Louise Schwarz

Louise Schwarz

Louise Schwarz's award-winning plays have been produced and developed all over the country, including the New York International Fringe Festival/Theatre for the New City, the Mark Taper Forum's New Work Festival, Stage Left Theatre, Pandora’s Box PlayRites of Spring Festival, Horizon Theatre’s New South for the New Century Festival, Trilogy Theatre, Railroad Playhouse, Playwrights' Round Table,...
Louise Schwarz's award-winning plays have been produced and developed all over the country, including the New York International Fringe Festival/Theatre for the New City, the Mark Taper Forum's New Work Festival, Stage Left Theatre, Pandora’s Box PlayRites of Spring Festival, Horizon Theatre’s New South for the New Century Festival, Trilogy Theatre, Railroad Playhouse, Playwrights' Round Table, Pulse Ensemble Theatre, Neo Pack Productions, Oscar Hammerstein Center, Cherry Lane Alternative, New Perspectives Theatre, RAL Productions/Museum of Sex, ESPA Drills/Primary Stages, Shakespeare on the Sound, ANDTheatre, among others.

Fellowships and residencies include Blue Mountain Center, Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Hambidge Center, and the Edward Albee Foundation. She has taught playwriting at Oklahoma State University, Hofstra University, Northern Stage, and Appel Farm Arts & Music Center. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and a member of Honor Roll!, an advocacy group of women+ playwrights over 40.

M.F.A. Playwriting, Columbia University. B.A. Drama, University of Georgia.

Plays

  • Control of the Dirt by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: coping with death and grief, in-laws + 3 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama
    Keyword: coping with death and grief, in-laws, college, contains LGBTQ characters, Mental Health
    In this tragicomic play, grieving widow Vanessa is trying to kick her late wife's nightmare-ish burden of a sister out of her apartment. When an easy way out presents itself through one of her therapy clients, she has a difficult decision to make between her own well-being and that of her patient.

    Full-length.
  • When the Lights Go Out in Georgia by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 3 more
    ·
    Keyword: addiction, centers a LGBTQ character + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, satire, tragedy
    Keyword: addiction, centers a LGBTQ character, middle age crisis, classic sitcoms, adult friendships, heartbreak
    Georgia is facing middle age with some comforting sitcom marathons, her own best-selling book of dating advice for men, and a penchant for booze-soaked oblivion. When her partner walks out leaving her devastated, she needs to figure out how she can keep her “respectable” career as a relationship coach legitimate. Will her new intern keep her from falling apart or will she make some shady moves and alienate the...
    Georgia is facing middle age with some comforting sitcom marathons, her own best-selling book of dating advice for men, and a penchant for booze-soaked oblivion. When her partner walks out leaving her devastated, she needs to figure out how she can keep her “respectable” career as a relationship coach legitimate. Will her new intern keep her from falling apart or will she make some shady moves and alienate the last remaining holdouts in her life?

    Full-length.
  • Next Time On Spring Valley by Louise Schwarz
    Recommendations: 2
    ·
    Cast: 
    7
    ·
    Genre: comedy
    ·
    Keyword: fandom, soap opera + 7 more
    Genre: comedy
    Keyword: fandom, soap opera, anxiety disorder, divorce, LGBTQ, train travel, long lost identical twins, pregnancy, celebrity
    Two fanatics and their unwitting accomplices board a cross-country train with a mission of grave social and cultural import. How far would you go to save your favorite soap?

    Full-length comedy.
  • The Children's After-Hour by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    2
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, drama + 3 more
    ·
    Keyword: reimagined classic, LGBTQ + 2 more
    Genre: adaptation, drama, melodrama, period, tragedy
    Keyword: reimagined classic, LGBTQ, lillian hellman, 1930s
    What happened to Rosalie Wells after the events of Lillian Hellman's 1935 drama The Children's Hour?

    A ten-minute play.
  • Goat Coaster by Louise Schwarz
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    10
    ·
    Genre: comedy, young audiences
    ·
    Keyword: teenagers, petty theft + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, young audiences
    Keyword: teenagers, petty theft, amusement park, Colonial America, kleptomania, summer job
    A group of high school students spend their summer working at Golden Olden Adventure Towne, a theme park outside a major American city in the southeast. G.O.A.T is having trouble adapting to a changing world where the theme park's old colonial themes don't quite work the way they used to. Just as the season is getting underway, some employees' personal items start to go missing. They quickly...
    A group of high school students spend their summer working at Golden Olden Adventure Towne, a theme park outside a major American city in the southeast. G.O.A.T is having trouble adapting to a changing world where the theme park's old colonial themes don't quite work the way they used to. Just as the season is getting underway, some employees' personal items start to go missing. They quickly suspect the thief is among them.

    A short but full-length comedy, that can also be adjusted into a one-act by removing some or all of the interstitial scenes.
  • Why Summer Is A Lie by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: coming of age, sexual orientation + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, drama
    Keyword: coming of age, sexual orientation, sexual harassment, Summer Camp, discussions of childhood sexual abuse, Gay and LGBTQ
    At a sleep-away summer camp in New Jersey in 1997, teenage Livvie and her friends struggle with coming of age, and face what happens when deeply troubled kids clash with deeply troubled adults.

    Full-length dramedy.
  • This Is Not A Project by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    5–9
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: wrongful conviction, dating and relationships + 1 more
    Genre: comedy, drama, romantic comedy
    Keyword: wrongful conviction, dating and relationships, exoneration
    Lyle has been exonerated after over a decade languishing on Pennsylvania's death row for a crime he didn't commit. He's grateful for his freedom, but has much to learn about the how the world has changed in his time away. More than anything, Lyle wants a nice girl to settle down with -- no easy task for someone with such an infamous background.

    Full length dramedy.
  • Sorry City by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 3 more
    ·
    Keyword: adult children with aging mother, aging + 3 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, mystery/thriller, tragedy
    Keyword: adult children with aging mother, aging, Generation X, suspicious death, hometown
    Bess has returned to the city where she grew up to work a thankless temp job at a bank while helping her elderly mother Donna recover from knee surgery, when the man who crushed her now middle-aged and hardened heart as a young woman turns up dead. First assumed to be an accident, the death quickly becomes a preoccupation of a group of Bess's former high school friends.

    Full-length tragicomic mystery.
  • Pluses and Minuses by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy
    Genre: comedy
    Angie and her friend Josephine go to buy her a pregnancy test after getting a little liquid courage, much to the extreme discomfort of an innocent drugstore clerk.

    10-minute comedy. Fun for accent work (midwestern/Minnesota).
  • How To Be A Rock Star by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: comedy
    ·
    Keyword: rock stars, drugs and rock n' roll + 1 more
    Genre: comedy
    Keyword: rock stars, drugs and rock n' roll, nostalgia for days gone by

    Sammy, the former rhythm guitarist of the once-legendary rock band Snake Train, has gotten sober and is trying to get the band back together decades later. Trouble is, their new lead guitarist Decker is much younger and hasn’t quite gotten the hedonism and decadence of rock n’ roll out of his system. Sammy and his bandmates enlist the help of Betsy, his childhood best friend, to house them in her...

    Sammy, the former rhythm guitarist of the once-legendary rock band Snake Train, has gotten sober and is trying to get the band back together decades later. Trouble is, their new lead guitarist Decker is much younger and hasn’t quite gotten the hedonism and decadence of rock n’ roll out of his system. Sammy and his bandmates enlist the help of Betsy, his childhood best friend, to house them in her mountain home in an effort to get Decker clean and to make the old magic happen again.

    Full-length dramedy.
  • A Life in Public Service (a monologue) by Louise Schwarz
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    1
    ·
    Genre: comedy, political
    ·
    Keyword: student council, childcare + 3 more
    Genre: comedy, political
    Keyword: student council, childcare, Adolescence, coming of age, female coming of age
    Monologue: A girl at various ages from 5 to 18 makes her stump speech running for student government. Great comic solo piece to show very wide range.

    (The spacing looks weird but it doubles as a prop -- you'll see!)
  • Theories of the Pole by Louise Schwarz
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    6–8
    ·
    Genre: comedy, movement/physical
    ·
    Keyword: Stripper, feminism + 2 more
    Genre: comedy, movement/physical
    Keyword: Stripper, feminism, generational divide, female sexuality
    Three young women decide to start a feminist revolution from the inside of a strip club.

    Full-length comedy.
  • That Bad Actress by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    7
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: con artist, dysfunction
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, satire
    Keyword: con artist, dysfunction
    Prudence, a struggling NYC actress who has been cut off by her wealthy father on her 35th birthday, uses her considerable acting talents to obtain money in increasingly damaging and unethical ways.

    Full-length comedy.
  • A Little Bit Vacant by Louise Schwarz
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy
    ·
    Keyword: roadside motels, infidelity + 2 more
    Genre: comedy
    Keyword: roadside motels, infidelity, affairs, adult friendships
    10-minute play

    In this short comedy, Nora runs into her best friend in the most awkward of places. Will either of them tell the truth about their reason for being there?
  • Fairy Tale (a monologue) by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    1
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 4 more
    ·
    Keyword: deconstructed fairy tale, deconstructing patriarchy + 2 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, fable/folktale, parody/spoof, satire, tragedy
    Keyword: deconstructed fairy tale, deconstructing patriarchy, domestic abuse, dark comedy
    Cinderella is trying to hang on to her perfect image and her perfect hair and her perfect marriage. Abuse and addiction tell another story.

    Dark comic monologue.
  • The Journalist's Manifesto (a monologue) by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    1
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy
    ·
    Keyword: monologue, TV journalist + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy
    Keyword: monologue, TV journalist, madness, drunk, abuse, murder
    A monologue in which a local news reporter has a bit of an onscreen meltdown while delivering the verdict in a murder trial. Great bizarro piece that an actress can really play around with and show her range in an audition.
  • Four Thirty at Sunrise by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: comedy
    ·
    Keyword: senior living, Assisted Living + 2 more
    Genre: comedy
    Keyword: senior living, Assisted Living, elderly women, School cafeteria
    Ten-minute play. The residents of Sunrise Villas Graduated Assisted Living Facility are discovering how little their dining room dynamics differ from that of the school cafeteria. We must avoid Betsy AT ALL COSTS!

    4 women, seniors but it's also fun when the characters are played by children
  • She's Got A Nice One by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: deconstructed fairy tale, Nursery Rhymes + 1 more
    Genre: comedy, drama, experimental, fable/folktale
    Keyword: deconstructed fairy tale, Nursery Rhymes, Existential Absurdism
    A ten-minute absurdist play. Old King Cole is having an existential crisis as two of his trio of fiddlers have gone to the other side and one is losing his hearing. It's also always daylight in his kingdom and it's starting to drive him mad.
  • Fair Maiden by Louise Schwarz
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy
    ·
    Keyword: coming of age, rock star + 3 more
    Genre: comedy
    Keyword: coming of age, rock star, 1980, junior high, school dance
    Future rock star Sammy doesn't want to be at the junior high dance in 1980, but Greg (the drummer, of course) thinks it's the perfect time to put the moves on early bloomer Betsy. But can the spark ever be rekindled after she says something less than kind about Led Zeppelin?

    Ten-minute comedy.
  • Into the Confines of Paradise by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: adam and eve, absurd comedy + 2 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, fable/folktale
    Keyword: adam and eve, absurd comedy, college age, sexuality
    Adam and Eve are bored out of their minds, hoping someone else will show up and liven things up a bit. Is Lucy too good to be true?

    Ten-minute play about faith, sexuality, and boredom.
  • The Nostalgia Cure by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: divorce, sexual assault + 2 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama
    Keyword: divorce, sexual assault, consent, aging
    Growing up is a funny thing. In the wake of his divorce, Will wants to turn back the clock and hopes that Farrah will help him recapture the old days. Can shame re-shape a memory?

    Ten-minute play.

  • Like A Glove by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: fandom, proposal + 1 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, romantic comedy
    Keyword: fandom, proposal, horror movies
    Marge, Simon, and Aaron visit the filming site of their favorite horror film, A Nightmare on Elm Street, to recreate an iconic scene, but some even scarier things are revealed in the re-enactment.

    Ten-minute comedy.
  • Lawyer Prep (a monologue) by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    1
    ·
    Genre: comedy, farce
    ·
    Keyword: attorney, trials
    Genre: comedy, farce
    Keyword: attorney, trials
    Monologue about an attorney who prepares for trial after a long time away from practicing law. A long, long time during which she watched way too much television. Good, big comic audition piece!
  • The Fair Hope Memorial by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    7–10
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 3 more
    ·
    Keyword: abortion access, LGBTQ + 2 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, political, tragedy
    Keyword: abortion access, LGBTQ, southern, Reproductive Rights
    In 1999, a reporter from a popular New York women’s magazine visits a small town in Alabama to interview the proprietors of a controversial abortion clinic. As she arrives, the town is preparing to unveil a statue of two young children, one white and one Black, who were recently killed in a tragic accident. What she uncovers is a community torn apart by racial and religious tensions.

    Full-length dramedy.
  • Beauty Pageant Massacre by Louise Schwarz
    Cast: 
    8–12
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, horror + 4 more
    ·
    Keyword: beauty pageants, beauty queens + 5 more
    Genre: dark comedy, horror, musical, mystery/thriller, parody/spoof, satire
    Keyword: beauty pageants, beauty queens, comedy horror, LGBTQ, thriller, horror satire, Mostly female cast by female playwright
    A group of young women arrive at a theater to participate in a county beauty pageant. As the other contestants start to go missing and horrifying discoveries are made, the pageant host decides that the show must go on. How much blood and terror can these women withstand in order to win that prized crown? (Hint: it's a lot.)

    Special Note: this play does contain a few performed songs and...
    A group of young women arrive at a theater to participate in a county beauty pageant. As the other contestants start to go missing and horrifying discoveries are made, the pageant host decides that the show must go on. How much blood and terror can these women withstand in order to win that prized crown? (Hint: it's a lot.)

    Special Note: this play does contain a few performed songs and dances. Sheet music and recordings are available upon request, but other music can be used. It has also been adapted to be locale-specific if desired (e.g., the original NJ production's pageant was "Miss Glassboro," but became "Miss Middletown" in a CT production).