Eric Pfeffinger

Madelyn and Keenan are NPR-listening, latte-sipping blue-staters who are planning a family. Or they were, anyway, until the fertility clinic screwed up and accidentally implanted their fertilized embryo in another uterus — a uterus belonging to a small-government churchgoing NRA cardholder. Can these ideologically hostile couples make it together through nine months of gestation without killing each other?

It's weird when city girl Sienna gets a cryptic phone call about the untimely deaths of some distant family members in small-town Blissfield, Indiana. Weirder yet is the way they expect her to deliver eulogies for relatives she's never met. But weirdest of all: Sienna goes there. Maybe she's hoping for a big inheritance. Maybe she just really needs to get away from her dead-end life in Chicago. But what she never expected was the tumultuous and rewarding relationship that she develops with Millie, the peculiarly sunny employee of the Blissfield funeral home.

TEN-MINUTE: One office suite. Two unnatural fiends. Because even monsters have meetings, and these taxes aren't going to file themselves.

Produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville as part of the Humana Festival of New American Plays, 2017.

Published in THE BEST TEN-MINUTE PLAYS 2018 and HUMANA FESTIVAL 2017.

TEN-MINUTE: Susan's trying as hard as she can to have fun at her class reunion, which she's attending with her husband and her baby. Her tiny baby. Her really, really, really really tiny baby. Are all these people judging the size of her tiny baby?

TEN-MINUTE: When Dan was a kid, he drew fantastical comics about himself and his peers-- most notably his crush, Kelli. Now they're grownups, and they seem to be inside one of Dan's old comics, and it's all really weird but Kelli has got things she's got to do.

A lot has happened in the ten years since Amy, Paul and Richard were in grad school together. Amy and Paul got married and became academics; Richard also found a wife, a new job selling Christian merchandise, and a new life serving God. So Amy's not really looking forward to spending an awkward weekend at Richard's house. Will Richard's born-again wife object to Amy's feminism? Will Amy and Paul's daughter get brainwashed by their God-fearing hosts? And can Amy keep herself from cursing for forty-eight hours?
And things just get worse when the world ends.
It turns out that Amy and Paul's visit happens to coincide with the night of the apocalypse, and thanks to a scriptural loophole they've been swept along with the saved. Worldly cities are destroyed, fire rains from the skies, lifelong friendships are tested, awkward silences are endured. Hilarity ensues.
Thrust together into the kingdom of God, the couples grapple with some big questions. Is there any room for overlap between Christian fundamentalists and liberal humanists, between red-state and blue-state America? Can friends stay friends when they share everything in common except for the pesky matter of an underlying belief system? Is eternal life and knowledge of God's love everything it's cracked up to be? And what happens to a person's faith when it's proven right?

The long-suffering Ghost of Christmas Future is trying her damnedest to reform her latest old miser -- hey, it's a living -- but technological glitches, staff incompetence and Scrooge's particular brand of stubbornness all keep working against her.

Middle-aged divorcé Garrett has been out of the dating pool for a long time, and his best friend Quinn thinks it's past time for him to wade back in. The problem is that he's vastly less sexually adventurous than Rachel, the stand-up comedian he's wooing. Can Garrett graduate from Quinn's personal Kinsey Institute crash course before Rachel loses interest? A romantic comedy about identity, twenty-first century values, and vanity license plates.

TEN-MINUTE: Girl meets boy, boy is marked for death, girl confronts Death and is all like "What's the deal?" -- y'know, that old story.

TEN-MINUTE: As an investment banker, Scott achieved internet fame for penning a smug manifesto defending the skills and adaptability of high-finance yahoos. Then his employer collapsed. Now he's a substitute teacher struggling mightily to convince his young charges of his importance.

TEN-MINUTE: There's nothing more relaxing than spending an afternoon at the museum looking at historical artifacts. Or looted plunder. Tomayto, tomahto.

ONE-MINUTE: The preborn detectives working the illegal-abortion beat on "Law and Order: Zygotic Crimes Unit" are as tough as they are nonviable.

TEN-MINUTE: Daedalus never expected to get caught up in a royal couple's sordid love triangle. He especially didn't expect the triangle to include a fake wooden cow.

TEN-MINUTE: Two shepherds tending their flocks are about to receive an annunciation from a heavenly figure. Unless they can screw it up.

TEN-MINUTE: The boss wants to talk to the worker about that thing they made. And the next thing they're going to make. And about a lot of things, really, but not so much about money. Because this isn't really about money.

TEN-MINUTE: Officemates Thao and Daryl love coming to work every day: they waste time, they goof around, they indulge in shared racial jokes which are okay because they're knowing and ironic about it and because Thao -- well, she's allowed, you know? That all makes it okay, right? Until a third coworker is added to their work cluster and the whole dynamic goes to hell.

ONE-MINUTE: If only Dr. Heimlich were here. Oh wait, he is.

TEN-MINUTE: The government announces an exciting new program to achieve reparations for past injustices by assigning Black citizens a white slave for a year. It will fix racism and nothing could possibly go wrong.

ONE-MINUTE: Some cities get to have the most brewpubs or whatever. Oh, well.

IN DEVELOPMENT: Griselda has never thought very much about color in general, or pink in particular—something she got from her mom, whose indifference to color borders on sublimated hostility. But when her new pink shoes catch the eye of Pinky, a girl at school, Griselda gets swept up in an all-encompassing, evangelistic pro-pink movement she never knew existed. The validation she gets from Pinky is dizzying and intoxicating, but by the time Griselda is attending a pink reeducation camp and rejecting perfectly thoughtful gifts because they’re the wrong hue, she finds she needs to make a choice: join Pinky in drowning the world in pink? Join her mother in dismissing all things colorful? Or carve out a new middle path just for herself?

Bill is a passive, unreflective middle-management guy who travels the world for his employer but never leaves his hotel. Until, one night in Phnom Penh, he does, and stumbles into a room full of underage sex slaves. Inspired to do something selfless for the first time ever, he decides to liberate one young prostitute from her life of misery by purchasing her. But it’s hard to attend to your business trip when you're the owner of a new child prostitute, and there’s no line item on the expense account for that kind of thing, and it all gets really aggravating when she keeps not doing what you tell her.
SOME OTHER KIND OF PERSON is an unlikely comedy about the commodification of humans and Americans’ misguided stabs at charity abroad.

ONE-MINUTE: Nothing's simple anymore. Not even ordering water in a restaurant.

IN DEVELOPMENT: The outrageously wealthy Missy Vanderveer is nominated to be U.S. Secretary of Education, and because of the controversy surrounding her lack of qualifications and overall out-of-touchness she decides to bring a salt-of-the-earth working-class character witness to the hearings. Ana Sofia, the hotel housekeeper she just met, seems like she'd do just fine. Little do either of them know that this impulsive partnership will lead to the most dramatic confirmation hearing in Senate history, and possibly — if things really go sideways — the violent end of the republic.

Nothing could tear Beth and Greg's marriage apart, except this miscarriage. Yeah, seems like this is maybe definitely going to do it.
A youngish couple is rocked when their long-awaited pregnancy is derailed. In the play that briskly follows, their marriage fractures under the weight of grief. Beth's inclined to dwell on their loss; Greg wants to pretend it never happened. (Beth's also starting to talk in nonsense syllables, and Greg seems to have impure purposes for the maternity catalogs flooding their mailbox. So they've got a lot going on.) Each finds solace in an unlikely confidant: Beth connects with their nurse, an evangelical Christian who's increasingly convinced that Beth is gifted by God; and Greg pursues his wishful infatuation with their very pregnant obstetrician, who in her spare time is also a Holocaust denier.
Taking place over the course of one short week, I AM GONNA MAKE IT THROUGH THIS YEAR takes a comic and character-centered approach to dramatizing four different approaches to the problem of suffering.

TEN-MINUTE: Lackey and Gofer are just a coupla working stiffs waiting for their guy to arrive, gossiping about their vile scoundrel of a king, who really does have a pretty good tax plan.

TEN-MINUTE: Aidan's a good boy, really he is. But he's so much better when he's threatened with consequences from Santa Claus and other fantastical creations.

Produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville in 2010.

ONE-ACT: Trudy's mother is in hospice. This could be a chance for them to reconcile and find closure on some of their lifelong conflicts. Or alternately I guess they could do something else.

TEN-MINUTE: High school was so long ago, and we were so free, and there were no consequences, and remember that one time with the empty house?

TEN-MINUTE: A man with a business proposal arrives at the door of Charles Dickens, and together they decide to pretty much invent Christmas.

The Washington Post called it "funny," "foulmouthed," "invigorating" and "off-center."

ONE-ACT: Just a quick email to tell everyone about the coffee cake in the break room and also btw the rest of your day is ruined. Best, Jim.

ONE-MINUTE: For all the miseries inflicted on the world by the COVID-19 pandemic, its one grace note has been giving some artists time to work on their art. Which is a gift. Kind of a way that big wooden horse from the Greeks was a gift.

TEN-MINUTE: It ain't easy being a mall Santa. Especially when there's an angry mob on an anti-socialism kick.

TEN-MINUTE: During a pandemic tempers can fray, even over little things like trash day or time folding in on itself.

ONE-MINUTE: What's in a name? Well, when you're naming a virus, sometimes -- racism?

Written in reaction to the One-Minute Play Festival's call for plays responding to the coronavirus pandemic.

TEN-MINUTE: The war on Christmas wasn't all mistletoe and gingerbread. A grizzled veteran of those merry Yuletide trenches tells his grandkid what life on the front lines was really like.

TEN MINUTES: Jenna used to date Craig. For some reason. Anyway, he left his mark on Jenna in unexpected
ways. A play about several years in ten minutes.

IN DEVELOPMENT: Savi, Bindi, and Zadie are figures from global folklore who fight crime and save the world together. Like Charlie's Angels, but more empowery. And their latest mission threatens to rupture the very fabric of their reality.

TEN-MINUTE: Seth is one of the 99%, a political activist who wants to highlight economic inequality. But that’s easier said than done when it’s the 17th century, your fellow insurgents are running late and the economic elites all have pointy swords. The Occupier’s Tragedy is a Jacobean comedy of good intentions thwarted.

TEN-MINUTE: It's 2019. The Trump White House has commissioned a team of theater artists to fashion a stage play out of leaked text messages between the president's enemies. And everyone's talking like Noel Coward characters for some reason.

TEN-MINUTE: Before we discuss terminating your pregnancy, there are just a few new government rules we need to go over.

TEN-MINUTE: Thanks to the magic of dating apps, Narcissus may finally have made a love connection: someone who's smart and sexy and very very familiar.

TEN-MINUTE: In fair Verona, Ramona and Juliet visit the apothecary to secure some potions, fatal and not-quite, as part of a scheme to retaliate against the local bakers and florists who refuse to supply a same-sex wedding. It's not a great plan, really, but they're young.

TEN-MINUTE: Margot's an editor at a big publishing company who could use a career boost. So when the slick literary agent Nate walks in with a new client hawking a bold new novel about 9/11, it could be the start of a new chapter. Or it could be the end of everything.

2 Women, 14 Characters, 11 Taboos, and several dozen laughs you’ll feel guilty about tomorrow. This comic tour de force for two performers was the best-attended show at the Indianapolis Fringe Festival and an award-winner at the Midtown International Theatre Festival.

"If comedy shows had encores, I’d still be at the theater.”
— Indiana Business Journal

“Assholes was funny. But, more than that, it was smart. Like really smart."
— Cincinnati CityBeat

Reconnecting with a dark man of mystery at a class reunion seems like a romantic way to
add excitement and companionship to one's life. But if that man is very possibly a fugitive
abortion-clinic bomber who didn't even go to your high school in the first place—well, let's just
say it's possible Kathy's not making the best choices at this particular point in her life.

Kathy—frustrated ex-dancer, lonely cafeteria manager, and desperate ray of sunshine—
assumes her new beau isn't a domestic terrorist but a struggling artist. Tomayto, tomahto. Her
new best friend Melinda has her suspicions but is preoccupied with winning the attention of her
own husband James, a beleaguered federal agent who's spent three years in the Carolina woods
searching for the bomber and has recently formally declared war on God.

Haunted by the enlightened brutality of anti-slavery terrorist John Brown, HUNTING
HIGH explores the obligations of belief, the banality of evil as a blank canvas for
wishful fantasies, and the bizarre ease with which political violence can start to seem like a valid
lifestyle choice.

A play for young audiences. Unusual things don't usually happen at Price Mart, but at this Mega Price Mart a mega-unusual thing happened once: a little girl was born. Or left. Or got lost in the aisles and her parents never found her. Whatever it was that happened, it was her destiny to be discovered between Truck Mirrors and Oil Filters by some Price Mart associates. They name her Pryce and raise her. Her first word is "affordable."

It's a good life at Price Mart, all things considered: clean, well-lit. But her discovery one day that there's a place called Lost and Found all the way on the other side of the store sparks restlessness and curiosity about where she came from. What follows is an epic journey of hilarious proportions. Armed with only her wits and a celebrity magazine, will Pryce manage to evade dangerous pitfalls like the Demanding Shopper and the Neverending Line? And even if she does find the Lost and Found counter, will she ever uncover the truth about her real family?

A comic and contemporary myth set in the recognizable world of changing rooms, free samples, and incandescent lights that never turn off, Lost and Foundling is a modern retail fairy tale about growing up, self-reliance, and big big savings.

This play is licensed by Dramatic Publishing. More information here: http://www.dramaticpublishing.com/p1823/Lost-and-Foundling/product_info…

A play for young audiences. Johnny, the great-great-great-great-grandson of American folk legend John Henry, is an email-addicted, text-messaging, video-gaming technophile. He’s also, though he would never admit it, a little lonely. So it seems like a stroke of luck when, the night before parents’ day at school, Johnny’s great-great-great-great-grandfather magically shows up at the front door. But is it? Being a steel-drivin’ man isn’t as useful or as cool as it used to be, and no one likes a guy who’d rather smash a video game with his hammer than play it.

Commissioned by HowlRound, these three short plays offer tonally diverse snapshots of contemporary rust belt life in northwest Ohio.

In "Deal," a woman helps her husband practice to apply for a casino job he's never going to get.

In "Ditch," beleaguered Toledo barely puts up with his troubled bromance with his even more beleaguered neighbor Detroit.

And in the semi-poetic "Divide," library patrons are sick to death of internet captchas and they're not going to take it any more. Except they probably are going to continue to take it, because what are you gonna do.

The Here and Now plays are licensed by Indie Theater Now. https://www.indietheaternow.com/Playwright/eric-pfeffinger

All her life, Carla has kept neighbors at arm's length—especially now that her neighbors include the boorish white family next door. But now their little girl Eva has an inoperable brain tumor, and Carla increasingly finds herself sucked into their daily lives—hosting grim birthday parties, running disastrous errands, weathering egregious insults. Everyone else in the neighborhood is attracted to the seductive power of someone else's grief; only Carla wants to extricate herself from it. The clock's ticking down as Carla has to decide whether or not to play a central role at a ceremonial celebration of the little girl's life. What do parents who are losing everything have the right to demand from Carla, and what will it cost her to give them what they want?
As the neighborly relationship grows more twisted and compromising through a series of celebrity visits, blind dates, racial slurs and adulterous come-ons, it comes to expose—through awkward comedy and moments of naked ugliness—the prejudices that churn beneath the comforting lies everyone tells one another about race, class, and death.