Marc Palmieri

Shakespeare's comedy about the power of love follows twins Viola and Sebastian, who are washed ashore in a strange land after a shipwreck, each thinking the other has perished. Viola disguises herself as a man, to become a servant of the local Duke Orsino. She quickly finds herself in love with this duke, despite being recruited as messenger for his wooing of the countess Olivia. Not only is this wooing unsuccessful, but Olivia falls for the messenger. The subplot involves Olivia's household revelers, who clash with her stern household steward, Malvolio. The wild knot of misunderstandings is untied at last, once Sebastian arrives on the scene,

Aron Martinos, a former high school, college and minor league baseball player, returns to his old school as an assistant coach. The elite program is that of boys’ Catholic school Saint Mark’s, on the Queens border of Long Island. While Aron, now a struggling part time college literature professor, has seen his passion for the game long ago fade, he finds himself deeply invested in the hopes of one unlikely aspirant to the team, the son of Aron’s former classmate. The play takes place across the tryouts, wherein Aron’s “coming home” quickly becomes a tense and meditative crisis of identity, spirituality, and a reflection of the unpredictability of life’s paths.

The play can be performed as one show or separated by its two parts. In Part One (WAITING FOR THE HOST), while theatres, playgrounds, schools, and churches are shuttered by a modern plague, the rector of a small church on Long Island gathers a handful of parishioners via video conference. His goal is to record a theatrical reading of the story of the Passion for the church website. As exes bicker and technology confuses, this socially distant endeavor quickly becomes chaotic. Still, in the effort, the group finds a strange, painful closeness, and that their comic and clumsy reading has become a kind of desperate prayer. In Part Two (STILL WAITING), the pandemic lockdown is well into its second month. Members of the church find themselves bitten by the “acting bug.” With the help of a “professional director” from Manhattan, they hope to launch a community theatre at the church. To their surprise, the bishop and church leadership found their Passion Play objectionable, and their plans are met with resistance. They decide to put on a showcase of their skills, with an “updated” version of medieval Biblical plays, and find they win the support of an unexpected guest.

After stumbling upon an outdoor production of a Shakespeare play in Manhattan, Long Island landscaper Bob Malone returns home inspired to write a play about his troubled marriage. He hires two reluctant New York theatre professionals to spend a week at his home and stage the play in his garage, with a cast of colorful locals. THE GROUNDLING is a comedy exploring the meaning of the final moments of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, and how the power of theatre can affect the most unsuspecting, and perhaps most deserving, of us all.

When Kevin, the grandson of a World War II combat veteran, returns early from yet another college, he learns that his deeply troubled sister is about to be married. With renewed hope, he attempts to reconcile his family with the abusive father who left them years before. Amidst the thin walls of their Levittown home, the members of this beleaguered family are forced to confront a concealed history, the self-destructive nature that has plagued them for generations, and the failure of faiths onto which they have desperately held.

Midway through a life of living in the shadows of others, city bookstore manager Carl Fraser has found solace and an understanding of his place in the universe with the great also-rans of literature. At peace in the lonesome cloister of a used bookstore, Carl has somehow found dignity, comfort and a kind of sad romance in the condition to which he believes he is doomed. Enter Christine, perhaps the first woman in his life who threatens his theory with a challenge to defy the evidence and dare to be loved.

POOR FELLAS consists of six short tragicomedies. The PROLOGUE introduces Frank, a high-school sophomore who’s just witnessed his first episode of humiliation at the local multiplex. In ROCKS, an aging minor-league baseball player has his superstitions and his hopes ridiculed by the team’s hot young prospect. TOUGH GUYS presents two men facing their failure to achieve the lives about which they’ve always dreamed. THE DEPARTURE OF BRIAN O’CALLAHAN finds a lost soul on the brink of suicide and in pursuit of understanding from the one person who may be able to save him. In MAKIN’ SENSE OF NOTHIN', two construction workers accidentally discover a horrible truth at a coworker’s funeral. In the title play, POOR FELLAS, two recently jilted buddies learn a stunning fact of life when they come face to face with utter abandonment. Using minimal sets and a cast that can double and triple throughout, the comic pieces come to hilarious and unexpected crises and finish on somber, thoughtful notes.

Friends and frenemies alike find themselves stumbling into the big questions of their lives, like “What’s wrong with parents? Who’s really my friend? Will the popular kid hang out with us? Why are we even at this dance? Will I be sad when this time of my life is all over? And is that a human-sized parrot or am I dreaming?” Discover the awkward, awful, and sometimes awesome world of middle schoolers in this collection of eight short comedic plays.