Forever Christmastown is reopening. It's June. The holiday-inspired theme park in Bastrop County, Texas, (you know, like a Ren Faire, but about Christmas), was closed because of lawsuits, and then they had to deal with wild boars, but now they are back in business. They've hired Shannon Bennett, a 90's actress from Santa's Wife I, II, and IV, to play Mrs. Claus, along with an alternative Santa (he's in a band, he prefers "Bwa-ha-ha" to "ho-ho-ho"), and a new, unpaid intern elf they're calling "Tinkle."

And Tinkle, she's stupidly excited. See, her mother always told her that, well, Santa is her father. She's sure that the real Santa will pay the park a visit. You know, assuming that it isn't shut down for tax fraud. 

These kinds of things tend to escalate, and after an odd 'miracle,' Tinkle finds herself leading a cult of Santacolytes. And when their "Mrs. Claus" runs off with the park's co-owner, she also finds herself leading a revolution as Forever Christmastown declares itself a sovereign nation.

This is a play about toxic nostalgia and our tendency to double down on stupidity.

This large cast comedy is intended to be produced out of the holiday season when a Christmas show would be inappropriate, but it also works for that winter timeslot. Casting is flexible.

When Skip Powers realizes that no one will ever love him, he volunteers to go to Mars -- and the Principal of NASA says, "Yeah, sure. You'll do." Skip is super gay and isn't really a participant in the gene pool, so it just makes sense to send him millions of miles on the the spaceship Atlantis on a mission that will, in all likelihood, kill him. And after crappy experiences on gay hookup apps, he's more than prepared for the training with the Abstinence Coach -- but a little less prepared when the Love of His Life tries to keep him on earth. This play about what it means to attempt to live your life in the pursuit of great things spans a million years and fifty-five million miles.

REVIEWS

"touching, engaging, funny, and surprising (....) SMALL STEPS is a thought-provoking comedy that is easy to love." - Broadway World

"And like Bradbury, Oglesby douses his writing with a rich mixture of humor and hard truths about isolation, loneliness, and the search for real connection in a disconnected world… The Martian Chronicles reflects American society immediately after World War II, when new military technology had amplified humanity’s potentials to create and destroy. Small Steps is a reflection of an American society that has been living with the consequences of all that technology for decades, filtered through Oglesby and Rae’s acerbic and occasionally silly sense of humor. Still, the play ends poignantly. And so, during this production, you will likely laugh until you cry.” - Austin Chronicle


For Virtual/Hybrid Performance Edition: https://newplayexchange.org/plays/1245860/small-steps-virtual-performance-edition

In a small town in California, Maria wants nothing more than to meet this mysterious Hank Lord she’s been talking to online. Her sister is trying to live in the 90s. Neither know that Hank Lord is actually a demon.

Meanwhile, Ella's job at Taco Bell isn't going well. Her manager won't talk with her, and she is coming to terms with her own sexuality, and she keeps hearing the cries from the cows in the ground beef.

This awkward comedy about people connecting and disconnecting was described by an audience member as "Clerks meets The Goonies."

*VERSION FOR HIGH SCHOOL ALSO AVAILABLE*

* Winner of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Latinidad Playwriting Award

Every night, an untouchable woman walks into the bar, and she always, always, always leaves alone. Men fall over themselves for a shot at her, but it’s a woman from the past who drags the god back to the earth, the place where we all eat dirt.

She Gets Naked in the End requires three versatile actors. “She” (aka Elle) plays herself at various ages; Alex plays several characters and ages, including Elle’s mother. “He” plays about ten terrible men and couple good ones.

In a crappy house in the fields of Northern California, surrounded by a dead walnut orchard, brothers Boomer and Dirt struggle with each other, with themselves, and with their dog-breeding business. As their prized pregnant pooch swells, they seem on the way to strike it big. Their dreams are disrupted when Boomer brings home Marisol, who should be a one-night stand, and Dirt finds a boy who will never grow up.

Note: Dirt and Boomer are both mixed (half-Latino, half white). Boomer must be able to pass for white.

In a crap-filled alley, Shane trains for a Renaissance Faire tournament when the neighborhood bully, Otis, comes to beg him for help. Dinosaurs have resurrected, he claims, and someone has to believe him. Worlds collide as Shane tries to escape into fantasy and Otis is pursued by his nightmares.

This is a play for middle school, high school, and college aged (or older), with sword fights, dinosaurs, dragons, and surprise kiss.

At a no-tech summer camp, teens re-invent themselves. Some spin fictions and live fantasies, while others deal with dead brothers and dark things, and another sees what he’s pretty sure is an alien. Relationships are formed and broken as the lies are on a collision course with uncomfortable truths.

For mature teens and young adults

A comedy that says, "You must give up whatever you most love to get what you most want."

Nameless awakens in the desert. He doesn't know who he is, but he knows he has a desire for greatness -- and a sword. He goes gallivanting across the desert, learning how be a hero, defeating a great sand monster, and finally executing an evil king. Even achieving greatness, he is still unhappy, and so he continues to search for answers.

Originally written for teen actors, this play was further developed with adults. It's appropriate for all audiences, but probably best for teens and older.

Well, the king is dead in the kingdom of Eastwood, and a kingdom needs a king, so it falls to Princess Wimberley to wed the obnoxious Prince Driftwood. Prince Driftwood seeks True Love, so he's not on board with this plan either. Both the prince and the princess run away from their wedding, fleeing into the Forbidden Forest of Tez, dragging their reluctant attendants behind. In the woods, there's a dragon who's been turned into an old man and the boy he's adopted, a vain artisan-witch and her annoyed henchman, a chorus of strange Dreamcreepers, and soon an outraged mother-of-the-bride, her son, and a female knight wrestling with complicated feelings for the princess. This comedy originally written for teens is both inspired by and blows up familiar tropes in Shakespeare's romantic comedies.

Flexible Cast. 60 mins, but can be adjusted to be shorter (by cutting scenes) or longer. Perfect for middle school students.

A group of fairytale-telling creatures entertain a bored kid with new scenes from old stories. The number of actors and stories can be adapted to fit different needs.

Includes:
- The Three Little Pigs are in a band. Being creatives, they build their houses out of straw, sticks, and bricks, but the winds of gentrification threaten to blow them down and turn them into breakfast tacos.
- Humpty Dumpty and his wall are Instagram famous, but the phone is also a distraction...
- The Boy Who Cried Wolf - The wolf is unemployed and seriously thinking about opening an Etsy store when he hears the boy calling him.
- Snow White - The dwarves are member of the United Dwarven Miners Union, and when Snow White takes over the house they prove that the Union keeps them strong.
- Rumplestiltskin name is not guessed, so he ends up having to raise the queen's baby. He's not really equipped for this.
-In Little Red Riding Hood, Little Red does not guess that her grandma is, in fact, the wolf.... And the wolf must then take on some of Grandma's responsibilities.
- Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The three bears vow vengeance and break into Goldilock's house to destroy her stuff.

Now represented by Uproar Theatrics!

It’s 2024. Four years ago, everyone over the age of 20 disappeared from the planet. No one knows why. Then it happened again.

On the Altierra compound in Texas, young T dreams of the internet returning so she can be a Youtuber and document her generation. When a crisis expels a group, she joins the exiles on a trek across the broken land. This group faces constant danger as they search for safe-harbor - and possibly the answer to the question of what happened — at the rumored New Eden. This is a play about what happens when the young are left to deal with the disasters in a world they didn’t create.

Along the way, the crew experience a strange and yet recognizable landscape. They encounter an authoritarian farm, anarchist Firestarters, feral children, Sad Disneyland, and ruined hometowns.

There are moments of intensity and plenty of humor in this play that's about climate change, social change, coming-of-age, immigration, and the current moment. Notably, this play features a resolution that brings an adult audience member into the play.

This play can be produced with as few as nine actors or many more of any gender.

SYNOPSIS: A Chorus of the Dead puts the broken Icarus back together, telling him of his boyhood friendship with Tor, who would become the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, and with Theseus, who would kill him. The path to his final fall is far from straightforward, and the Chorus tells of the cruelty of the tyrant – Tor’s father and king – and the world that made them. Modern elements like Youtubers mounting the 24-hour Labyrinth Challenge make this a relevant take on a classic story. Appropriate for teens and adults.

An epistolary play for the internet age. SECRET LIVES is composed of old Youtube vids, Twitch streams, video calls, security footage, Public Access, and more.

Five years ago, Corey’s astronaut sister died on an expedition to Mars. Now their brother Carl searches Antartica for meteorites while Corey's best friend Lexington tries to revolutionize Public Access Portland. Corey is stuck streaming games from his basement over Twitch when a mysterious stranger from another planet begins to play along.

A play built for social distancing before it was cool.

Act 1 has Skip on quarantine. Act 2, he's on a one-man mission to Mars. This made the play ideal for adaptation for a virtual performance.

When Skip Powers realizes that no one will ever love him, he volunteers to go to Mars -- and the Principal of NASA says, "Yeah, sure. You'll do." Skip is super gay and isn't really a participant in the gene pool, so it just makes sense to send him millions of miles on the the spaceship Atlantis on a mission that will, in all likelihood, kill him. And after crappy experiences on gay hookup apps, he's more than prepared for the training with the Abstinence Coach -- but a little less prepared when the Love of His Life tries to keep him on earth. This play about what it means to attempt to live your life in the pursuit of great things spans a million years and fifty-five million miles.

Note: this is the latest 'hybrid' draft, intended for a live performance with a virtual component. There is another draft with some minor tricks for 'Virtual Performance Only' available upon request.

For live/in-person edition: https://newplayexchange.org/plays/83346/small-steps

We begin on the Titanic. An ideal setting for a murder mystery, don't you think. First class. A widow, a magnate, young lovers, a grifter, a confirmed bachelor, a spiritualist and editor (Tennessee Blossom, close personal friend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), along with the White Star staff are in a room when one of them ends up dead. The iceberg is a convenient distraction. Then, the captain's orders: no murderers are allowed on the lifeboats. The game afoot: a mystery that must be solved before the ship goes down...

And then, something starts to shift: the characters begin to sing. We learn we are actually backstage at a Broadway show based on a Titanic. And one of the actors ends up dead. It's a noir.

And then the perception of reality starts to shift again.

On the surface it’s a traditional locked-room mystery. Below that, the play seeks to examine the construction of murder mysteries themselves, the drive to stage and imagine murder, even how issues of class connect. We intentionally evoke, reference, call into question, and/or subvert Sherlock Holmes, film noir / The Maltese Falcon, Columbo and Murder She Wrote, Clue, even the true crime media like the Serial Podcast.

It's a night to remember.