←Recommendations of Seventh Inning Stretch (Ten Minute)

Poor Max. Probably should have at least broached the subject of marriage before popping the question on the jumbotron at a major league baseball game, huh? Enter Sis Brenda and Best Bud Stuart to help him move on from the humiliation. And even if there isn’t hope for romance, there’s always Pickle Ball. A fun short play by Paul Donnelly.

Sometimes that 15 minutes of Fame can be a real kick in the pants. Max had suffered a very public humiliation and his sister and best friend come to comfort him. Paul Donnelly paints a perfect pity party for Max.

It feels like we all have the potential to become unwilling stars of a future viral video. Poor Max just had to have one of the hardest days of his life be immortalized and shared. However, when best friend Stuart comes in with tough love, brilliant perspective and patient support, it's easy to see a good story can continue even after the viral video is over!

Oh poor Max, in trying to deliver the most perfect proposal, it's all gone horribly wrong. Bad enough in front of so many people, but worse still it's all over YouTube!
Thankfully Brenda and Stuart are there to pick him up and send him off to face the world, shoulders held high.
A fun play, at Max's expense, but I have a feeling he'll look back at this and laugh.... in time.

This play is a home run! Donnelly expertly fields this story of a marriage proposal "strikeout"! (I assure you, this script is far more impressive than my baseball puns.)

I loved so many things about this play! Despite the horrible moment that led up to where it starts, we, as an audience get to see the wonderfully supportive way that Brenda and Stuart try to pull their friend back from the decision of "never leaving the house again". Mixing that in with a look at how much social media has influenced our lives makes a fascinating commentary on our society. A proposal was once a private thing and now it gains 60,000 views and the world is entitled to an opinion. It's brilliantly constructed with fabulous witty dialogue!

All of us have those moment in our lives where we just want the world to end tomorrow instead of facing the embarrassing situation. I can't even begin to think why it must be like for Max or any of the social media bloopers that people make and these days. This play is so touching and shows that the gods did give us something that we definitely should be thankful for every day: resilience!

I love the sense of community rallying behind Donnelly's central character in Seventh Inning Stretch. This is a wonderful heartfelt short play that is well written and performance ready. Donnelly illustrates a keen sense of the many facets and nuances of humanity in his play. I find his exploration of what happens after an awkward proposal that goes sour to be clever, witty, and ever so endearing. Well done.

Failing in front of a crowd is never pleasant, but when it's about a major life decision, it's got to be mortifying. One of the things I like about this play is how it shows the lack of privacy one can have in today's world. Not just at a baseball game, but in the afterlife online -- Youtube, social media, and other online sites have the ability to make our pain and humiliation one Google away. The play is comic, but has big questions within it. Nothing to do but go on, I guess. But it's tough! Great play!

Quite fun with believable characters. I'm sure many of us can relate to Max, at one point or another. Shows how the world is changing, how we are living life under a media microscope in a connected world... Dating 2.0! This play creates a fun, memorable premise, that plays very true to our current times.