Balloon
Play Description
On the eve of his departure from Paris, Benjamin Franklin and his French contemporaries avoid goodbyes by engaging in charades and parlor games. The passions of revolution are overshadowed by the intensity of personal relationships in this structurally inventive play within a play.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (1 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“… the power of BALLOON is its density … magnificence … poignancy … Encountering BALLOON bears some resemblance to being overwhelmed while assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle, but then relishing its finished design.” —The Times London
“It’s absolutely first-rate … serious, intelligent, challenging, a play that’s humane in its concerns, vividly theatrical, and gracefully written with one sharp epigram after another … full-blooded drama, layered with meaning … intriguing conceit … the individual in history, both as shaper and thing shaped … a play about the shapes of lives and the fates of nations.” —The Record
“… intriguing … arresting ideas … full of an engaging playfulness, an admirable seriousness.” —Women’s Wear Daily
“[Sunde] converts our text book history into flesh and blood passions … People achieving greatly, now and then crippled by arrogance and intolerance, suffering mightily, dazzled by possibilities, devastated by disappointments yet continuing and surviving are what she dramatizes.” —The Villager
“The extremely high quality … is apparent throughout — it bubbles with crisp language, depth, and humor. Your “actor’s ear” serves you so truthfully and consistently. So rich … And thus so rare. Coming to the BALLOON for the third time just now leaves me in awe … Truly.” —Richard Dysart
Author(s)
Karen SundePlaywright/Screenwriter Karen Sunde was first an actor. Off-Broadway she performed many leading roles and became Associate Director of CSC Repertory. Her plays have been performed Off-Broadway, in regional theatres, on a USA tour, in eleven countries, in seven languages. As screenwriter (adapting her plays) Sunde's won the Gold Prize from Hollywood Screenwriting Contest for IN A KINGDOM BY THE SEA; HOW HIS BRIDE CAME TO ABRAHAM is an "Official Selection" at Oaxaca Film Festival (www.abrahamfilm.org); UNDERCOVER PATRIOT was finalist at Sundance, THE FASTEST WOMAN ALIVE adapted for Howard S Shulman Productions, NYC. Among her plays: Shakespeare's DARK LADY, produced Abbey Theatre, Ireland; Aalborg State Theatre, Denmark; BALLOON, produced CSC won three VILLAGER awards Off-Broadway, nominated Best Play by Outer Critics Circle; in French, aired by Radio France; TO MOSCOW premiered Ankara National Theatre, Turkey; Chain Lightning, NYC. PLAYS BY KAREN SUNDE includes TRUTH TAKES A HOLIDAY; IN A KINGDOM BY THE SEA produced Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey; HOW HIS BRIDE CAME TO ABRAHAM, produced PTNJ; Praxis Theatre Project, NYC; The Unicorn, Kansas City. HAITI: A DREAM in FACING FORWARD, produced Seven Stages, Atlanta; radio play produced WNYC, aired WHYY, NPR. ANTON, HIMSELF for Actors Theatre of Louisville, played the Moscow Art Theatre and Yalta Festival in Russia; Peoples Light and Theatre, PA. THE FASTEST WOMAN ALIVE produced Luna Stage, NJ; Praxis, NYC; the Edinburgh Festival. KABUKI OTHELLO, produced People's Light and Theatre; Annenberg Center, Philadelphia; Wisdom Bridge, Chicago. KABUKI LADY MACBETH produced Chicago Shakespeare Theater, cited for five JEFF Awards. ACHILLES (a Kabuki play) toured Hungary, Cyprus, Japan. Sunde cowrote musical QUASIMODO, produced Byrdcliffe Festival, Woodstock, NY; Lahti City Theatre, Finland. For Cheltenham Center, Philadelphia, Sunde wrote LA PUCELLE (Me & Joan) and DADDY'S GONE AHUNTING (Tracking Blood White); for Chain Lightning, WHEN REAL LIFE BEGINS. Scenes from TO MOSCOW; ANTON, HIMSELF; MASHA, TOO; HOW HIS BRIDE CAME TO ABRAHAM appear in SCENES & MONOLOGS FROM THE BEST NEW PLAYS. Sunde lives in New York City and is faculty at New Hampshire Institute of Art's "Writing for Stage and Screen" MFA program.
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
Premiered by CSC Rep in New York City
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com
Related Plays
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Inspired by the life of Hatshepsut, a woman who ruled as a pharaoh in ancient Egypt. Under the guidance of Senenmut, her female lover, Hatshepsut usurps the throne from her son-in-law, Thutmose III. Full of intrigue, farce, and sexual politics, FIT FOR A QUEEN is a tragicomedy of epic proportions with a modern sensibility.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (4 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00Play Description
The sweep of Eleanor’s entire life — from her early marriage to Louis VII, King of France, through her marriage to Henry II of England, to her imprisonment, reign and death — is encompassed in this action-packed, highly literate drama. Through every challenge, Eleanor, with her grace and independence — in a world which expected women to stay in their place — triumphs, as wife, soldier, mother, queen and patron of the Courts of Love.
Production Info
Cast: 16 total (5 female, 11 male, doubling possible)Full Length Drama (about 140 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00Play Description
In this comedy about the nature of marriage, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley battle out their relationship at the gates of Heaven and Hell. Predeceasing Mary by several decades, Shelley can hardly wait for her to come to him in Limbo — but when she does, he is astonished to find that the woman who seemed for all her life to worship him now wants an independent existence. The Archangel/Devil must adjudicate between them and decide whether, in this afterlife, they will enter Heaven or Hell.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
Play Description
Richard Nelson's haunting account of Benedict Arnold's search for love and country, and his discovery of only compromise and despair. A rich portrait of the American general and turncoat whose name became synonymous with treason.
Production Info
Cast: 17 total (4 female, 13 male)Full Length Drama (about 125 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
The often hilarious, bawdy, and adventuresome story of Celadine, coffeehouse proprietor, writer, and sometime spy, during the reign of Charles II in London.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$35.00Play Description
A fast-paced musical comedy in which a cast of five Dickens devotees bring hundreds of his best-loved characters to life in 90 minutes of madcap Dickensian mayhem. From Great Expectations complete with flaming bride, to A Christmas Carol in which Tiny Tim rocks the house with a soaring electric guitar solo, DICKENS (ABRIDGED) also features scenes from David Copperfield, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (5 female, 5 male, or any combination of males and females totaling 5)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$0.00–$15.95Play Description
In the first years after World War II the author of Animal Farm is chaperoned during an American book tour by a fetching young woman, whose job is to dissuade Orwell from telling Americans why he is a proud socialist.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male, 1 male bit part)Full Length Drama (about 105 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$11.95Play Description
The country you love and the values it represents are being destroyed by a misguided leader. You can continue to live in relative comfort by not involving yourself, or you can take action to save the democracy you love. Set outside of Rome in the villas and hillsides of Tusculum, the play chronicles those entangled in Julius Caesar's world of manipulation and power.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 140 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Part Greek tragedy, part blackest comedy, HILLARY AGONISTES presents the cautionary tale of Hillary Clinton, newly elected President of the United States. One bright spring day 65 million people disappear — First Husband Bill among them. Is it the rapture? Pat Robertson, Stephen Hawking, a Papal emissary, the Antichrist, and a Muslim convert named Chelsea offer their opinions as Hillary agonizes and attempts to avert Armageddon.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (3 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 75 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95Play Description
This Goldoni comedy recounts the matrimonial scheming, gossip, and games enlivening the daily activity of a bustling but poor Venetian piazza where gaming, dancing and pandemonium reign. The haughty Gasparina catches the attention and interest of an attractive visiting Count. Zaretta and Gnese are two years too young to marry as their mothers desperately desire. Lucietta is not trusted by her jealous and handsome fiancé, Anzoletto, and the toothless mothers of all are busily plotting for husbands of their own. Squabbles run throughout this madcap story of the square, are silenced by a wedding feast, and erupt again as the festivities draw to a close.
Production Info
Cast: 16 total (6 female, 10 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$15.00Play Description
Sarah Bernhardt made her lasting fame in America. This tour de force for one actress takes Bernhardt from her first American tour, in her thirties, to her last, when, with leg amputated, she toured the country at age seventy-two. Her indomitable spirit, summarized by her motto “Quand Même,” is abundantly displayed as she travels from coast-to-coast experiencing triumphs and tragedies.
Production Info
Cast: 1 total (1 female)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes