaughter
Charles Stolfe his son-in-law
Martha Stolfe his daughter
Ogden Willis the lawyer
Julia Willis the lawyer ( Ogden's wife)
Sammy, Laurie-Anne's friend
Frick A construction worker
McGrath his (her) partner
Gerri the schoolyard bully
Mr. Glockner the restaurent owner.
The Toys:
Anitra the princess dollJack-in-the box
Agatha the blue elephant
Teddy the shy teddy bear
Sssimone the purple snake
Tommy the toy soldier
Type: Children's Theatre One act Mask playStoryline: An astronaut lands on a strange planet and decides to stay rather than to claim it for the Earth Federation.Concept: An astronaut lands on a curious planet
Setting: The surface of the planet of Rombolio
Time: The present
Characters: four maskers, and the astronaut
Length: 40 minutes.
Dramatis Personae:All characters may be played by either male or female actors. It is the intent of the playwright that masks be utilized for the aliens. Since the aliens communicate telepathically, percussion instruments should be used to indicate dialogue and/or thought.The Announcer:
Arthur the Astronaut: Hero type, physically alert, strong sense of dedication to duty, almost overwhelmed by his mission, agressive when threatened.
Romboliolians:
Macho Preener: Totally concerned with self, doesn't listen, not much depth. Preener's movement is cocky and arrogant. He requires praise constantly and treats all objects as his own.
Slithery Cautious: Slow to come to a decision, careful and easily frightened. Slithery is the real leader of the native group. He sees all of the possible solutions to a problem.
Bouncy Curious: Rushes in and gets into trouble without thinking, must touch everything and everyone. Bouncy has an infectious personality. She is not intelligent but, like a child, knows no fear. Life for Bouncy is a joyful puzzle.
Baby Bouncy: Like her mother in every respect. She is more child-like with even greater energy.
Type: Children's Theatre; One act Mime play (can be adapted for flexible cast that would include a classroom production.)Storyline: This is the life story of Charlie Chimes. We begin at his birth, go through childhood, high school and the workplace. Until he discovers his talent he is a poor soul of a man; one of life's losers.Originally conceived for Axis Mime Theatre and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
Concept: A young man who adores music but can neither sing nor play an instrument discovers a talent for conducting.
Setting: Various settings
Time: The fifties and sixties
Characters: Flexible cast
Length: 45 minutes.
Dramatis Personae:This is an ideal vehicle for a mime troupe. It was designed to be played with four mimes and an orchestra.Narrator
Baby Charlie
Mr. Chimes
Mrs. Chimes
The doctor
Charlie's first friend
The school children (8 - 20)
The soccer team
The school bully
The band Master
The band
The assembly line workers (3)
The music teacher: Miss Loretta Treble