SOON TO BE PUBLISHED. A 15 minute play for younger actors and youth groups - a staging of the famous poem that begins "Twas the Night Before Christmas" - that goes off the rails with interruptions, arguments, dancing sugar plums, and of course a mouse stirring a big bowl with a spoon!
Note: there are two versions of this script, one for US audiences, the other with language adapted for the UK. Contact the playwright for the UK version.

36 minutes.
This is a one act version of my published full length play, edited to be UIL performance length! I'd love to get some feedback, and I will probably tweak it after the first performance before I submit it to my publisher as the official one act version.
The Ithaca Ladies Read Medea is about 1950's faculty wives who get together for a play reading, while suspecting that one of them has betrayed the others to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.
The full length version includes the role of Senator Mundt, who interrogates each of the four faculty wives about their husband's activities.

Ten Minute Play - Four teenagers, lost in the remains of a forest after a devastating fire, search for the former camp site of their friend who started the blaze - but find that ghosts, secrets, and guilt endure long after the flames have died.

Full length (excerpt only - published work) When privileged Anastasia is sent to a Siberian gulag for the murder of her abusive husband, her arrival destroys the intricate web of hierarchy, alliance and treachery among the other four inmates of her bunkhouse. To save herself, Anastasia must save all of them: the prostitute, the killer, the lifer... and Prushka - the mouse.
The feature film based on this play - Where We Disappear - is available on iTunes, Amazon, Fandango, DirecTV, Vudu and other streaming services.
"A Gulag Mouse is the one that approaches genius, the one that has a chance of outliving its author, the one I'm thinking about as the next week begins and will be thinking about for a long time to come." - Anchorage Daily News
Content Warning: Spousal abuse, violence, discussion of sexual violence.

10 minute play. Gabrielle is haunted by nightmares after the drowning death of her young daughter. Her husband Raoul is equally distraught - but he's also ripped apart by the fact that Gabrielle dreams their daughter is a monster coming to get her. It's a fight between two broken, hurting people lashing out to try and handle their pain. There is a brief appearance by the ghost of their daughter at the end - a non-speaking part, playable by almost any age actor, but useful for a child's first role.
The play premieres in May 2018 in Australia.
Content Warning - please read the description for themes.

Full length (excerpt only - published work) A spoiled princess is tasked by a witch with finding three magical gifts if she wants to escape an arranged marriage to a stupid prince - but discovers that the true magic is within herself all along. Published by YouthPLAYS, Inc.

One Act - A frail hypochondriac tries to ask his neighbor's headstrong daughter to marry him in spite of a long history of rivalry between their families.
This play is an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Marriage Proposal, but set in Wheeler County, Georgia in 1881.

Ten Minute Play - A man with no feelings falls for a woman with no taste at a support group for the sensory deprived.
Published in Smith & Kraus' Best Ten Minute Plays of 2012
"Unique, lip-smacking, gourmet surprises.... The Four Senses of Love written by Arthur M. Jolly is a hilarious coupling of two members of a sensory-deprived support group." - Chicago Theater Beat
Content warning: Onstage kiss, discussion of disabilities and "passing".

Ten minute play. Four men meet at the urinals of a restaurant bathroom - and clash over politics, physical attributes, the meaning of masculinity... and of life.

Full length play (excerpt only - published work) In 1953, after interrogation by the House Unamerican Activities Committee, four university wives meet for their monthly play reading, knowing one of them betrayed the others.
Tonight, their secrets and their deceptions will burst through the veneer of decency they struggle to maintain.
This is the night they have chosen to read Medea.

There are roles for six women - 2 in their 20's, three in their 40's or 50's and one a generation older than the others (60's up.) One of the women uses a wheelchair. There is one additional role for a man, for a total cast of 6F, 1M.

Note: This play has just been published by Next Stage Press. Having polished it literally until the final version sent to print, I know that any version previously downloaded here is out of date. If you want a perusal copy for a theatre proposal, please contact me directly, or, if you have the $, purchase the play through Amazon!
"Mr. Jolly’s play is in turns drawing room comedy, serious social satire, and bitter political drama. It is also utterly fascinating and perfectly absorbing. I suspect this play will have legs and I expect it will be picked up by many theatre companies looking to make the best use of their female actors." - Theatre Notes Review
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10 minute play - still in development.
Two siblings are stuck with the weird, creepy - and ultimately maybe not even human - kid from next door, on July Fourth, when there are firecrackers to be stolen and played with. Let freedom ring!
Suitable for high school, possibly Middle although it might be too edgy. Still in development, so happy to hear your opinion.
Content Warning: implied offstage horror; blood.

10 Minute Play. What's worse, a dead rat in the toilet or a dead husband in the kitchen? Is there a difference?
In the play, Babs has to make some tough decisions when her old flame Abby turns up on the run from her abusive husband - who she's stabbed in the back of the neck with a kitchen knife.
It's a dark comedy with a heart of murder. (This play was formerly titled "Of Rats and men")
Content warning: discussion of past spousal abuse, mostly implied.

Full length (excerpt only - published work) Seventeen year old Kirstie gets caught sneaking home after curfew. Her mother, Sarah, has been waiting up with a bottle for company. Sarah's thirty-four, which, if you'll do the math, explains why she's so distraught about Kirstie being out with a boy... Michael. Kirstie's first crush.
Years of bitter conflicts gradually erupt in a night of head games played to the limit as Sarah and Kirstie finally confront the unspoken issues between them, including Sarah's conviction that becoming a mother at 17 ruined her life.
Michael's arrival after Kirstie has fled in tears only makes things worse; but eventually, as the layers of lies and truths wielded as weapons are stripped away, the core of their relationship is exposed - and can be rebuilt.
Content Warning: On stage violence, abusive relationship, discussion of prior sexual abuse (implied), themes of self-harm, adult F/teen M "seduction" scene.

10 minute play - Shades of Glen Garry, Glen Ross in a life insurance office, when irascible co-workers and their awkward boss must decide who gets the commissions when the leading salesman gets squished by a bus.
The play took first place in the Tree City Playhouse 10 minute play competition.

10 minute play. A mother reveals to her three bickering children that her cancer has returned - more aggressively - and she has only a few months to live. Sibling rivalry in the face of family tragedy...
While the play is dramatic, the characters use humor to deal with their situation - and I have debated describing it as a "dramedy"... like so many of my plays, it skates back and forth across that line.
Content warning: cancer and discussion of end of life planning.

MONOLOGUE - a stand alone monologue, about two minutes long, written for a local High School drama class.

In Sugar on My Fingers, a seventeen year old girl confronts her older sister about an abusive boyfriend.

Content warning: Discussion of domestic violence & physical abuse.

Full length play (excerpt only - published work) The play takes place entirely in a dump - a municipal landfill, where two estranged sisters have come to look for a letter from their mother. They've come from their mother's funeral - the first time they've seen each other in years, and as they dig through the literal and metaphorical trash heap, they get further and further into their complicated relationship with each other - and with the lives they led under the shadow of an abusive, domineering mother who still controls and influences them even after her death.
The published version of the play takes place in the US, but there is a UK-centric version of this play available from the author, created for the London premiere at the Rosemary Branch Theatre, with language and concepts translated for a UK audience.
"Trash is such a powerful play that once the setting has been quickly established, I wanted to stay and pay attention to this part-conversation, part-argument, part-fight between Diane (Emma Shenkman) and Becky (Georgina Philipps), sisters for whom sibling rivalry not only runs deep but intensely troubling, and even life-threatening." London Theatre One

One Act (excerpt only - published work) Reginald Niebold, stricken with cancer, holds a secret that his symptoms have deteriorated, and he knows his time is almost up. Niebold, however, is determined to wring the last moments of joy out of life, and his irrepressible spirit will awaken even jaded Nurse Lauder, who has worked on the ward too long to care anymore. Published by Next Stage Press in the collection "Thin Lines"
"a nuanced, moving portrayal of one man's last great battle." - Urban Milwaukee