Brian C Petti

In a futuristic Office of Absolution, a worker citizen attempts to receive forgiveness for an unnamed sin, but is unfulfilled with the bureaucratic ease with which it is granted.

Ophelia’s mother offers her dying advice to her too young to understand daughter.

Donna is the mother of a newborn girl. She is also a long-time heroin addict. When she loses her baby to Child Protective Services, she begins a harrowing journey through drug court, N/A meetings, and her own demons to earn back custody of her baby and try to reclaim control of her life.​

In FRUITLESS, a woman shows up to a dating app date to find her prospective partner is a rather quiet watermelon.

Echoes of Ireland is a series of four inter-related monologues that follow the saga of a single Irish family from County Cork in 1860 to present day New York City. Beginning five years after the end of the potato famine in Ireland, Echoes follows the Cunyngham clan through their journey across the ocean to the ports of Manhattan, through the lowly existence of immigrant life in the States, to the assimilation and rebirth of their family as American citizens who never forget from whence they came. The journey is part tragedy, part comedy, part history lesson and all undeniably human.

MONOLOGUE ONE (m), 40s+, Irish born Cork native, victim of the potato famine, at turns angry and heart-breakingly sad

MONOLOGUE TWO (f), 20s, Irish born immigrant to America, feisty, able, filled with life

MONOLOUGUE THREE (f), 40+, a hard-working 1970s New York woman of Irish descent

MONOLOGUE FOUR (m), late 40s, modern-day New York Irish fireman, funny, relatable, devoted to family

Available for licensing through Eldridge Plays & Publishing (http://www.histage.com/playdetails.asp?PID=2517.)

An aging actor uses a Yeats poem to express the limits of his art.

The play has two characters (any sex/age, but being cows they are technically female,) and runs about 10 minutes. It takes place in a holding pen for a slaughterhouse, where two stable-mates have differing reactions to their coming demise, and plot a dramatic escape.

The play takes place in an upper East Side Manhattan apartment, switching back and forth in time from the early 1990s to present day. The earlier scenes explore the relationship of Richard, a handsome, irresponsible actor in his 40s, and Rodney, an slightly older, attentive, well-off member of a theater's Board of Directors. The two are sometime partners, sometime roommates who share a tumultuous, unequal association, wherein Richard does not completely return Rodney's affections, yet finds himself frequently availing himself of Rodney's generosity. In the present-day scenes, some 25 years later, an older version of Rodney brings an older version Richard to his apartment to care for him in the end stages of Pancreatic cancer. The two have had no relationship to speak of for many years, and Richard is both perplexed and wary of Rodney's motives in fetching him from his Brooklyn apartment after all this time. As Richard's illness progresses, he has bouts of anger, amnesia and confusion, testing the limits of Rodney's devotion to him.

Taken together, LIKE DROWNING is a complex, detailed exploration of the nature of unrequited love from both the giver's and receiver's point of view, and the bonds of friendship and devotion that somehow manage to withstand turmoil and time.

The play takes place at a wake, during a conversation between old friends.

The Love Song of Sidney J. Stein follows the relationship of Sidney, a 45-year-old man who
works at an NYC half-way house, and Dennis, an 17-year-old streetwalker. Sidney is a snide,
funny and guarded former prostitute who tries to set Dennis straight, despite Dennis'
immaturity and indoctrination into the street life. They begin tenuously (and platonically) living
together, though Dennis is not quite willing to give up his past. Both end up bringing out
something in the other that is revealing and unexpected.
With humor and pathos, Love Song explores the struggle to truly connect with another human
being, and the role one's past has in dictating one's future.

Sidney (M, 40s): Snide, funny, guarded former prostitute, now working at a halfway house for
troubled teens. Someone who is used to not caring, but nevertheless does.

Dennis (M, late teens to early 20s): Immature but capable streetwalker. Thinks of himself as
a commodity and struggles to see himself as more.

All production rights are held by the author.

On the Expectation of White Christmases takes place in 1975 suburban New York from Christmas Eve through Christmas Day. It tells the story of Mary, an 11-year old girl who is waiting for her long estranged father to show up for a Christmas dinner reconciliation. Mary lives (quite uncomfortably) in her Irish grandparents' house with her mother Katherine. Her Nana, the unquestioned authority in her home, is decidedly against the prospect of hosting a dinner for the man who abandoned her daughter and pulls no punches in letting Mary know exactly what she thinks of him. Mary waits fruitlessly for her father's arrival with her promised bike, but dinner and the rest of the night go by. When the father finally appears drunk at 3 in the morning, the entire family is forced to confront very real Christmas ghosts.

With equal parts humor and pathos, On the Expectation of White Christmases explores the trials of familial love, hope and redemption. The work has had one regional production, at Columbia Greene Community College in Hudson, NY. Reviews call it: "The first play to focus on the life of the Irish in New York, (their) sad dysfunction and piercing humanity...a riveting theatrical experience."

The play follows Jerry Sullivan (Junior) as he tries to reestablish his life after time in a psychiatric hospital. Despite his domineering Irish-born mother Kit, Junior's policeman brother Neil sets him up with a new job and eventually with a new girlfriend. Kit, however, is convinced the newcomer is a "banshee", the mystical wailing Irish creature that foretells imminent death. Junior tries desperately to cling to his sanity while he questions his mother's motives, his new relationship and the possibility of truth behind the myth.

Banshee is part psychogical thriller, part family drama/comedy and part ghost story. With humor and pathos, Banshee explores the nature of familial relationships and the struggle to overcome one's personal demons.

Based on the structure of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death,” Masquerade takes place over six hours at an East Village, NY apartment in the mid-1990s. Different generations' attitudes toward AIDS collide when long-time companions Mario and Hersh decide to thrown a surprise "positive party" for their much younger friend Doug, who has just tested positive for HIV. With the message "I'm positive and proud" written on the cake, the guests arrive dressed as their favorite literary characters, from Tennessee Williams to Cervantes and Dante. However the party goes off the rails when Doug appears with his mother, who has no idea of his condition. What results is a near farcical effort by those present to hide the truth .

Eventually, things take a sharp and sobering turn as unspoken thoughts and emotions come to the surface. Through a mix of comedy and drama, Masquerade examines AIDS through the prism of differing generations, attitudes and understandings

The play traces moments in the life of the boxer Max Scmeling, whose epic fights with Joe Louis underscored the pre-war tensions between Germany and the United States. Long portrayed as a Nazi "show horse," Schmeling's actions and motivations are examined in the play, from his cooperation with, but refusal to join the Nazi party, to his insistence on keeping his Jewish-American manager, to an act of heroism during Kristallnact that saves two Jewish boys' lives. Schmeling's life after his boxing career is also explored, including his stint in the German Army as punishment from the Nazis and his reconciliation with Louis as an old man.

The play traces the memories and insights of an 81-year-old Holocaust survivor who is preparing a speech he must give about his experiences.He is led through moments of his life through ghosts of his past, moving from incidents in the Warsaw Ghetto to a family Seder in Lublin to a chance encounter in 1970s Brooklyn. Cumulatively, Next Year in Jerusalem is one man's search for meaning, understanding and spiritual truth in the aftermath of a life broken by uncontrollable forces. http://www.amazon.com/Next-Year-Jerusalem-Brian-Petti-ebook/dp/B0032JTW…, all rights held by author.

The play begins in the late 1890s with Bert Williams meeting his future vaudeville partner, the brash and cocky George Walker, on a San Francisco street. Walker hits upon the idea of “corking up”—patterning themselves after the white performers who use blackface and billing themselves as “A Couple of Real Coons.” The two work their way east, which takes them into the racist heart of the South where Williams first encounters the bigotry Walker, a Kansas native, has lived with his entire life. While Williams settles into his success befitting his calm, implacable demeanor, marrying his solid, longtime partner Lottie Thompson, Walker lives as fast and loose as the character he portrays onstage. Although he marries Ada Overton, a young, attractive up and coming star, he is frequently unfaithful, a situation that boils over on the night of the New York City race riot of 1900. Walker doesn’t heed Williams’ warnings about his personal life, and upbraids Williams for his lack of experience himself. The first act ends as we are told by Williams of Walker’s premature death of syphilis.

The second act begins with Williams in his new milieu, telling a story in blackface as a solo act for Zeigfeld’s Follies. Williams never identified himself with the black community that wanted him as their leader. Finding himself more isolated than ever, he is befriended by the cynical but loyal W.C. Fields. The Actors’ Strike of 1919 continues Williams’ downward spiral—although one of the most successful and well-known performers of his time, he is not told of the strike because he was never invited into the union, a fact that incenses Fields. David Belasco, the Broadway impresario, offers Williams a chance to do a dramatic role, and break free from the stereotype he had been playing for so many years. Faced with this opportunity, Williams cannot bring himself to grasp it. After his death he is left to wonder if he did anything to ennoble the character he portrayed, or did he just mock him?

Though not a "musical," bert williams is nobody does contain musical performance. All songs were originally performed and recorded by Bert Williams and are in the public domain. Sheet music can be sent upon request. All rights to the play are held by the author.