Peter Papadopoulos

Peter Papadopoulos

Peter's work has been produced and published in the United States, Australia, China, and the United Kingdom. Channeling strong socio-political themes, expressionism, absurdism, and epic athletic staging, his plays aim to create a thought-provoking theatricality that merges the raw power of Oedipus Rex with the jaunty wit of Saturday Night Live.

His short play In the Cool Cool Cool was...
Peter's work has been produced and published in the United States, Australia, China, and the United Kingdom. Channeling strong socio-political themes, expressionism, absurdism, and epic athletic staging, his plays aim to create a thought-provoking theatricality that merges the raw power of Oedipus Rex with the jaunty wit of Saturday Night Live.

His short play In the Cool Cool Cool was published in Karawane and named a finalist for the Actors Theatre of Louisville's Heideman Award. The play is also scheduled to appear in a collection of American plays to be published in China.

Last Love, part 1 of his Love-Gone-Wrong-at-the-End-of-the-World Trilogy, ran at the Totem Theatre in Alice Springs, Australia and is published with Playscripts and in Algonquin Plays, Volume One. Part 2 of the trilogy, the climate change meltdown play Lost Love, has been produced in Chicago, Minneapolis, and San Francisco.

Love Love, the final part of the trilogy written in the years leading up to Covid, tells the story of a viral pandemic sweeping across the globe, and was selected for the NEWvember play festival in Tivoli, NY.

Peter has an MFA in Theatre from Trinity Repertory/Rhode Island College. He is a former Artistic Director and Playwriting teacher at Mojo Theatre in San Francisco, and has taught playwriting and acting at Indiana State University and other programs.

Plays

  • LOVE LOVE
    **WRITTEN IN THE YEARS LEADING UP TO COVID**
    If history is written by the winners, then things don't look good for the humans when Wayne the Cockroach takes over narration of this play halfway through the first act.

    A deadly virus has swept across the planet, a modern plague that overwhelms the scientists and health workers who try to fight it off.

    As bodies pile up...
    **WRITTEN IN THE YEARS LEADING UP TO COVID**
    If history is written by the winners, then things don't look good for the humans when Wayne the Cockroach takes over narration of this play halfway through the first act.

    A deadly virus has swept across the planet, a modern plague that overwhelms the scientists and health workers who try to fight it off.

    As bodies pile up on street corners, people across the world lock themselves indoors, flee out to sea, and a specially chosen group blasts off into space in search of a new planet.

    LOVE LOVE follows a small band of these survivors as they make their last stand against both this viral pandemic and mutual aggression. In this world of cockroaches, ghosts, and the shattered remnants of human culture, these survivors must find their desire to go on living and make soul-searching decisions about what steps they are willing to take to stay alive.

    KIT and VON, holed up in their seaside house, battle to keep out invaders; HELEN, traveling among the stars in the human escape spaceship, fights to break free of her computer captors; CARTER, in a boat on the open ocean, draws his guns as he prepares for his final showdown.

    A love letter to our endangered human race, LOVE LOVE pays homage to our rich history and culture, and the human heart that created it all.
  • The Bartender Mixes Magic Light
    MAN and WOMAN rendezvous in the classic bar pickup scene.
    Or is it?

    They speed through their fledgling relationship--the lust phase, the sharing phase, the
    blaming phase, and finally the family phase with a childbirth on top of the bar--all before closing time and Santa's arrival.

    Can these would be barfly lovers find transcendent grace under the tutelage of...
    MAN and WOMAN rendezvous in the classic bar pickup scene.
    Or is it?

    They speed through their fledgling relationship--the lust phase, the sharing phase, the
    blaming phase, and finally the family phase with a childbirth on top of the bar--all before closing time and Santa's arrival.

    Can these would be barfly lovers find transcendent grace under the tutelage of their
    benevolent libation-slinging guru?

    And who the heck is on the rooftop with his reindeer?
  • The Last Great Climate Change Debate
    The Last Great Climate Change Debate takes place among a small group of survivors huddled on the very last piece of land left above sea level. They battle howling weather and rising tides as they debate--for the final time--whether climate change is real.
  • LOST LOVE: The Final 100 Years
    Lost Love follows two pairs as they battle for survival and love in a world on the brink. The waters are rising fast in this global warming world and everyone and everything is melting down.

    Mitzy, a waterlogged, wedding-day bride is trapped on a mountaintop with Tito, a streetwise, Zen-wise parking valet after violent flooding rips through her wedding. Outside of the flood's reach, another...
    Lost Love follows two pairs as they battle for survival and love in a world on the brink. The waters are rising fast in this global warming world and everyone and everything is melting down.

    Mitzy, a waterlogged, wedding-day bride is trapped on a mountaintop with Tito, a streetwise, Zen-wise parking valet after violent flooding rips through her wedding. Outside of the flood's reach, another storm is brewing. Barb has cheated on her longtime partner, Jan, whose explosive grief is shaking their house to pieces.

    Another torrential storm is on its way. Can these couples find their way back to love in time to save the human race?

    "A little jewel of an existentialist comedy..." ~Robert Avila, San Francisco Bay Guardian

    "The best cabin-fever housewife since Tony Kushner’s Harper Pitt." ~Lisbeth Redfield, Chicago Maroon
  • The Fourth of July--A Glorious Day for a Revolution
    It's July 4th of that momentous year, 1776. But what exactly happened on this day that is cause for our modern celebration? This farcical play takes us through the day as our founding fathers (played by women of color) are joined by a merchant who, after months blockaded at sea, has finally broken through the British blockade in time to join them for this glorious day.
  • LAST LOVE: All that Rises Must Burn
    Drunken poetry. Competitive sex. Furniture hurling.

    Two couples battle in a mountainside house as an international terror crisis looms outside. A darkly funny and expressionistic look at cycles of violence--from couples arguing over the toilet seat to troops fighting in the Iraq War.

    "The outrageous situations that evolve are not only laugh-out-loud funny, but also provide...
    Drunken poetry. Competitive sex. Furniture hurling.

    Two couples battle in a mountainside house as an international terror crisis looms outside. A darkly funny and expressionistic look at cycles of violence--from couples arguing over the toilet seat to troops fighting in the Iraq War.

    "The outrageous situations that evolve are not only laugh-out-loud funny, but also provide incredible insight into relationships." ~Centralian Advocate (Australia)

    Read 95% of this play for free at the publisher, Playscripts:
    http://www.playscripts.com/play/658
  • In the Cool Cool Cool
    An adult Dr. Seuss bedtime divorce story set in a small bedroom by the shore. Told simultaneously by the wife, husband, his girlfriend, and their young son.

    "in the linen closet the doctor deposits a lifetime of absentee fatherhood dreaming. the linen needs cleaning after all of that creaming. but the linens of the next lingering losing love love-affair line the next shelf."
    ...
    An adult Dr. Seuss bedtime divorce story set in a small bedroom by the shore. Told simultaneously by the wife, husband, his girlfriend, and their young son.

    "in the linen closet the doctor deposits a lifetime of absentee fatherhood dreaming. the linen needs cleaning after all of that creaming. but the linens of the next lingering losing love love-affair line the next shelf."

    Will anyone make it out of this sordid surgery alive?

    *Published in journal Karawane, Spring 2007.
  • The Huns
    The post office has taken over the government and the police deliver the mail. Surveillance has photographed fallen leader Terrence whispering to his tuna salad sandwich. What does this mean? And who is fomenting a new revolution at the ballparks?