Rick Stemm

Rick Stemm

Playwright, game designer, Teaching Artist, and kungfu instructor, Rick mixes media, genres, art, and technology to create entertaining, spectacular, interactive art.

Plays

  • Coyote Ends the World by Rick Stemm
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    7–17
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    Genre: adaptation, adventure + 5 more
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    Keyword: mythology, feminist + 4 more
    Genre: adaptation, adventure, comedy, drama, fable/folktale, fantasy, young audiences
    Keyword: mythology, feminist, action, high school, teenagers, Trickster
    An adaptation of world myths, Coyote Ends the World recasts the old trickster god Coyote as his young apprentice, who must travel the multiverse as she learns to accept her role and fix her mistakes in this comedy adventure about dooming the world and, if there's time, saving it again.
  • Heroes Must Die by Rick Stemm
    Cast: 
    10–12
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    Genre: adventure, comedy + 3 more
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    Keyword: video games, multimedia + 5 more
    Genre: adventure, comedy, experimental, fantasy, young audiences
    Keyword: video games, multimedia, transmedia, heroes, audience engagement, Gamers, high school
    Experience the world of video games brought to life in the audience-interactive show Heroes Must Die! When player against player combat is introduced to their world, can heroes survive when they are turned against each other? Don't just find out, but control the action as a player of the game and see monsters, magic, and gameplay brought to life with incredible stagecraft. The sequel to the Heroes Must Die...
    Experience the world of video games brought to life in the audience-interactive show Heroes Must Die! When player against player combat is introduced to their world, can heroes survive when they are turned against each other? Don't just find out, but control the action as a player of the game and see monsters, magic, and gameplay brought to life with incredible stagecraft. The sequel to the Heroes Must Die video game, available now. Find out more and play the prequel video game at www.hmd-game.com.
  • Open Sesame by Rick Stemm
    Cast: 
    10–15
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    Genre: adaptation, adventure + 6 more
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    Keyword: fairy tale, sword fighting + 4 more
    Genre: adaptation, adventure, comedy, fable/folktale, fantasy, musical, pantomime, period
    Keyword: fairy tale, sword fighting, bollywood, Indian, action, Fantasy
    Can true love prevail over troublesome family, scheming villains, meddling gods, and dancing pirates? Open Sesame is a retelling of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves in the musical comedy form of pantomime. Set in beautiful India in a time when the world was small enough to find secrets around every corner, our story follows Ollie, a hopeful adventurer seeking his fortune with the East India Company. He stumbles...
    Can true love prevail over troublesome family, scheming villains, meddling gods, and dancing pirates? Open Sesame is a retelling of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves in the musical comedy form of pantomime. Set in beautiful India in a time when the world was small enough to find secrets around every corner, our story follows Ollie, a hopeful adventurer seeking his fortune with the East India Company. He stumbles across a vast treasure and uses it to woo his love while beset by greedy family and deadly foes. India provides more than just a backdrop for the story, infusing the musical numbers too. All song and dance are in the style of Bollywood, India’s most famous film industry. With fast, colorful Indian music and dance, flashy fight scenes, outrageous slapstick, mythical gods, and audience participation, Open Sesame fuses British, Indian, and American theater into non-stop fun. It's the amazing, musical, martial, colorful, audience-driven, Bollywood-style, anachronistic, fantasy adventure kung fu musical you've always been waiting for.

    Broke box-office records for San Antonio's perennial favorite theater and led to playwright being commissioned to produce a massive interactive work the Luminaria city arts festival.

    Contact playwright for full script.
  • You've Ruined a Perfectly Good Mystery! by Rick Stemm
    Cast: 
    8–12
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    Genre: adventure, comedy + 5 more
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    Keyword: audience engagement, Sherlock Holmes + 2 more
    Genre: adventure, comedy, experimental, mystery/thriller, parody/spoof, period, satire
    Keyword: audience engagement, Sherlock Holmes, Steampunk, choose your own adventure
    The world’s most famous investigator clashes with the world’s most preposterous narrator in You’ve Ruined a Perfectly Good Mystery! — a play that hilariously exploits and subverts theatrical conventions and classic detective stories. Audiences decide which clues the detective and his associate follow in a fantastic investigation that features entertaining combat, dastardly schemes inspired by Victorian-era...
    The world’s most famous investigator clashes with the world’s most preposterous narrator in You’ve Ruined a Perfectly Good Mystery! — a play that hilariously exploits and subverts theatrical conventions and classic detective stories. Audiences decide which clues the detective and his associate follow in a fantastic investigation that features entertaining combat, dastardly schemes inspired by Victorian-era science fiction, an increasingly vexed protagonist, and cultural references as diverse as Shakespeare and Arthur Conan Doyle, video games and kungfu movies. 24 possible paths through the show will have audiences returning each night.

    The world premiere of Ruined was September 2010 in Madison, Wisconsin, where it was the opening play for Mercury Players Theatre’s season and sold out every performance. In 2011 Ruined was part of the New York International Fringe Festival. Prior to that it had an encore run in Madison, which was voted #1 Favorite Theater Production in the annual Isthmus Madison’s Favorites poll.

    Learn more at http://ruinedmystery.com/

    co-written by Christian Neuhaus. Contact playwrights for full script
  • Hong Kong Action Blues by Rick Stemm
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    3–8
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    Genre: adaptation, adventure + 2 more
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    Keyword: Hamlet, Shakespeare + 2 more
    Genre: adaptation, adventure, comedy, parody/spoof
    Keyword: Hamlet, Shakespeare, kung-fu, 1970s
    The most action-packed, silly version of Hamlet ever produced, Hong Kong Action Blues was written in one night for the TheaterASAP 2011 24 hour theater festival. The audience favorite show wowed them with the exact plot of Hamlet done in 15 minutes as a 70s kungfu flick. Originally performed with three actors playing all roles. Perfect for students learning Shakespeare or making literally anybody laugh.