Nora Louise Syran

(A Monologue) A teacher stands before a disciplinary board as one of their students has declared they want to write like Virginia Woolf. -- "Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Many people still are..."-Andrew Martineau

Published in 2023 by Smith & Kraus "WE/US: Monologues for Gender Minority Characters Anthology."
Voted one of the "Best of the Best" June 2024 by Different Strokes! Performing Arts Collective's for their 369 Monologues and Short Play Festival pt 2.

A monologue about a woman, the universe and her dog.

*Broadcast January 2024 Radio Six International through the Writer's Block Radio Hour produced by Glen Dickson (now available on youtube: https://youtu.be/slpjYoIJQDs?feature=shared) Read by the author
AND -- better yet! -- read as a prepared cold read by Miranda Jonte on Back Porch Theater: https://fb.watch/rhiqLc3oWH/ I love how she finds the joy in the piece

(A ten minute play) The Devil arrives in another circle of hell, the department of motor vehicles, to renew his driver's license. How hard can it be? For Hell's sake, he has been driving since Henry Ford rolled his Model T off the assembly line. But no one, not even the Devil trapped in his own circles of Hell, is above the law.

Performed at the Heartland Theatre (Young at Heart) October 2023
and Berkshire School in Sheffield, MA May 2024

(A very short tragedy) A woman helps a pigeon escape an overheated dollar store but not quite the way she'd hoped.

Full Length. A Play with Music of Montmartre
The French Impressionists --notably the "female artists" Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt-- as seen through the eyes of Auguste Renoir's model, muse and artist: Suzanne Valadon. Who was Suzanne Valadon? You may not know her name, but you know her face. Dancing for Renoir, drinking with Toulouse-Lautrec. Born Marie-Clementine, Suzanne Valadon was an illegitimate school drop out who "grew up with giants!" She lived in Montmartre, Paris and after falling from the trapeze in the circus went on to model for painters Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and Berthe Morisot, among others. She inspired Edgar Degas who announced her "indeed one of us."

Valdon's friend, Aristide Bruant, of Chat Noir fame, leads an ensemble cast in bringing to life some of the beautiful melodies of Montmartre. It's been a great honor to breathe new life into them by translating/adapting them into English.

Citations of the painters throughout the play are in italics

Songs:: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbjMf0v8IS8hheWhqQYi4H14KerMXKKJ2
Projection images (to update): https://youtu.be/ObPVtpR-HoY (from original 2018 one act)

(Full length) The classic story by Jane Austen woven with songs she wrote out in her own hand and is known to have played regularly. Ensemble cast. Piano accompaniment (with guitar, flute, harp also possible)

Demo scenes/songs: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbjMf0v8IS8iF-3sEpxJE-ejWWDuDvt3R

Iceland 1000AD. Midsummer's Eve. While the Christians and the Pagans are fighting, Einar--a poet who cannot write--turns to the magical power of stories. Discover the frightening, sorrowful and hilarious world of norse mythology. Ragnarok is not the end, but the beginning.

Raghnild's monologue has been included in the Smith & Kraus Best Women's Monologues of 2023 collection.
---
This story takes place between two worlds: Asgard, the home of the gods, and Midgard, where men live. It is 1000AD. At the Althing, Iceland votes to become Christian. The world is changing and to change with it, Einar is learning to write down the old stories. Funny stories of Thor and his hammer and sorrowful ones like the death of Baldr. But the bad is always balanced by the good and we learn that Ragnarok is not only the end, but also a beginning.
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Ragnarok are the events that result in the end of the world signalled by the god Heimdallr sounding his horn. Then Yggdrasill, the tree which holds the nine worlds together, will fall and the trickster god Loki's wolf Fenrir and the World Serpent will destroy the gods of Asgard. To hold off Ragnarok, the gods do everything in their power to fight fate: Freyja's handmaidens ask the cosmos to protect Odin and Freya's son Baldr, Idunn keeps the gods young with her magic apples, Thor fights giants with his hammer, a wall is built to keep themselves safe and Loki is finally punished, held beneath the earth below a giant snake, dripping poison.

(full length) Four teenage girls serving a detention discover we don't live in a clockwork universe, it's always breaking down. But, as Voltaire's lover Emilie du Châtelet believed, this is the "best of all possible worlds."

The play features the female scientists, mathematicians and intellectuals of the Enlightenment and early Romantic period: Emilie du Châtelet, Mary Somerville, Nicole-Reine Lepaute, Sophie Germain, Mary Anning, Caroline Herschel, Ada Lovelace and Lady Mary Montagu.

A new full length unproduced version of the original (produced in France) one act.
https://newplayexchange.org/plays/1524436/physics-poets-club-one-act

PUBLISHED in March 2023 by Next Stage Press (60-70 minutes) Twelve short interconnected plays based in modern day France at Christmas time. Twelve stories set in Paris, Brittany, Normandy and Provence which weave together wild boars and hunters, swans on the Seine, partridges in plum trees, lonely lovers and more...

"What a complete joy this cycle of short plays is. Immensely enjoyable on so many levels; funny, moving, informative but full of atmosphere and Christmas cheer. A sparkling seasonal gem."
-- Paul Smith, playwright and critic

"These short plays are woven together to make one beautiful holiday blanket. They're poems. They're paintings. And honestly very inspirational."
--Jacquelyn Floyd-Priskorn, playwright

"I love the concept of using a song, lyric by lyric, to create a sequence of short pieces that form a whole. This has the feel of France and the comic tone meshes with the nostalgia for a holiday time that we all think we miss. This lets us revel in our own memories because the writer gives us the space and time to do that. Lovely work."
-- Emma Goldman-Sherman

"Daedalus and a wild boar in a Christmas tale? It works beautifully. And it doesn’t need to be Christmas to appreciate this story of care."
-- Claudia Haas (of the first of the plays: A PERDRIX IN A PEAR TREE)

(Full Length) TO BE PUBLISHED SEPT 1 with NEXT STAGE PRESS

TRUE or FALSE?* 1) Vikings wore horns. 2) Napoleon was short. 3) Marie Antoinette said "let them eat cake"
History comes alive as students learn that fake news is old news and disinformation can be disastrous. With the school principal waiting for the slightest excuse to fire the students' favorite teacher, Mr Parker, and Charlotte Locus manipulating the media to become Student Council President, will the students learn from the past or will they be doomed to repeat it? A trope-filled, historical myth-busting comedy, with a couple of songs thrown in.

*FALSE!

(This play has been edited from its original 2019 version performed in France. It is now full length.)

(A 10 minute monologue) Medusa sits waiting as the last of a long line of heroes attempts to cut off her head.
This time she just might let him. But she'd like to sit and talk for a bit first...

To be published in the Venus Theatre Anthology: Frozen Women, Flowing Thoughts

Undergoing revision- no file attached (will be posted by Sept 22)
(Full length) 1381, England. Seventeen year old. Eleanor finds herself captivated by Robert "Robin" DuBois, an apprentice stonemason. She is enamored by his skillful carvings of Green Men and intricate leafy details in the church which transport her to the Greenwood itself. Alongside her admiration for her real life Robin, Eleanor's mind wanders from her lessons in Latin and French with the Reverend Mother to the tales of Robin Hood that she hears being told all around her. As reality and her imagination intertwine, she compiles the stories of "The Green Man" and his "Merry Men" (all women save for Friar Tuck). A play with medieval music, mumming, mystery and magic.

Brook tells the other girls about when her undiagnosed narcolepsy started but her mother failed to give her the attention she needed. She was actually enjoying today's detention, the research and the company of the other girls before Enya had to ruin it. She missed an important appointment today.

(A monologue) A woman drives with her teenage son to a gun shop in America.

Free for Educational Use Only

(A monologue) A woman recounts her first --and last-- speed dating event.

(5-8 minutes) A cafe/restaurant near a swampy, marsh filled with frogs.
A Glutton sits eating plate after plate of frogs' legs.

#tpcmonthlyprompt prompt: Haunted Cafe

(short) An Anglophone and French Partner celebrate life with a bottle of champagne...better left corked.

(A 10 minute monologue) Mary Mallon, aka Typhoid Mary, tells her story to the new doctor she works with in the laboratory on North Brother Island where she has been held in isolation for 18 years --and where she'll live a total of 26 years, until the end of her life. She escaped once and continued to cook even though under strict orders not to. She's believed to have infected hundreds with typhoid fever and it has been confirmed she killed three people. But while other asymptomatic typhoid carriers carried on with their lives in New York City, which she could see from her prison on North Brother Island, she was never released. Was it because she was a single, Irish female? Or just another poor soul lost in the shuffle... (Words in italics are hers.)

(short) An ANGLOPHONE and their FRENCH PARTNER get the house, and garage, ready for Christmas. But they have mice...or is that mouses?

Note: "Mince!" in French is a gentle expletive; a substitute to avoid using the "gros mos"/swear word "merde"

(A 5 minute Monologue) Edith sits waist high in a pile of cheap looking clothing while her husband is having dinner with the neighbors next door.

You can see Miranda Jonte present a cold reading of it on Back Porch Theatre: https://fb.watch/iR60ZbIp47/

It's Peggy Sue's birthday. She's turning sweet sixteen. She and her steady Johnathon E. Good have a date at the diner to celebrate. But things turn sour when Peggy and John E. discover his father’s brand new Shavy El Domino is missing. Will their paranoid Etiquette teacher Miss Molly and the other 50s misfits help him recover it before his father finds out? Or will John E. “The Bee” Good learn a lesson he’ll never forget?

(This is a NON-MURDER mystery-Contact the author for the full script, including the RESOLUTION!)

Quiz and pre/mid/post show games/audience interaction
A classic 1950s car to have on display for the non-murder event is highly encouraged

Jade tells the other girls about her sibling rivalry and her fascination with bugs. She was enjoying today's detention, the research and the company of the other girls before Enya had to ruin it.
(Redacted to avoid a spoiler)

Please note: this is for educational use only.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace...pah-pum, pah-pum, pah-pum, pah-pum.
This was a cute show for primary aged children. I am polishing up a collection of AA MILNE poems adapted for the stage so this was draft one which does not quite capture all the antics we added. Working on these...
If you're curious and want to read more of them, reach out and I'll put them to the top of my 'list'--where is that list....?

(Short) An ANGLOPHONE and their FRENCH PARTNER prepare for the holidays.

(The final scene of "The Twelve Days of Christmas in France")
A woman and her partner celebrate Christmas in France "à table"...which goes on for hours!

To be published by NEXT STAGE PRESS

Two women meet on a bus crossing the French-Italian border. It's stiflingly hot, wildfires have stopped the trains into Nice and it's getting late.

(Eleventh of "The Twelve Days of Christmas in France")
A male music teacher in their late 60s leads 11 bagpipers at Christmas.

To be published by NEXT STAGE PRESS

(A monologue) A woman meets up with a friend to explain why she's not been coming out with her friends this summer... (A little something silly for the summer)

(Full length) A female tourist in an Hawai'ian hotel piano bar lounge is transported over and over again to the past to revisit her brief love affair with a talented local piano player.
The first of the triptych was written for the February 2022 Go Try Play Write competition co-sponsored by Kumu Kahua Theatre & Bamboo Ridge Press. Received a wonderful online reading.
--This first draft of the triptych received another online reading with this same inspiring group May 24, 2023 as the last two parts were also written in response to the monthly prompts

(30 minutes) 1927. Four girls with broken Broadway dreams, leave New York and set off for Hollywoodland, California only to end up with a silent film director set in his old-fashioned ways, refusing to film a Talkie.

A fun comedy with music, the Charleston and more.
A mini musical: large flexible casting

Cast of 18; 5-11M, 7-13F, 6M/F (A smaller cast may be possible-this is under revision)

(Tenth of "The Twelve Days of Christmas in France")
Ten short scenes revisiting the characters of the first 9 plays in the collection "The Twelve Days of Christmas in France"

To be published by NEXT STAGE PRESS

(A one minute play) A 50 year old BIRTHDAY GIRL and her PARTNER receive a card in the mail.
Just a bit of silliness to celebrate another turn around the sun.

A teenage girl learns a little about life from a load of laundry.

(Ninth of "The Twelve Days of Christmas in France")
Cannes, France. Sacristy of St Patrick's Anglican Church.
A giddy French Anglican Priest is helped to prepare for the Holy Eucharist by three English women of the Altar Guild.

To be published by NEXT STAGE PRESS

Have a large cast? Need speaking roles for everyone? Want everyone to shine? Love the classics but want something new and challenging as well? Here are ten short plays for large casts in which everyone gets a spot
IN THE LIMELIGHT! (Volume One)

Aesop's Fabulous Fables (Cast of 21-23 — Running time ~8-10 minutes)
The Boy Who Cried Wolf on Old MacDonald's Farm (Cast of 21-24 — Running time ~15 minutes)
The Bremen Town Mashup (Cast of 24-31 — Running time ~15 minutes)
Jack and the Beanstalk of Banbury Cross (Cast of 24-26 — Running time ~ 20-25 minutes)
The Princess Paradigm and the Pea (Cast of 21-24 — Running time ~12-15 minutes)
She/herazade's 1001 Nights (Cast of 23-27 — Running time ~20-25 minutes)
The Sky is Falling! (Cast of 20-22 — Running time ~10-12 minutes)
The Stonecutter (Cast of 17-23 — Running time ~10-12 minutes)
The Tale of the Name of the Tree (Cast of 20-25 — Running time ~12 minutes)
Why Mosquitoes Buzz in Our Ears (Cast of 13+ — Running time ~5-8 minutes)

This is the pre-publication version.

(~40 minutes) A female tourist in an Hawaiian hotel piano bar lounge is transported to the past to revisit her brief but enduring love affair with a talented local piano player.
--The first of the three plays was written for the February 2022 Go Try Play Write competition co-sponsored by Kumu Kahua Theatre & Bamboo Ridge Press. Received a wonderful online reading.
--This first draft of the triptych received another online reading with this same inspiring group May 24, 2023.

The FULL LENGTH version: https://newplayexchange.org/plays/3064461/aohe-loa-i-ka-hana-ke-aloha-d…

(Eighth of "The Twelve Days of Christmas in France")
France. Countryside. Normandy. A woman milks a cow on Christmas Day.

To be published by NEXT STAGE PRESS

(Short scene for Three Females) After learning of English poet Lady Montagu's observations in Turkey, Enya and Brook debate the significance of her contributions to science: the eventual eradication of small pox.

Three teenagers sit on the floor of a small church bathroom with a Ouiji board set up before them when the light suddenly switches off. But it's no longer hide and seek in the dark bathroom during choir practice like when they were young; it's serious. And there is a strange scratching come from inside the wall...
(Audio/Stage Play)

A female tourist sits crouched before a locked hotel door while her host knocks repeatedly on the other side.

RAGNHILD, the teenage sister of EINAR, has been helping him write down his tales of the norse gods and goddesses. But he has avoided telling the end of the story which ends in the death of the beloved god Baldr and the end of the world, Ragnarok, and has started again from the beginning with the creation of man and woman from an ash tree and an elm tree. RAGNHILD desperately wants to hear how the story will end but is frightened to write it down.

Published in Smith & Kraus "The Best Women's Stage Monologues 2023" edited by Debbie Lamedman

The Weaver Girl, Zhinü, and her sisters sneak off to swim in the forbidden Jade Lake.
An English retelling of the Chinese Tale: The Weaver Girl and the Cowherd

Miletus, Ancient Greece ~450BC. Aspasia wants to put on a play with her friends Sophronia and Efimia but 1) they're not living in Athens 2) They're girls. How will she convince them into letting her write, produce and direct a modern play? No masks needed. And where will Aspasia find her inspiration? And once she has it, how will she control it? Can she stop Phaeton from taking his father Apollo's chariot of fire out for a spin? Can she help save Prometheus from Ethon the Eagle, who doesn't care much for liver? How can she write a happy ending in the underworld? Psychopomp Hermes has left the theatre connection portal open. So hop on in and find out.

(A short audio drama) Harriet enters a Haunted Hall of Mirrors where she faces the past and her hatred of Halloween. (Edited for radio May 14, 2024)

Original written for the 2023 Playwrights Thriving Halloween Bake Off

(Seventh of "The Twelve Days of Christmas in France")
Paris, France. Christmas Eve. A couple walks home along the left bank of the river Seine.

To be published by NEXT STAGE PRESS

(Sixth of "The Twelve Days of Christmas in France")
France. A maternity ward. An American Woman refuses to have her baby born on Christmas day.

To be published by NEXT STAGE PRESS

A teenage girl is cleaning her bedroom. She becomes overwhelmed with social media pressure and her parent steps in to help.

(A 5 minute monologue) Ellida treads water in a Norwegian fjord during a long week of sailing camp. She's already failed the rowing exercise and camping out on a rock all night under a sun that doesn't set. She can drown or swim in and give up; she's not giving up. Inspired by Henrik Ibsen's "The Lady From the Sea"

(12 minutes) Three sisters reunite on the island of Chincoteague, VA.
Tensions below the COVID19 crisis and growing political divide cannot help but surface.

Written for the the PDC ten minute Bakeoff 2020.
Ingredients: Chincoteague, Toby jugs, umbrella
Semi-Finalist for the 2021 TASN Short Play Festival.

Published online under the title Walking Warm: https://www.americanpopularculture.com/review_americana/fall_2021/syran…

30-50 minutes. Optional scenes. PUBLISHED by Eldridge Plays and Musicals.
1954. On the eve of the closing of Ellis Island, two teenagers sneak inside to see it for themselves. Through the stories of the janitor--from his time as an inspector on the island--two teenagers, an Italian-American and an Irish-American, are drawn into the past and join an ensemble of people from all nationalities and backgrounds including Irving Berlin, Khalil Gibran, Emmeline Pankhurst, passengers aboard the Titanic, Hollywood stars and many, many others : each on the path of their "pursuit of happiness." A timely piece, celebrating America as a country of immigrants. A play with music.

(Third of "The Twelve Days of Christmas in France")
Paris. A busy cafe at Christmastime. Three women gather to celebrate the opening of a charity shop.

To be published by NEXT STAGE PRESS

(40 minutes) California 1856. The Gold Rush, which brought people to California from all over the world, is slowly winding down. The Wells Fargo Stagecoach has just come into town and with it, news from the rest of the world. Join sweet Betsy from Pike, Charlotte “Charley” the stage coach driver, Clementine, the miner's daughter, Sewati of the Miwok tribe, Calamity Jane and Angeline the baker as they plot to rid their town of a corrupt sheriff...

This script worked well just as it is as a one act, but I'll be expanding it to full length soon.

(15 minutes) A short zoom play: a parody of the absurd based on Beckett's "Happy Days". An actor crashes a family Zoom session thinking it's an audition. While Millennial Millie tries to explain to him that he's made a mistake, Millie's mother Winnie greets it all--the computer, husband and daughter who don't need, see or hear her-- and the intruding thespian, with overwhelming optimism. (Revised Draft: July 18 2022)

(60-70 minutes: a play with music; ensemble cast of 12) Paris. 1877-1889. Meet the Impressionists.
Anyone doing something new seems crazy. Claude Monet feverishly paints the departing trains of the Gare St Lazare. Berthe Morisot paints alone outdoors. Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt bicker like an old married couple. And Édouard Manet has been "skied" again while his infamous young model, Victorine Meurent, herself has become a painter. Paris is changing, yet only the men are free to debate at the Café Guerbois while the women attend the opera for matinee performances only, and are "inevitably boxed-in. Only [their] eyes may wander." Meanwhile in the freedom of the marketplace, a young artist meets the beautiful former circus performer Suzanne Valadon, Auguste Renoir's model and herself a celebrated painter.

Using the paintings, the artists' own words and the music of the time, the play captures the ephemerality of the Impressionist movement and transports us into the future as the Impressionists visit the 1889 World Exhibition. There Monet discovers his waterlilies and the Eiffel Tower is beautiful in the eyes of the young Julie Manet who like her famous uncle believes “you must be of your time and paint what you see.”

This one hour play is being expanded to full length.

(60 -70 minutes) Une jeune artiste assiste à une conférence sur l'art et se retrouve transportée dans le Paris du XIXe siècle où elle rencontre les impressionnistes : Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas et leur inspiration : Édouard Manet. En utilisant les tableaux, les propres mots des artistes et la musique de l'époque, la pièce capture l'éphémérité du mouvement impressionniste et nous transporte dans le futur.

(10 minutes) 406BC. Euripides is hiding away in his cave on Salamis, an island not too far from Athens. He is 74 years old and planning to move as he cannot bear to see democracy disintegrate and fall to the rabble. His good friend, Socrates, 63, arrives and irritates him with "Socratic" questions and coaxes him into revealing the plot of his next and last play "The Bacchae" before it's fully hatched. Athens is falling apart and Euripides wants to write about a cross-dressing king?! (THIS DRAFT IS UNDER REVISION--FULL LENGTH)

(Written in response to the events leading up to January 6th, 2021; the storming of the US Capitol.)

(An 8 minute monologue) A woman stands looking out over the oil rigs on Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela. She's trapped. The borders are closed and there's nowhere to go but up or down.

(2-3 minute dialogue) A writer accidentally insults a theater critic online and tries to back-peddle their way out of it. The writer is gently coached out of their people-pleasing by their patient partner.

NEW full length available here: https://newplayexchange.org/plays/3140717/physics-poets-club

60 minute One Act For Zoom or Stage--Four teenage girls serving a detention for various misdemeanors discover that "we don't live in a clockwork universe, it's always breaking down." But as Voltaire's lover Emilie du Châtelet believed, it is the "best of all possible worlds." By exploring the lives of the female scientists, mathematicians and intellectuals of the Enlightenment and early Romantic period: Emilie du Châtelet, Mary Somerville, Nicole-Reine Lepaute, Sophie Germain, Mary Anning, Caroline Herschel, Ada Lovelace and Lady Mary Montagu, the four girls come to a better understanding of themselves and their potential in the modern world.

(45 minutes) Join a talkative minstrel, a feisty Maid Marion, Robin and his merry 'men' (all women save for the rotund Friar Tuck) on a fun romp through Sherwood Forest.

(A short comedy of 5-25 minutes*)
Star-crossed lovers' orbits literally collide at a school dance.

(Could be repeated 5 times with actors exchanging roles for a half hour length play; or recast each time up to 25 players--flexible)

(First of "The Twelve Days of Christmas in France")
France. Countryside. Provence. A partridge fleeing local hunters stays safe in a couple's plum tree.

To be published by NEXT STAGE PRESS

(Second of "The Twelve Days of Christmas in France")
Paris. Wintertime. A woman tries to fall asleep to the incessant cooing of a pigeon outside her window.

To be published by NEXT STAGE PRESS

(Fourth of "The Twelve Days of Christmas in France")
France. Countryside. Provence. Four women walk their dogs in hunting season.

To be published by NEXT STAGE PRESS

(Fifth of "The Twelve Days of Christmas in France")
France. A busy shopper pays it forward just in time for the holiday season.

To be published by NEXT STAGE PRESS

Cast of 21-23 (8 minutes) An ensemble retelling of the classic tales. Includes the following fables: The Tale of the Popular Rabbit, The Tale of the Ant and the Grasshopper, The Tale of the Dog and the Wolf, The Tale of the Fox and the Crow, The Peacock and the Crane, The Tale of the Two Crabs, The Tale of the Mice and the Cat and The Tale of the Mouse and the Lion

Cast of 21-24 (15 minutes) An original retelling and blending of two classic tales: The Boy Who Cried Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood.

Cast of 24-31 (15 minutes) There's a lot going on in that cottage in the woods....Hansel, Gretel and Snow White lead a host of fairy-tale creatures through the classic tale.

Cast of 24-26 (25 minutes) "Well, first there's a family who drinks nothing but tea...with parents whose children can never agree. And children with parents too lazy to work.... and then we move on to the Ogre Family." -- Jack has lost his beans at the market. But he and his cow come up with a plan which ends up teaching the whole village a lesson or two about hard work and not judging (even ogres) by their appearance.

A rhyme-filled original play for the stage based on the classic tale. Full of fun characters and music.

(10 minutes) The circus is in trouble. Not even the solo acts can save it. And now the Ringmaster has fired the stagehands... What will they do? Join the clowns, dancers, acrobats, lion tamer and dare-devil for one crazy day at the circus!

(10 minutes) Join a class as they count their way backward through classic nursery rhymes.
An original play for young children.

(10 minutes) The Octopus's Garden -- An age old family feud. Two children set off to find the Weird Sisters to set things right...Hints of Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and the Beverly Hillbillies!
(20 minutes) The Land of Submarines -- Sometime in the future. War. Students are sent under the sea to a "boarding school" for their safety. Their teacher (a shark!) teaches the children a lesson or two about tolerance. Blends poetry, humor and an anti-war message.
Themes: Underwater, the Sea, Adventure, Tolerance, Reconciliation, Education, Fear, Magic

(10 minutes) "The King was in his counting house/Counting out his money...The Queen was in the parlor eating bread and honey..." and thinking of marrying off their son, the Prince... So begins the retelling of the classic tale.

Cast of 21-25 (10 minutes) A Stonecutter asks for more than he should and learns a valuable lesson. A retelling of the Japanese tale.

Cast of 23-27 (20 minutes) Sheherazade will not see the sun rise if she fails to please the Sultan with her story-telling. Watch how she weaves her stories together night after night, for 1001 nights...in under a half an hour! A large cast ensemble adaptation of the classic tale 1001 Tales of the Arabian Nights

Cast of 20-22 (10 minutes) Henny Penny (aka Chicken Little) overhears Humpty Dumpty's "fake news" and leads everyone on a literal wild gaggle of a tea-drinking goose, duck and fox chase... An original large cast stage play based on the classic tales

Cast of 20-25 (10 minutes) An adaptation of the Bantu tale. No one knows the name of the tree, so no fruit will fall...and the creatures are famished. Many animals try, but they just can't remember the name of the tree. Until the most unlikely of animals remembers, and saves the day...Audiences will be delighted to remember the name of the tree when the actors 'forget'!

Cast of 13-27 (8 minutes) A Retelling of a Philippine myth; imagine feeling empathy for a mosquito!