Julius Galacki

When “Young Jack” Thompson became the second African-American to win a boxing title in 1930, he was paid $14.85 after “expenses” while the losing white boxer made $37,640. Today Thompson is forgotten, yet his story is more than a historical footnote. It resonates to our current world.

Thompson rose and fell and rose again, over and over. We follow his life from 1920 to 1946 (but scenes also occur through the subsequent decades, including up to today) as Thompson navigates around corrupt boxing officials and gangsters, the Klu Klux Klan in Los Angeles, his complicated relationship with his step father, his wife and his lover, and not least, his friendship and rivalry with both an Irish boxer and a Jewish boxer.

Based on my own original research, I attempt to right this wrong and relate it to today's issues of racial injustice. But not just thematically, as I use a framing device of returning through the play to a modern young African-American teen and the ghost of Young Jack telling his story while both are in the Angelus Rosedale Cemetery.

Stylistically, the play mixes realistic scenes with Epic Theatre techniques (projections, music, dance and other non-naturalistic devices).

Note on the development history: I revised and shortened the play for the June 2020 Zoom reading that included Equity and SAG actors (one of whom won an Emmy Award).

“The Master and the Magician,” is a romp, a farce, a hotchpot of mistaken identity, physical buffoonery, vulgarity, rhymed couplets, alliterations and word play (e.g. “I must snare this hare before she becomes rabidly aware.”): a fractured fairy tale for adults that culminates in an increasingly frenetic, farcical series of reversals.

To this end, the language of the play initially is straightforward and fairly naturalistic, but as the realm of magic becomes the locale of the action, the words also become more heightened and overtly poetic and playful. Yet beneath this seemingly light entertainment is a contemplation of class, gender roles, the nature of love and mortality itself.

Class is built into the very vocabulary of the characters as the noble Lovers employ a greater proportion of French derived words; the peasant Lovers use more Anglo-Saxon based words and the magical characters utilize Latinate words. The play uses the conventions and clichés of its faux medieval world (romantic love, divine right of kings, etc.) to both subvert those conventions in not only the world of the play, but more importantly, our own modern world.

Notes: the characters of the Magician and the Master (i.e. the Puck-like fairy spirit can be played by either a man or a woman, as I've specifically re-written the play to make that possible. The play has undergone a long development process with multiple public readings in classically trained actors in New Haven, Delaware and Los Angeles.

It is just after World War 2, and Sian and her husband Joe love each other, but each has been changed by their wartime experiences. For Sian, working in an aircraft factory was the beginning of an evolution of consciousness. At first, however, she can only act on her feelings for her tempting next-door neighbor, Katrina, in a Film Noir fantasy where Sian is the detective and Katrina is the femme fatale. Meanwhile Joe struggles with both PTSD and survivor guilt. Sian eventually finds the courage to accept her sexuality and risk everything in real life. (Note: the video link is to a scene from the May 16, 2020 online reading with a strong cast that included an Emmy nominated actress and an Emmy winning actor... please contact me directly for a private link to a recording of the entire play reading.)

The play is a darkly humorous, poetic drama that goes on a metaphysical journey in which one heroine drives her car headlong into the mouth of a laughing god, but simultaneously also travels from fury to forgiveness.

Each act has 3 characters that must be played by the same set of 3 actors. This is important for the themes of the play as it slowly becomes clear that the two main characters are doppelgangers.

At the end, the stories from both acts as well as the doppelganger characters integrate into a new wholeness – where love is once again possible.

Note: the 1998 workshop reading at the Yale Rep was directed by Obie Award winning director Evan Yionoulis and included Oscar and Tony nominated actress Amy Ryan.

A Lady (Penelope) is BORED and thus has her male Butler assume the role of her female former best friend. The play is a sequel of sorts to "A Man of No Importance" - my Oscar Wilde homage in which the Lady, Penelope, had dueled over tea with Helen, her new "best friend" regarding Penelope's husband. The sequel is more a satire about class as well as manners. (Note: the Pandramatica Play Reading Festival noted below was recorded on Zoom - contact me at my email address in my script and I will send you the Vimeo link and password.)

in this parody, Charlie Brown is visited by a rabbinical ghost who tells Charlie that he, the Christmas icon, is really Jewish and really a Brownstein. Charlie tries to discover what it means to be a Jew and the true meaning of the Festival of Lights by directing a Hanukkah pageant. (Note: there is only one song in play, at the very end, a parody of the 12 Days of Christmas, so it's not literally a musical. There is some political commentary particularly in regards to the genesis of the African-American character Franklin.)

Scrooge is visited by a series of ghosts who teach him about Kwanaaa and leading a better life. The play is both a parody of A Christmas Carol by Dickens and while the play is comic, it is a serious explanation of Kwanzaa

A less than 7 minute comic play which finds a middle-aged couple post-coitus for the first time together; an event that was less than fully satisfying. However, through some neurotic back and forth, they find a way back together. (Note: the video file is the entire play performed for the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights' In Our Own Voices series... this year held on Zoom because of the pandemic.)

A short play about the things we miss and why they went missing in the first place. A man asks his long time girlfriend where a missing photo is, but the audience realizes only later that this is a remembered conversation and we end in the present.

A 15 minute comedy where a therapist takes her annoying, OCD client to the park to “process” his emotions about a disastrous date that happened in the park, but once there, her own repressed memories are triggered.

A homage to wit and Wilde (Oscar, that is) in which an insignificant man is the excuse for two women to duel over tea. Penelope has invited Helen over for tea because of the latter's affair with her husband, Harry Homer.

A couple of gangsters head up to the North Pole but get properly elf-handled.

In the sweet, comedy FIRST NIGHT, finds Thomas and Sarah in bed after having coitus for the first time with less than stellar results. Nonetheless, they fumble toward a positive degree of post-coital communication... (Note: I adapted the play into a short film. It played at a couple of film festivals, was nominated for an STTV Award and was shown on Palm Springs PBS in 2014.)

A black comedy set in a diner that is not what it appears to be, in which a poetry salesman – he sells the words of "only the best dead people" - receives his comeuppance from and an oddball "cook" and a judicious waitress who has a heart of gold for only those that deserve it.

Approx. 30 minutes long.

Note: a monologue from an earlier version of the play was published by Smith & Kraus for their "Audition Arsenal" series.

A drama consisting of a series of rotating monologues spoken directly to the audience. Thematically, the play is an examination of the relativity of truth, but on a literal level, each monologue is a simple recounting of an important event and/or observation made by each character: a high school psychologist, a teenage girl, a blue-collar father and his maladjusted teenage son. While initially their lives seem rather separate, the latter character becomes the link and focal point of the play in a strongly emotional ending.

Note: a monologue from the play was published in Smith & Kraus "Audition Arsenal for Men in their 20s"

In a modern wasteland of diner divers, apartment stoops and bedroom floors, two guys are stuck, so they pass the time by talking about profound things in profoundly foolish ways. (It is in essence, my version of 'Waiting for Godot.') '...CHICKEN' is both a play about how NOT to live one's life yet also a paean to the saving grace of friendship.

The title is a double entendre referencing the literal variations of Fast Food and living in fear, particularly the male variety of such.

Structurally, I label this play a vaudeville both because it is both a comedy and because it has a circular structure, like “Waiting for Godot” and also like Godot, it is made up of “routines” that the “boys” create not just to pass the time but quite literally to survive.

For each character has a reveal (mid-way for Ray, and near the end for Dave) of despair and/or loneliness that underlies ALL of the comedy. In other words, the play has a deceptively light surface. Their patter is a desperate bid to make a fairly meaningless moment into something significant. Also, unlike the aforementioned theatrical role model, hope is not obliquely embodied by a single leaf on a bare Beckettian tree, but rather is more overtly the light in the night sky, and the plot more clearly clear moves forward in time even while it circles back.

Note: a monologue from the play appeared in Smith & Kraus' "Audition Arsenal" series.

Also, in 2013 I adapted the play into a 30 minute, subtracting the 3rd male but adding some female characters. The film was nominated for 5 awards, including Best Short, at the Tenerife [Spain] International Film Festival, won Best Short Film Screenplay at the FireReel Film Festival and Best Score at the Williamsburg [Brooklyn] International Film Festival. It was shown at film festivals in the US, Canada, Germany and Spain.