Black Forest
Play Description
At an elite women’s college in Massachusetts, two minor crises emerge during the fall semester: the philandering head of the English Department decides to callously end his affair with a colleague, and an aging professor is caught making unwanted sexual advances toward a student. But in the academic world of the early 21st century, there is no such thing as a minor crisis. For Jacob Freundlich, an English professor approaching middle age, the sudden necessity of making moral choices, rather than just teaching books about them, leads him into a devastating midlife crisis of his own. A comedy about the necessity, and the exquisite pain, of making choices.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (5 female, 5 male)Full Length Comedy (about 105 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“Honest, intelligent … the play’s dialogue has the exactly right academic-faculty sound to it; clearly, Giardina knows of what he writes.” —Variety
“A class act … a play well worth auditing … Giardina balances his banter about the great writers with penetrating looks into the lives of the male teachers.” —Hartford Courant
“In BLACK FOREST … the playwright Anthony Giardina says volumes about changes between the ’50s and the present … Attitudes toward transitions in educational, social and sexual attitude inform Mr Giardina’s new play …” —Alvin Klein, The New York Times
“Edgy and biting and funny.” —Chronicle of Higher Education
Author(s)
Anthony GiardinaAnthony Giardina was born in Waltham, Massachusetts and educated at Fordham University. He is the author of the novels Men with Debts (1984), A Boy's Pretensions (1988), Recent History (2001) and White Guys (2006), as well as the story collection The Country of Marriage (1998). His fifth novel, Norumbega Park, is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Harper's, Esquire, GQ and The New York Times Magazine. His plays, including LIVING AT HOME, AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY, THE CHILD, SCENES FROM LA VIE DE BOHEME, THE BEACH, BLACK FOREST and CUSTODY OF THE EYES, have been produced in New York at Playwrights Horizons and the Manhattan Theater Club, and regionally at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., Seattle Rep, Yale Rep, the Long Wharf in New Haven and the Cleveland Playhouse. He has taught at Smith and Mount Holyoke College, Colorado College, the University of Rochester, and in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts. He is a regular Visiting Professor at the Michener Center of the University of Texas at Austin, where he will be returning in Fall 2012. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
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 at Long Wharf Theater, New Haven
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
A play about love, sex, ambition, and the Arab American experience, ROAR is the story of a Palestinian American family living in Detroit in the wake of the first Gulf War. Karema and Ahmed Yacoub work long hours in their liquor store while their teenage daughter, Irene, relentlessly pursues a career as a pop star. All hell breaks loose when a notoriously sexy and scandalous relative, Hala, gets thrown out of Kuwait and arrives on the doorstep without a return ticket.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
A black comedic look at the parents in Peter Pan. It is set in the present, in an upscale townhouse. Mrs Darling is a socialite and George Darling is a white collar criminal with the U S Attorney’s Office closing in. George has decided that he must escape to Switzerland, but his wife refuses to believe that his problems are real. She goes off to receive an award for her work with “brownish” children. George then confides in Nana, his dog and drinking companion, his disappointment in the devolution of his marriage. Upon Mrs Darling’s return, they notice that their children, Wendy Peter, and Michael to are missing — it takes them awhile, though, as they only speak to their children through the intercom. The Darlings proceeded to try to retrieve their children, each in his own way. In doing so, they explore their commitment to parenthood and to each other.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
On the verge of the millennium, a strange teenaged prophetess obsessed with New Wave music invites a suburban family and the raunchy movie star who has crashed in on their holiday to join her as she welcomes The New World.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00Play Description
A young woman returns home to find her gauche and uneducated beautician mother has hired The Perfect Daughter, taken a handsome young cowboy lover, is learning French, and is adopting a buffalo. What is Mom up to? Has this lower-middle-class older woman who is taking on all these airs lost her mind? And where did her sudden wealth come from? These are only a few of the mysteries lawyer Vicky and her ineffectual husband have to figure out in this fast-moving comedy which explores the mother-daughter relationship and the nature of familial and many other kinds of love.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (4 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Skewed family values and the deep and dark secrets they create become a life force for Valerie, the infamous butcher of Baraboo, Wisconsin. Once her husband has gone missing everyone suspects she played a hand, especially her nosy sister-in-law who just happens to be the town sheriff. Enter the drug-pushing pharmacist daughter who just might hold the key to the ultimate unanswered questions.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (4 female, 1 male)Full Length Comedy (about 110 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00Play Description
Based on A R Gurney’s novel Entertaining Strangers, the story is reminiscent of TARTUFFE. Set in academia, at a large technological institute in the Boston area, HUMAN EVENTS follows the rise of a visiting instructor, presumably from England, as he ingratiates himself into the Humanities department and snakes his way up the ladder of success.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Melissa figures she has everything: a thriving career, a devoted partner (who never overstays his welcome), and the freedom to enjoy whatever and whomever else she wants. But when an unexpected visitor brings equally unexpected news, Melissa's rollicking life turns into comic confusion, replete with surprising twists and a tantalizing resolution.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
FLORIDA GIRLS, takes place in Crestview, Florida circa 1965 and focuses on the upheaval in a middle-class family when two daughters compete in a high-school beauty pageant.
Production Info
Cast: 1 total (1 female)Full Length Drama (about 75 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.95Play Description
Subtitled “A Comedy of Trans-Atlantic Manners.” An Englishman and his family live far-flung across the vast American continent. Brought together by tragedy, they find comfort in attacking their adopted country, ridiculing its crude ways and lack of standards. Humour and irony as well as the sense of loss and longing permeate this story of exiles unable to address a world that is passing by.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
A Puerto Rican hit woman, her mentally challenged son, and a janitor who dreams of nothing more than being a father meet the neighbors from hell. Crass, rude and desperate, these neighbors are like everybody else, looking for a way to end their loneliness. These characters find out the hard way that family comes first.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
John Greer has a charmed life: he is a professor at a renowned university, a beloved father, and he is about to be named Poet Laureate. He owes much of his success to his wife, Diane, who aggressively shepherds his career. But when their daughter and her new boyfriend return home for the weekend, hidden secrets emerge that threaten to destroy the image he has cultivated in both his public and private lives. POETIC LICENSE is a biting drama set against the cutthroat “publish or perish” world of academia and explores how one person’s past can shape his art, his family, and in this case his future.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 80 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
A tender, quirky play about two white women and a black man living in Seattle in 1992, as the nation and the media are transfixed by the trial of four Los Angeles police officers accused in the beating of Rodney King and the outcry of protest after the verdicts.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes