Steve Karp

Brought together by the fact of their parents’ scandalous marital history, a man and a woman "of a certain age" discover that their teenage romance has come full-circle. A “Dear-John” letter, which ended the original relationship, is the surprising catalyst for its regeneration. And though life during the intervening years has had its rewards for both of them, the events of the couple’s reunion suggest that the closest they may ever come to finding love is with each other.

Performed by two actors, the play is told in one act, comprised of three scenes, laced with an abundance of humor. It takes place in a cramped one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The apartment’s playing areas - living room, terrace, and bedroom - should be conceptually discernible by lighting and only the most minimal display of props and furniture. No walls or doors should be necessary, and modular pieces might even be preferable to real furniture.

The time is the present. Scene I: a late mid-summer afternoon; Scene II: that evening; Scene III: the following morning.

After workshopping the play at PlayFest/Santa Barbara (CA), and at the Phoenix Theatre Festival of American New Plays (AZ), and after a pre-Covid reading at the Penguin Rep (Stony Point, NY), the current draft reflects the revisions made before appreciative audiences at these venues. Curiously, even the younger folk found the play fun, funny, and moving. One possible explanation: the JURASSIC PARK phenomenon cannot be overlooked for stimulating an interest in dinosaurs.

Amidst the many deservedly young and multicultural voices that are happily making their way onto the American stage, WHEN WE WERE YOUNG is a reminder that the human heart, however well-traveled, may still beat with a passion to live and to love.

In late 1944, Allied forces were advancing steadily on Nazi Germany. Victory in Europe seemed inevitable. Only the last-minute deployment of an atomic bomb, which the Germans were known to be developing, gave the Allies any threatening reason to be concerned. The assignment of determining the bomb’s readiness would fall to a very unlikely candidate: a professional baseball player and veteran of 15 seasons in the Major Leagues – Morris “Moe” Berg. Berg was passionate about baseball, and despite his reserve status for most of his career, he had distinguished himself for being one of the best defensive catchers in the game. He was also unusually well-educated and Jewish, two ingredients not commonly associated with the professional baseball players of his day. Educated at Princeton, the Sorbonne, and Columbia Law School, Berg spoke at least a dozen languages, and when the newly created World War II intelligence agency – the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) – came looking for spies, Moe Berg was ready, willing, and eminently able.

While the play is inspired by the historical facts of Moe Berg’s life, the intimacies of Berg’s dramatic and diverse associations are all imagined, including his confrontation with Werner Heisenberg, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist and head of the Nazi atomic bomb program.

The play is told in two acts, on a bare stage, with a continuous series of scenes that utilize multiple, conceptualized locations, cross-fading lights, and a cast of colorful supporting characters that move directly from one scene into the next.

The play takes place over a period of approximately 20 years: from 1935 to the mid-1950s.

On September 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 people are murdered in the worst attack on American soil since the Civil War. The fear of additional terrorist attacks puts America in a state of nervous alert as the government works to secure its internal readiness, prepares for a military retaliation, and argues that the 9/11 attack could not have been anticipated.

Virtually unknown to the general public, is a small group of surviving 9/11 family members who tenaciously work to uncover the hidden facts of 9/11 and who relentlessly lobby their government for a national investigation into the 9/11 attack. With the loss of their loved ones as their driving motivation, and their passionate and often contentious interaction with government officials and with each other, this group becomes the principal catalyst for the establishment of the 9/11 Commission - The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States - and the landmark legislation that results from this Commission's recommendations.

THE FAMILY STEERING COMMITTEE is based on true events and historical fact. It is not a documentary, but a well-researched historical fiction. The play's eight (8) composite characters - six women, two men - are inspired by the real 9/11 Family Steering Committee members who courageously spoke truth-to-power, and who remain unsung heroes in one of America's most iconic tragedies.

The play is performed in Two Acts (112 pages), on a bare stage, with a continuous series of scenes that utilize multiple conceptualized locations, cross-fading lights, and characters that generally move directly from one scene into the next. Video projections (and non-video projections as deemed necessary), and the recorded voices of government officials in the public domain, are also relied upon to tell this story. The play takes place in various locations in the Northeast and Washington, DC.

In the course of researching the play, the playwright has curated and recorded many of the voices and video projections of government officials in the public domain, and of other unseen characters who appear in the play. These recordings are available upon demand.

FRATERNITY is about a college freshman named Sam Katz who is being rushed by a local chapter of a large, national, college fraternity – Delta Phi Delta – whose brotherhood is defiantly attempting to buck its fraternity’s own anti-Semitic traditions. The play depicts how Sam’s two WASP recruiters, upperclassmen Don Curtis and Larry Clinton, have put themselves in direct conflict with Delta Phi Delta’s venerable chapter adviser, Noel Richards, and the fraternity’s national organization, who are adamant in maintaining Delta Phi Delta’s “restrictive” status-quo.

As the conflict mounts, Sam’s identity as a Jew is called into question by his classmate and love-interest, Betsy Kay, who, herself, may have a problem with being Jewish, and by Sam’s Jewish roommate, Eddie Solomon, who decidedly does not.

And while the play’s dramatic center is clearly focused on the issue of discrimination, its broader and perhaps more inspiring appeal may lie in the play's cast of college students, who find themselves socially and politically engaged in an issue whose ramifications may extend far beyond their own campus.

FRATERNITY takes place in 1961, when America was discovering an energy that reflected the youthful vigor and idealism of the newly elected president, John F. Kennedy. Kennedy’s influence on the youth of America triggered an activism that inspired college students to believe they could make a difference. It was an exciting time because the country was changing, and because the changes that occurred would forever owe their incubation to the “college campus”, which served as a laboratory for challenging the status-quo and for questioning the efficacy of prevailing social, cultural, and political thought.

FRATERNITY is performed without intermission (80 minutes), with a continuous series of scenes that utilize multiple conceptualized locations, cross-fading lights, and characters that move directly from one scene into the next.

Fully imagined, FRATERNITY is inspired by real people and real events.

On the face of it, THE WAREHOUSE is about a family-owned, retail office equipment business forced by the pressure of competition to capitulate to a much larger corporate entity. Under the adage that "the big fish must swallow the little fish," the family business owner competes for survival using only the competitive advantages he has: his unique ability to service his customers, and a dream that his children will one day join him in his fight to stay in business.

But set entirely in the business's cluttered office equipment warehouse and performed by a diversified cast of six black and white characters, the play becomes an intimate and nuanced tale of a specific segment of the American workforce. Functioning as an independent character, the warehouse, itself, becomes a living laboratory for observing the division of labor that defines the social, economic, and business relationships that interact in this uniquely physical workplace.

The play is told with an abundance of humor, authenticity of behavior, and in language that is often vividly evocative.

NOTE: THE WAREHOUSE is radically restructured and revised from a production of 14 performances at Stamford Theatre Works (Stamford, CT) in 1992. The current draft is in development as a brand-new play.

Two women, patrons of a trendy beauty salon, mistakenly walk off with each each other's Christian Dior raincoat. In their increasingly irrational behavior to return the the coats to each other, the innocent beauty shop owner is mercilessly caught up in the dueling women's rage, the likes of which could easily set off World War III.

30 minutes

ONE-ACT FESTIVAL WINNER:
New York, NY;
Astoria Oregon
Newport, WA
Vancouver, Canada

An influential Alabama senator defends his little known condom manufacturing company from being put out of business by a powerful agency of the U.S. government.

25 minutes

ONE-ACT FESTIVAL WINNER:
St. Louis, MO
Buffalo, NY
Washington, DC

A female senator argues for legislation to increase bathroom stalls in the U.S. Senate.

30 minutes

ONE-ACT FESTIVAL WINNER:
Dubuque, IA
Pittsburg, PA
Charles Town, WV
Hopkinton, MA