Winner of a Rolling Premiere from the National New Play Network

PUBLISHED BY PLAYSCRIPTS!

In Shakespeare's day, men played the women's roles. In this new comedy, women play all the men's roles. It's the story of Jessica, an actress who has been cast to play Hamlet in New York. After accidentally interrupting a performance of Hamlet starring Patrick Stewart, Jessica thinks Mr. Stewart is stalking her; she also faces an uphill battle through a maze of self-important humanities professors, Freudian psychiatrists, and a Danish mother only to discover she doesn’t understand Hamlet, or herself. The search for identity is the theme as Jessica takes on her emotional baggage and an existential overload, as well as her self-doubt and disdain for Danish fondue. In the end she takes the stage and finds herself.

"This wickedly clever new play from William Missouri Downs, dubbed 'a comedy about a tragedy,' uses an all-woman cast to explore questions of courage and conscience in a modern setting, managing to both spoof Shakespeare and pay homage to him in a two-hour show that moves like lightning." - The Patriot News Harrisburg

"With the colorful script and vivid characters Women Playing Hamlet is a slam dunk..." - Kansas City Examiner

"What's amazing lies in the script where Downs dissects Hamlet's intricate character and puts all aspects of Hamlet's persona in Jessica's challenge to scale the ladder to play the part." - Kansas City Examiner

"A rollicking satire jabbing shallow pop culture, overly reverential attitudes toward literature and the intensive navel-gazing shared by actors." - Florida Theatre On Stage

"Silly, profound and ultimately moving" - Florida Theatre On Stage

"Downs's script has... theater history and some of the eternal questions about playing Hamlet woven into its fabric, along with funny and sobering truths about the actor's life." - Miami Herald

Winner of a Rolling Premiere from the National New Play Network.

PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL FRENCH

Untenured professor Dr. Dick Fig has found that a Ph.D. on Bertolt Brecht isn't worth much – He's being pink-slipped. The last thing he needs to do before he hits the slow-moving unemployment line is attending the University's required exit interview. Eunice, the interviewer, is not a good match for Dick; she finds comfort in self-help books like The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, while Dick hates small talk and is a vocal freethinker.

When a despondent student begins shooting up Ronald Reagan Hall (next door to the action), Dick and Eunice are forced to take cover as they confront the great existential questions of life: What is its meaning? What is the relationship between religion and science? And why does God hate amputees? (Dick had his foot amputated in a tragic moose accident – it was reattached).

The Exit interview is not realism - A chorus of actors play nearly two dozen roles that interrupt the main action to tell the story of Dick's failed relationships, his fallout with small-minded people, and his relationship with the moose. When things get too intense, the chorus stops the play's action to stage commercial interruptions and ten-minute plays with other storylines to remind the audience that they are in a theatre and need to keep thinking.

"The Exit Interview" may be one of the most up-front, honest plays you ever sit down to watch. – The Salt Lake Tribune

"Bertolt Brecht would be proud." - Orlando Sentinel.

"A gleefully boundary-flouting riff on religion, piety and the limits of belief" - San Diego Union-Tribune

Narrated by the iconic children’s show host, Mr. Rogers, American Terminator is a comedy about how smartphones, Facebook, and selfies have changed reality. In this world full of multitasking, I-phone junkies, and algorithms controlling our worldview, how do we know what is real or who we are? The story centers on a couple who post an abusive review about a play on YouTube. With more than a million hits, their antics go viral. So, the playwright searches them out, holds them hostage, and forces them to mono-task by having a face-to-face conversation without any smart devices. Soon this comedy spirals into itself as Mr. Rogers is replaced by Mr. Google and a new world full of deep-fake photos and fake news.

PUBLISHED BY HEUER PUBLISHING

Seagulls In A Cherry Tree is a Chekhovian comedy about Boris and Stan, two Hollywood screenwriters who have been hired by Disney to adapt Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard into a new movie for Mel Gibson. The trek to an isolated Arts Colony just outside Moscow, Idaho, to finish the stalled adaptation and get away from L.A.'s smog. The colony is full of navel-gazing, self-indulgent, philosophizing, chronically indecisive Chekhovian artists, actress, and doctors.

All plot points in Seagulls In A Cherry come from Chekhov's plays (The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, and The Seagull), plus a touch of invention, all of which have been rearranged and shaped to form the first new Chekhov play in a hundred years. In the end, Stan and Boris (just like many Americans today) never realize that they are, in fact living in a Chekhovian world.

A NEW HOLIDAY COMEDY

It’s Christmas, that wonderful time of year when families deck the halls, don their gay apparel, and pretend they don’t hate each other. College student Loretta hasn’t been home in two years because she has nothing in common with her blue-collar parents. When she left to attend Harvard, she thought she’d never return, but then she fell in love with a cultivated Cambridge law student, and he wants to meet her parents.

The difference between Loretta’s law student and her parents couldn’t be more profound. He loves yachting, while her parents never let her near water - growing up, Loretta’s mother told her chlorine caused skepticism. He reads Tennyson, while her parents read Jonathan Livingston Seagull - not the book, the Cliffs Notes.

How to Survive Your Family At Christmas is a crowd-pleasing comedy about family, love, and the one thing we all need to survive the holidays, forgiveness.

PUBLISHED BY PLAYSCRIPTS

MR. PERFECT is not what you expect in a love story. It is a romantic comedy about a quirky flight attendant who is a romance novel junkie. When she meets Mr. Perfect, she attempts to make love with him in the bathroom of an Airbus 32,000 feet over Dayton, Ohio. When it doesn't work out, she sets out on a personal search to find the purpose of life by connecting the random chance events that make up existence.

Her search leads her to find solace in the arms of a Ph.D. student whose thesis is about human beings' feeble attempt to find meaning where no meaning exists. Mr. Perfect finds comfort in the arms of a nationally known self-help guru and author of such famous books as Ten Days to Self-Esteem and On a Wing and a Prayer: A Twelve-Step Crash Course on Conquering Your Fear of Flying.

But when the self-help guru goes down on an airliner and the Ph.D. is charged with plagiarism, the lovers by chance find each other again and set out to create their own through-line, narrative, and meaning.

Now a full-length play, the original one-act version was produced at the New York City Fringe Festival a few years ago. The play was canceled after one performance when Hurricane Irene hit, but the short version did get one review from New York Theatre.com, "Hysterical! If you're going to see a play as a sort of escape, you will get more than you bargained for here."

"...Downs flexes his considerable wit in asking if our ability to live in the present has been quashed by our need for familiar outcomes. If that sounds like a lot to get your mind around, fear not, for Downs brings this down to earth in the person of Zooey, an audio-book junkie who wants her life to be the incarnation of her favorite taped stories." - Denver Post.

"Probably the wittiest new play in the last few seasons; Mr. Perfect is also very wise. In this case, Mr. Downs' laser-sharp pen skewers our need to have lives reflective of the romantic visions of authors of the past who floridly illustrate the way relationships should begin love at the first page and end happily ever after." - Colorado Critic Corner

"Hysterical! If you're going to see a play as a sort of escape, you will get more than you bargained for here." - nytheatre.com

You Can't Say That is a comedy about the labels we attach to each other as if those labels capture the sum total of who they or we are.

The story centers around Chris, a white newly hired adjunct professor in a diverse English department, who is assigned Dorothy, a transwoman, as his TA. Chris attempts to act 'woke," but his ultra-conservative childhood haunts him. The University's poorly produced diversity and inclusion training webinar "You Can't Say That" only complicates things. The department decides that all faculty and students are to wear name tags that label their personal nouns and pronouns. But Chris doesn't know who he is or which labels define him. He's trapped in a society that forces us to clip the edges of our identity to fit ready-made social expectations. Then he discovers that his politically incorrect gaffes and personal struggles with his sexuality are going public and that he must stop hitting the "accept" button on his or others' identities without first reading the terms and conditions - in other words, without understanding who he or they really are.

Our purpose in writing this comedy is to draw people out of their bubbles. When you laugh at something, you never look at it again the same way. Laughter can open our minds to new perceptions, which is the beginning of change.

This quick-moving comedy features a diverse cast and is filled with ridiculous webinars and student-written absurdist plays-within-the-plays that demand an after-performance talkback.

Beverly Hills Theatre Guild’s Julie Harris Playwriting Award

A Ph.D. in English lit isn’t worth shit - just ask Dr. Helen Hand. Desperate for a job, she drunkenly agrees to teach at a conservative Bible college in the middle of nowhere Kansas. The problem - she’s a skeptic, a liberal, and gluten intolerant. She enters a world of rigid moral rules: no smoking, no alcohol, no doubting. Working undercover, she sets out to enlighten the fundamentalist students, but it quickly goes to hell. This small cast comedy looks at our need for faith and reason.

PUBLISHED BY HEUER PUBLISHING

Headset, a view from the light booth, is a comedy about the technical side of theatre. The entire play takes place in the Light Booth of the Chicago-Ensemble-Repertory-Group-Theatre-Project, on the final night of the Company's questionable production of Hamlet. Everything that can go wrong does.

The Los Angeles Times called it "A delightfully funny play." While Kevin Fox of the Company of Lost Souls wrote, "Headset is that rare sort of play that gives audiences a look at the chaos that often happens behind the scenes of theatrical productions… very, very funny."

The shadow of Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) looms large in the world today. Her thoughts on unregulated capitalism and selfishness have influenced everything from the Tea Party to her close friend and disciple Alan Greenspan, who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve for nearly twenty years. Her philosophies are to Fortune 500 CEOs what Scientology is to movies stars.

In this small two-character play, I place Ayn on trial and ask the audience to be the jury and vote on which ending the play will have – guilty or not guilty. Were her thoughts on laissez-faire capitalism the fountainhead that led to our current economic situation? Have her philosophies on selfishness led to Social Darwinism? In her personal life, did she live up to her heroes such as John Galt?

The trial covers the strengths of her philosophies but also her drug use, affair with a man half her age, and temperament. From her appearance before the House Committee on Un-American activities to her influence over the Federal Reserve, this play presents both sides of the argument. It lets the audience vote on how the play will end (like Ayn’s play The Night of January 16th).

The Trial of Ayn Rand is an interactive play that will lead to post-performance discussions.

PUBLISHED BY NEXT STAGE PRESS

A new (two act) adaptation of Ibsen's classic drama designed for smaller theatre companies.

A comedy about how nothing lasts forever, even love.

A short comedy about how the theatre will be changed by the Coronavirus.

A ten minute play about how straight, white, privileged, male academics talk To each other in private!

Cockeyed - это комедия о философском понимании Декарта «Я думаю, поэтому я есть». Это история среднего философа философии, который влюблен в недостижимую женщину своей мечты. Единственная проблема в том, что у нее стеклянный глаз и смотрит сквозь него. Вскоре ему приходит в голову, что она не нарциссична, но на самом деле его не видит. Он объясняет, что единственная логическая задача - перебраться с ней и сожителем - несмотря на то, что она не знает о его существовании. Его можно назвать комедией Вуди Аллена. (3 мужчины, 1 женщина, комплект)
Cockeyed - eto komediya o filosofskom ponimanii Dekarta «YA dumayu, poetomu ya yest'». Eto istoriya srednego filosofa filosofii, kotoryy vlyublen v nedostizhimuyu zhenshchinu svoyey mechty. Yedinstvennaya problema v tom, chto u neye steklyannyy glaz i smotrit skvoz' nego. Vskore yemu prikhodit v golovu, chto ona ne nartsissichna, no na samom dele yego ne vidit. On ob"yasnyayet, chto yedinstvennaya logicheskaya zadacha - perebrat'sya s ney i sozhitelem - nesmotrya na to, chto ona ne znayet o yego sushchestvovanii. Yego mozhno nazvat' komediyey Vudi Allena. (3 muzhchiny, 1 zhenshchina, komplekt

Ein Blick Aus Der Beleuchterkabine ist eine Komödie über die technische Seite des Theaters. Das ganze Spiel findet im Lichtkabinen des Chicago-Ensemble-Repertory-Group-Theater-Projektes statt, in der letzten Nacht der fragwürdigen Produktion von Hamlet. Alles, was schief gehen kann, ist Die Los Angeles Times nannte es "Ein herrlich lustiges Spiel." Während Kevin Fox von der Firma der verlorenen Seelen schrieb: "Headset ist das seltene Spiel, das dem Publikum einen Blick auf das Chaos gibt, das oft hinter den Kulissen der Theaterproduktionen geschieht ... sehr sehr lustig."