Liz Duffy Adams

An aging, unstable ruler, an oppressive police state, a restless polarized people seething with paranoia: it’s a dangerous time for poets. Two of them—the already great Kit Marlowe and the up-and-comer Will Shakespeare—meet in the back room of a pub to collaborate on a history play cycle, navigate the perils of art under a totalitarian regime, and flirt like young men with everything to lose. One of them may well be the death of the other.

A burnt-out coder has become a hermit in the wilderness, nursing a broken arm and making lists from memory—of endangered species, moments of Lost Time, Incorrect States of Mind—in company with her only friend, a gray fox with a bad attitude. When wild fires approach they flee through the wilderness to the sea, pursued by feckless would-be rescuers and threatened by a punk psychopomp. A climate-chaos comi-tragedy.

The neo-Restoration play Or, takes place (mostly) during one night in the life of Aphra Behn, poet, spy, and soon to be first professional female playwright. Sprung from debtors’ prison after a disastrous overseas mission, Aphra is desperate to get out of the spy trade. She has a shot at a production at one of only two London companies, if she can only finish her play by morning despite interruptions from sudden new love, actress Nell Gwynne; complicated royal love, King Charles II; and very dodgy ex-love, double-agent William Scott—who may be in on a plot to murder the king in the morning. Can Aphra save Charles’ life, win William a pardon, resist Nell’s charms, and launch her career, all in one night?

For acting editions or production rights, contact Dramatists Play Service.

Ten years after Abigail Williams, instigator of the witch trials, disappeared from Salem, she turns up at the frontier tavern of fellow witch-hunter Mercy Lewis. About to leave the colonies forever, it’s her last chance to understand the madness that overtook them. But with war threatening northern New England yet again, Mercy and her fellow townspeople are in no mood for Abigail’s doubts, which suggest to them complicity with the devil. And just when everything is at its most dangerously tense – the devil himself shows up.
NOTE: The play has been revised since the first two productions.

In pre-Revolutionary Paris, Madeleine, a girl fresh from the convent, is promised in marriage to an older nobleman to pay off her father’s debts. She flees to the literary salon of her late mother’s friends, aristocratic women who conceal radical politics within reinvented folk tales. When her promised husband shows up too, the women must use their wits to save Madeleine. But in the end, the maid Françoise is revealed as the real hero of a story they didn’t realize they were in.

Asterion, the half-bull Minotaur of Greek legend, is trapped in the labyrinth his sister Ariadne designed, alone except for the angry ghosts of the young sacrifices he has devoured. Now Ariadne and her borrowed hero, Theseus, are coming to kill him – unless he kills them instead. A play about the monster in us all.

Zetta Stone, a traveling performer, and her companion, Dog (a young man undergoing a voluntary species demotion), meet another couple of lost vaudevillians and join forces in their quest for an audience, stalked all the while through the post-apocalyptic wilderness by a pair of ferocious and hungry Lost Boys. A future-mythic comedy with music. For acting editions or production rights, contact Playscripts.com.

A shambolic, reclusive advice columnist known professionally as Dear Alien is under the gun. They have a deadline of yesterday for a collection of their columns; if they don’t turn it in they don’t get the advance, and they will be evicted from their apartment for non-payment of rent. On top of that, their editor is showing alarming signs of romantic interest, online trolls are threatening to doxx them, and the agonizing predictability of readers’ questions is driving them mad. In an attempt to create a passable manuscript, Dear Alien chooses seven unread letters at random and answers them, in a countdown to transcendent meaning or absolute despair. But before they can read the seventh letter, there is a knocking at the door, and Dear Alien has only time for the most fleeting last answer to us, their hapless human audience.

Four survivors of a storm-sunken pirate ship — the legendary Isabella, Neptune’s bastard daughter; pirates Jenny (a runaway whore) and Sally (an electrified girl); and the Viscountess Marlene, a drag queen — seize a half-wrecked ship manned only by Captain Joppa and two sailors, Jack the cabin boy and ex-slave Horatio. Joppa is determined to get back to the war. Isabella has other plans. Amidst time lurches, shifting loyalties, story-telling and sudden violence, hearts lost and secrets revealed, the seven souls find themselves without wind or current on a slowly sinking ship—until an unexpected event offers either hope or doom.

In a ruined mill town, two estranged sisters and their estranged mother get unstuck in time, roaming through the history of their town while a radio DJ talks all night and an Artist of the Criminal Class wreaks havoc. A interstitial fantasia about the past, present, and future of work and what we’re working for.

In this musical epic spanning centuries — from the ancient world to our near future — LuLu the God of Lies is banished from the celestial realm and makes her way among humans to plot revolution against her fellow gods. Meanwhile a young woman sets out to rescue her sister from the lustful god who has abducted her. Composer: David Rhodes

Generations after most of humanity has discarded a ruined Earth for a shiny new moon colony, the Listener spends her life alone with a sacred radio, calling out to hoped-for fellow survivors and harboring a vision for the future of Earth. Her fellow Junk City citizens have their own roles to play in a fragile, cobbled-together new culture—a culture threatened by the arrival of John, an emissary from the moon, who talks of rescue but is regarded as an alien demon. The Listener risks everything to help him, but not for mercy. Will John learn to listen? Will Listener hear? Will Junk City survive?

An alt-rock musical adaptation of THE LISTENER (also by Adams), with music by John Hodian. Generations after most of humanity has discarded a ruined Earth for a shiny new moon colony, the Listener spends her life alone with a sacred radio, calling out to hoped-for fellow survivors and harboring a vision for the future of Earth. Her fellow Junk City citizens have their own roles to play in a fragile, cobbled-together new culture—a culture threatened by the arrival of John, an emissary from the moon, who talks of rescue but is regarded as an alien demon. The Listener risks everything to help him, but not for mercy. Will John learn to listen? Will Listener hear? Will Junk City survive?

Late at night on a train hurtling towards infinity, eight strangers meet. A twelve-year-old with the powers of a comic book heroine manipulates time and the lives of a jaded Earth Goddess, an unraveling physicist, an Irishman fleeing predatory angels, a reluctant travel writer and three brothers from Ulyanovsk. While they ride, the destruction of the universe looms. A comi-threnody.

Train is available in a French translation by Adelaide Pralon, as Sa Charge Féroce Fatale Brutale, Ou Le Train. It had a staged reading in Paris at the Théatre des Bouffe du Nord in May 2014, as part of the Des Voix Festival.

French translation by Adelaide Pralon of Adams' "The Reckless Ruthless Brutal Charge Of It Or, The Train Play:"

Late at night on a train hurtling towards infinity, eight strangers meet. A twelve-year-old with the powers of a comic book heroine manipulates time and the lives of a jaded Earth Goddess, an unraveling physicist, an Irishman fleeing predatory angels, a reluctant travel writer and three brothers from Ulyanovsk. While they ride, the destruction of the universe looms. A comi-threnody.

Young Enid Arabella longs for adventure and an escape from her family’s anxious descent into poverty. She gets her chance when she is captured by a wicked pirate king and his crew of kidnapped child pirates. With too much spirit to submit to tyranny, Enid Arabella must summon all her courage and wits to defeat the pirate king, free her fellow captives, save her parents, institute a new democracy, and sail on to fresh adventures! With a brilliant score by Ellen Maddow inspired by sea shanties and world music.

Four late nights, five lost souls, one poodle gone Elvis. Above an after-hours club in an urban art slum, a painter loses control of her subject, a romance writer loses control of her heroine, an ESL teacher loses control of the to-be verb — and everybody learns the perils of living by formula. A rhapsodic comedy in one act.

A brief sequel to The Tempest, in which Ariel and Caliban, unable to embrace their freedom, squabble over Prospero's broken staff and take turns lording it over the other – until Miranda comes back, exiled once more.

A ten-minute verse play after Shakespeare: The ex-Amazon warrior Hippolyta, awake in the night after her wedding to King Theseus, is visited by her old friend and lover, Titania, queen of the Faery realm. Zoom and audio friendly. Published in in “Red Bull Shorts Volume I,” Red Bull Theatre & Steele Spring Stage Rights 2016.

Written for the centennial of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, QUAKED interweaves three women's experiences of that day: Cora fleeing with her sister in their best hats, Annie surviving as a small child and spending the decades afterward seeking that same thrill, Kate confessing her part in the Hayes Valley Fire. The play was commissioned for a Playground Center for New Plays benefit performance, and directed by Mark Routhier. Would readily work as audio or zoom play.

In this ten minute countdown to the end of the world, the oldest living Earthling is resisting mandatory evacuation. A science fiction elegy for everyone who'd rather go down with the ship.

A 1960s showgirl who was poisoned by government A-bomb testing in Nevada greets a young man who ended things after losing in Las Vegas, and shows him the ghostly ropes, in the company of slot-machine ghosts and the ghost of Elvis, in a short, bittersweet American fantasia. Written for the 2006 Humana Festival anthology play Neon Mirage and published by Playscripts Inc. in Humana Festival 2006: The Complete Plays.

A casino worker and a casino loser wake up together in Las Vegas and maybe change each other's lives, in this ten minute romance about rolling the dice.
Some Such Luck was written for the 2006 Humana Festival anthology play Neon Mirage and is published by Playscripts Inc. in Humana Festival 2006: The Complete Plays.

A satirical essay in the form of a short play about developmental talkbacks, featuring an unproduceably large cast, a twist or two, and verbatim dialogue from actual talkbacks about various plays.

Five people stumble into a remote house as dark sets in, and an Alien Prince sings a series of ballads describing their mission to colonize our world. Nothing is normal for any of them, much as they long for it. A horror play vibing off our ongoing existential crisis.