Cary Mazer

Shirley, the eldest survivor of her generation, in a family that operates a multigenerational business, is deeply concerned about the possibility that a stranger will manage to be buried in one of the many vacant spaces in the family cemetery plot. She is therefore pleased when her orphaned cousin (and adoptive daughter) Becca asks her to participate in the funeral of a distant relative with whom only Becca has corresponded.

One of them thinks they are all there for couple's counseling; another believes that they have been sent by their churches; the third's reason is more mysterious, and possibly dangerous. All they--and we--know is that they are asked to sit and play children's games, as they wonder whether they are each there to be deprogrammed or to be reprogrammed.

Cameron has Parkinson’s disease, and is beginning to worry about how his ailment might affect his creativity, his mobility, his retirement travel plans, and above all, his marriage. Alice is beginning to worry about the role in which she has been cast, as her husband’s “care partner.” Both Alice and Cameron are afraid that they might lose one another as they struggle not lose themselves. Whatever answers they find, they find in examining Shakespeare's sonnet #73

Lynn, a young theatre professor at a small college in 1983, loves teaching, and loves watching her students enter her life as 18-year-olds and leave as interesting , educated, creative artists. But what about Brendan, who doesn’t finish any papers, but says to wants to graduate? Is he just a con man ? Or is he tragically stuck in a Beckett-like universe? As the years (and years, and years) go by without Brendan getting any closer to finishing his degree, Lynn has the opportunity to alter her opinion, as they work on a play by Samuel Beckett together

By any stretch of the imagination, it’s only natural that Suzy, a literature professor, would be astonished when she learns that her evolutionary biology professor friend Annie has magical powers: whenever Annie describes an evolutionary adaptation, the person she's talking to starts acting it out. Soon Suzy must decide whether to stick her neck out and intervene when she sees the disturbing ways in which Annie is evolving, and she sees how their friend Doug, a religious studies professor, has had to adapt when Annie selects him to be the subject of her experiments.

Allie is falling in love with a mysterious stranger in her adult-ed classes, Deborah drops off 21 pre-cooked meals at her house-bound mother’s doorstep every week, and Maureen visits her mother at her senior living facility. Life is normal … or rather, it would be normal, were the world not in lockdown, and friends and family weren’t communicating with one another solely by Zoom. Willa, a therapist, and Leora, a palliative-care nurse, try to help their friends and patients; but, through “coming together by staying apart,” they all discover the power and the limitations of empathy, and the strain of living and loving and mourning only in their imaginations.

After her mother dies, Gillian, a Biology professor and research Immunologist, visits her brother to deal with the estate and to divide the family trust, of which they are co-trustees. The more she learns about the terms of the trust, the more she discovers about her own connections to the family business, and the profound effect her involvement has on her wife and on her professional life.

In a series of post-performance “talkbacks” after script-in-hand readings of his new play, Dan is confronted by audience members, moderators, and even his own artistic collaborators, over issues of ethnicity, race, disability, and the question of who is entitled to tell whose story. With each talkback, it becomes increasingly uncertain whether Dan really wants to tell the story he is so vehemently asserting his right to tell, or is actively trying to conceal it.

Long-time company-member Helena has been cast in the role of Helena in a summer Shakespeare company’s production of All’s Well that Ends Well, and newcomer Brad has been cast as Bertram. But there’s a problem: Helena (the actor) considers playing the self-effacing Helena an obstacle to her professional advancement, and identifies more with Bertram, who has newly come into his own and wants to make an impression in the French court and on the battlefield, than she does with Helena; and Brad is secretly in love with his fellow-actor Helena, and identifies more with the character Helena, who pines away with an impossible love for Bertram, than he does with Bertram When they discover that both of them identify with the other actor’s part, they decide to switch roles. With the help of their fellow actors, they have only a single day to prepare scenes and speeches to perform for the director when he returns Tuesday morning, in order to persuade him to cross-gender cast the entire production.

lIana, who came to her family by adoption, receives a letter from Stan, who believes that he might be her biological father. Meanwhile, Leigh, a journalist, is seized with the conviction that her husband Harris is a serial sexual harasser at his corporate workplace. As they learn what can be learned of the truth of their relationships present and past, they each discover how they deal with loss, what they are willing to risk for love, and whether or not they can live with the continuing gaps in their life stories. (The play is inspired by The Winter's Tale.)

Judith, the artistic director of a regional Shakespeare festival, is shocked when she hears that corporate funders have withdrawn their financial support for the New York Shakespeare Festival’s production of Julius Caesar because of the director’s decision to depict the title character as Donald Trump. Then she learns that local corporations have decided not to fund her production of the same play. As she is about to go into rehearsal, she begins to have doubts about the play, about the viability of political theatre, and about the effusive support offered by the chair of the board of directors, the managing director, and the company’s dramaturg, her long-time artistic collaborator.

In 1858 New Orleans, theatre manager and playwright George Washington Lazarus has two problems on his hands: an actor in his own company has chosen to play Shylock for his benefit performance; and his trial for first-degree murder begins the next day. Lazarus refuses to defend himself; but his wife and daughter may have other plans.

Leslie wants the township council to build a playground for their economically depressed American town, and two new friends offer to help: a lawyer for the council who has recently moved back from the city; and the entrepreneurial owner of a local wine shop with big plans. Which will Leslie choose and whom can Leslie trust, after lies are exposed, and her friends reveal their true characters? (N.B. The play is an allegory, an attempt to account for the outcome of the 2016 election.)

In 1817, a master puppeteer discovers that he has Parkinson's Disease, and, in a conversation with his own puppet of David Garrick, discovers that he understands how the disease works better than Dr. Parkinson, and learns how to make art in the face of no longer being able to make art.
(Adapted from the full-length two-actor play, A Puppeteer with the Palsy Performs Scenes from Shakespeare, or, The Ghost in the Machine, also available on npx.org)

Instead of his usual performance of his favorite scenes from Shakespeare, the master puppeteer, along with his troupe of inanimate thespians, shows us why and how he became a puppeteer. Then, for one night only, he puts on a performance unlike any he has given before.

While her country is emerging from colonialism, a young graduate student travels to Europe to study Shakespeare. Will she notice—after she returns to her homeland to become a professor—that the stakes are higher in the real world than in any of the literary theories she likes to lecture about?
(The politics of the play's setting will fit the race and ethnicity of the actor, which is open [non-white].)

Dan, a Jewish Shakespeare professor, never liked Shylock. Things were bad enough when he agreed to dramaturg a production of The Merchant of Venice. But then he started seeing Shylock in his bathroom mirror.

After Ibsen's Peer Gynt. A young Jew in an eastern European shtetl in the 1890s gets out of scrapes by telling traditional Jewish folktales and making himself the hero. After a dream-like encounter with various folk-tale demons, he flees the shtetl for America. His travels take him to interwar Palestine and finally to post-Holocaust Europe, where, in his effort to evade his own Jewish identity, he loses and ultimately rediscovers his self.