Ben Schroth

NOW AVAILABLE FROM NEXT STAGE PRESS.
NOW AVAILABLE FROM NEXT STAGE PRESS.
Holmes and Watson fight the greatest evil yet in this spooflicious comedy. Time travelers, a fictional giant lizard and a villain from drive-in movies challenge our deductive hero with evil seduction of every stripe. Watson helps as best he can but is distracted by the call of the wild in the form of both automaton seductresses and an unwillingly cross-dressed assistant. In the end, Holmes must face Godzilla and his own gooey inner demons to save the world from its farcical fate.

NOW AVAILABLE FROM NEXT STAGE PRESS.

"Very funny, wild assed comedy. I like it." -- Matt Lyle, Playwright.

NOW AVAILABLE FROM NEXT STAGE PRESS.

GANYMEDE, a space-age fairy tale, is the nostalgic story of two brothers—one abducted by space aliens and one left behind by the visitors. When the elder brother returns for a visit, his parent’s restful weekend is turned upside-down. Alien enforcers come to take the boy back and, if not for the assistance of a nosy neighbor in disguise, our hero would never find love and even more lamps would be destroyed by tropical fruit.

A family confronts some difficult news. But this family stays a family. As mom says, “family is more than relations. Make your own family.”

IF I AM GOOD takes its style from the hardboiled crime novels that influenced Film Noir. IF I AM GOOD translates this style for characters who had no voice in their own time.

In an era of stifling sexual repression, two men, both unhappy in their marriages, meet by coincidence on a train. An intense sexual encounter ensues. They arrange to meet as often as they can. The older man entices the younger man into a murderous plot to escape into freedom. The boy agrees but things rapidly crash downhill. Hidden relationships are revealed. A final despairing act finishes the young man’s first and last experience of love.

The Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation finalist 2013.
The Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation’s competition judges: “Nice melding…of hard-boiled 30s-40s noir with gay content.” “I like the theatricality and artificiality, at the same time I found it genuinely moving.”

OUR BREAKFAST -- Two old friends struggle to choose either an existential crisis for breakfast or to just stick with waffles. In the background, their waitress has to cope with a more urgent reality. Lots of laughs and giggles. Deep questions collide with pragmatism and bad food.

"Two dingy older ladies meet at greasy spoon for breakfast. Not since Seinfeld has there been a show in a diner as much about nothing as OUR BREAKFAST. Playwright Ben Schroth has created a...vignette that verges on heartbreaking brilliance…the show teeters on a fantastic post-modern precipice deconstructing small talk [and] friendship…" --- Theatre Jones www.theaterjones.com

"Ben Schroth takes the simple scenario of ironically flawed communication between friends, and makes it punchy, loopy, funny and melancholy, without missing a beat." -- Christopher Soden, Dallas Examiner

SECRETS OF MY PRISON HOUSE is a black comedy in the southern grotesque tradition--- a parody of Greek Tragedy. A family of obsessive psychopaths and hobbyists gather for their mother's funeral-- what they're really after is the family treasure. But Daddy won't give it up. The younger son shows up and brings a special visitor who turns things around. Or so it seems. All taboos included.
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SECRETS was nominated for the 2013 Steve Lovett Award for Best New Play by a Local Author.
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"A subversive, deranged, blissfully silly, tongue-in-cheek, pop culture farce… Secrets of My Prison House is a gratifying show, weaving mythology with religion and Southern White Trash depravity with homocentric enlightenment…The brilliance of Schroth’s comedy is his ability to create this dreadfully plausible Bizzaro World (to anyone from the Deep South) and suffuse it with deeper meaning." ---Christopher Soden, Examiner.Com
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"The play itself is a triumph for Schroth. One can only wonder what the inside of his head is like, to come up with something so brash and unapologetically crazy, able to birth a pleasing monstrosity such as this. The anarchic elements, the social commentary, and the grotesque satire combine to concoct an oddly pleasing trip that, like a drug, doesn’t last long enough and leaves the user itching for more." -- Kris Noteboom, Theatre Jones www.theaterjones.com

JIMMY PINE is a farcical tragedy-- a play about the comedy, tragedy and terror of being human in an inhuman world. It's hilarious. Our hero, Jimmy, is an artificial prostitute with a glitch-- he wants to be a real boy. Dystopian Pinocchio. Deep questions get comic answers and vice versa.Believe it or not, this is a play about love and innocence.

Camp Death Productions

Jimmy Pine --
A bleak, dystopian retelling of the classic Pinocchio tale, Camp Death, known for their late-night horror movie spoofs at the Pocket Sandwich Theatre, promise a production that is provocative, compelling and full of the off-beat, wicked sense of humor that has made Ben Schroth one of DFW’s most popular local playwrights.

JIMMY PINE -- bold, theatrical, fresh, retro-futurist Pinocchio. The cultural struggle going on right now around gender identification is the identity crisis of the decade-- this is Jimmy Pine’s story. Jimmy Pine is at once an innocent love story and a story with deep implications—a show with levels to appeal to the broadest range of audience.

RAVES:
"...the Tragical Farce of Jimmy Pine can shock, arouse, and might make some people uncomfortable, but it is no less a pertinent story of need and desire worthy of being told. Just be forewarned . . . and Walt Disney, close your eyes!" --Mary Clark, THE COLUMN.

"Savvy playwright Ben Schroth dives into the messy, painful, disturbing realm of sacrifice, trust and true love and refuses to blow sunshine. If the damned enjoyed comedy, this is what they’d see. Dark as total eclipse, dry as a fossil, sharp as a scalpel and sardonic as a sneer, The Tragical Farce of Jimmy Pine will rock your lame ass. " -- Sharpcritic.com

Tyler is not really a morning person. He usually doesn't say a word. But Tyler's mom is up early and on the attack. She's ready to set you right on life and death. It's best not to argue or she'll go on all morning—unless she has laundry to do.

"Whether it’s his cat, his father or laundry, the subject of loss and coping permeates every ambling word uttered... Schroth’s touch is absurd yet subtle in creating a fascinating character in a mundane situation...
Ultimately, the piece is a brilliant study in the mundanity of middle class American life; the repetition, the oft-recited script that doesn’t actually require an audience, and the boredom that masks the underlying complexity. Like life itself sometimes, it’s a little unsettling and yet absurdly funny at the same time."--- Kris Noteboom, Theatre Jones www.theaterjones.com

Holmes must save the world from a new ice age! But--will love interfere? Can the world's greatest detective be destroyed by a mere woman?! Watch in horror as farce destroys causality and reality unzips to expose the truth!

SHERLOCK HOLMES ON ICE premiered in September of 2014 at the Pocket Sandwich Theatre in Dallas, Tx.

SHERLOCK HOLMES ON ICE was nominated for the 2015 Steve Lovett award for best new script by a local author.

"A sly, coy, spoof, laced with current topics and colloquialisms, peppered with allusions to the B-Grade Cinema Canon...and chock full of spectacularly preposterous episodes... Sherlock Holmes on Ice is amusing, ticklish, pleasure. Schroth sends up many pop culture movie cliches, but does so with more finesse and restraint than we usually associate with mockery." --- Christopher Soden, Examiner.com

LITTLE RED is a fable for grownups. A boy prostitute relives the Little Red Riding Hood tale. All told from the viewpoint of the Big Bad Wolf. A playfully bitter look at some of the myths of gayness and of being human.

The classic characters of world literature confront the poetry of whores.

"If you enjoy tawdry, raunchy, erudite, merciless comedy that's sharp as a scalpel and actually treats you like a grownup, go see the staged reading of Ben Schroth's LITTLE RED at FRESH READS" -- Christopher Soden, Sharp Critic.

Stylistically sophisticated and yet as bold and entertaining as a circus.

Turns the epic style upside down – a parody in the form of a Brechtian epic but without political or class solutions – instead—LITTLE RED celebrates the melodramatic passions of intense archetypical struggles. With dirty jokes.

THE CHICKEN INCIDENT is a grown-up version of the Henny Penny tale. Truth is dead, nothing can be trusted and the sky is falling-- Henny Penny's very bad day begins. She and her friends take a walk through the intellectual chaos of our times. Funny, scary, witty.
HILARIOUS SOPHISTICATED COMEDY! An ultimately sad journey to the edge of the pit—but something survives. Something makes the journey worthwhile.

A bold new American English Adaptation of Julius West’s translation of the Chekhov classic by Ben Schroth.

A new American English translation that is true to the original AND immediately playable-- not weighted with scholarship but fresh and vigorous-- Chekhov that doesn't sound British or needlessly old fashioned. This is a text that utilizes consistent modern punctuation that actors will recognize and use to inform their choices. This sounds like spontaneous American English. In this translation, the language becomes transparent thus the drama becomes luminous. A great play reborn.

" – the reality of life slipping away, of the dissolving process. They are sad clowns, redeemed only by being fully felt as people, and not the comic icons they are always threatening to become – failed shamans, whose magic does not work though it has cost them everything to perform." --- Michael Goldman on Chekhov's masterpiece, CHERRY ORCHARD.

RAVES:
"Ben Schroth's colloquial adaptation of Julian West's translation gives an easy, musical feel to the language, with American expressions and Americanized names. It fits into the mission of the company, which is producing classic plays of the 19th and 20th centuries with the aim of making them "alive" for contemporary audiences..." -- DALLAS MORNING NEWS

"Many translations tend towards academic turgidity. Schroth’s adaptation strips away much of the florid nonsense. " -- Alexandra Bonifield, Critical Rant

A new adaptation. New American English translation of a rarely performed masterpiece of World Theatre.

This sounds like spontaneous American English. In this translation, the language becomes transparent and the drama becomes luminous. A great play reborn.

Clear Beautiful American English. Practical dimensions. AUTHENTIC GOETHE!

A deal with the devil propels Faust through a disastrous love affair and into the world of ideas. Striving is all. Self-awareness is the final redemption.

"...the work remains a resonant parable on scientific learning and religion, passion and seduction, independence and love, as well as other subjects. In poetic terms, Goethe places science and power in the context of a morally interested metaphysics. Faust is a scientific empiricist who is forced to confront questions of good and evil, God and the devil, sexuality and mortality." -- Wikki

A bold new American English Adaptation of Marion Fell’s translation of the Chekhov classic by Ben Schroth.

A new American English translation that is true to the original AND immediately playable-- not weighted with scholarship but fresh and vigorous-- Chekhov that doesn't sound British or needlessly old fashioned. This is a text that utilizes consistent modern punctuation that actors will recognize and use to inform their choices. This sounds like spontaneous American English. In this translation, the language becomes transparent thus the drama becomes luminous. A great play reborn.

"Chekhov's natural manner, however, isn't the same thing as naturalism. There's a compositional fluidity to the playwriting. Verisimilitude is enlivened with spry theatricality. The artist's invisible hand is always at work, bringing the various elements of the stage picture into conversation, varying the tone so that scenes don't become airless or too heavy and relaxing the strictures so that characters can give voice to their inner thoughts, however scattered or self-deluding."
Charles McNulty --- On Uncle Vanya, LA Times