Joan Saltzman

I write plays, comedies, parodies, and dramas, about politics, musical theater history and Jewish dysfunctional families. The Jewish dysfunctional family plays practically write themselves; I grew up in one in Philly. Now I live in both New York and Philadelphia. I'm way over-educated--Bachelor's in philosophy and English. My father worried that I would spend my life on a soapbox. I didn't. Well, if you count some of my plays, maybe I have? Got my Master's, a terminal Master's, a kind of terminal cancer for graduate students and then, no thanks to Perry Mason, gravitated to law school. Spent years practicing law. Now I don't. Halleluyah! I'm much happier writing plays, libretti and lyrics. Searching for a composer. I published a memoir about meeting my husband later in life and giving him...

I write plays, comedies, parodies, and dramas, about politics, musical theater history and Jewish dysfunctional families. The Jewish dysfunctional family plays practically write themselves; I grew up in one in Philly. Now I live in both New York and Philadelphia. I'm way over-educated--Bachelor's in philosophy and English. My father worried that I would spend my life on a soapbox. I didn't. Well, if you count some of my plays, maybe I have? Got my Master's, a terminal Master's, a kind of terminal cancer for graduate students and then, no thanks to Perry Mason, gravitated to law school. Spent years practicing law. Now I don't. Halleluyah! I'm much happier writing plays, libretti and lyrics. Searching for a composer. I published a memoir about meeting my husband later in life and giving him a kidney. Really. It's called "Mr. Right and My Left Kidney". Privileged to have studied playwriting with Halley Feiffer, Joshua Harmon, Melissa Ross and Michael Walkup, and lyric writing with Adam Gwon.

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Scripts

FIVE BY FIVE

Written by Joan Saltzman

Cast Size
5—25
Genre
docudrama/historic,
drama,
political

FIVE BY FIVE is a play in five scenes--each scene features five college-age women grappling with feminist, abortion, and other reproductive rights issues. The scenes are set in the 1960's, the 1970's, the 1980's, the 2020's, and in the future. The women can be played by 25 different actors, or by five women each playing five roles, one in each scene.

FIVE BY FIVE is a play in five scenes--each scene features five college-age women grappling with feminist, abortion, and other reproductive rights issues. The scenes are set in the 1960's, the 1970's, the 1980's, the 2020's, and in the future. The women can be played by 25 different actors, or by five women each playing five roles, one in each scene.

Cohn-Trump

by Joan Saltzman

Cast Size
2
Genre
dark comedy,
docudrama/historic,
horror,
satire,
tragedy

How I imagine the first, disgusting in-person meeting between Roy Cohn and Donald Trump. Here's where Cohn starts to teach Trump all his unscrupulous methods. It will sound eerily familiar. Read and weep!

How I imagine the first, disgusting in-person meeting between Roy Cohn and Donald Trump. Here's where Cohn starts to teach Trump all his unscrupulous methods. It will sound eerily familiar. Read and weep!

MOTHERS

by Joan Saltzman

Cast Size
5
Genre
comedy,
dark comedy,
romantic comedy

Oy, not another Jewish dysfunctional family play! Yes, that's unabashedly exactly what it is, with some significant twists. There's Boris, a talking samovar that the maternal side of the family schlepped from Russia, and Claudelle, the elderly French-speaking cat. There are three generations of Jewish mothers. Debby, the youngest of them, is a shonda to her mother and Bubbie because she's over forty and...

Oy, not another Jewish dysfunctional family play! Yes, that's unabashedly exactly what it is, with some significant twists. There's Boris, a talking samovar that the maternal side of the family schlepped from Russia, and Claudelle, the elderly French-speaking cat. There are three generations of Jewish mothers. Debby, the youngest of them, is a shonda to her mother and Bubbie because she's over forty and pregnant, with twins yet, and she wants to elope instead of having the wedding her mother and Bubbie have always dreamed of. There's a father who doesn't have much of a speaking part because he can't get a word in edgewise, and the future groom, who is a saint. All ends happily ever after for some of them at a wedding in the living room with one member of the family presiding as a Universal Life Minister. All of this is set in the late 1980's with Reagan's "Shining City on a Hill" videotape (Bubbie loved Reagan even though the family had always voted Democratic) and the Challenger disaster tape (Judith Resnik was Jewish) playing in the background.

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