Carnival Round the Central Figure
Play Description
A wild ride through theatrical terrain that sears the senses and impacts the audience at a visceral place, which also manages to be hilariously funny and heartbreakingly real in the five core scenes of a young woman’s visit to the deathbed of her friend. Her moment of acknowledgment and comfort comes hard in the face of denial, moralizing, insane positive thinking, desperate chit chat, and the existential fears we all harbor about the end moments of life — the great mystery.
Production Info
Cast: 11 total (5 female, 6 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“CARNIVAL ROUND THE CENTRAL FIGURE is steeped in the absurd — the man’s face is caked with white makeup, and a menacing nurse sits nearby, holding a needle about three feet long. Yet like much in this clever and confounding meditation on dying, what is unusual can also be affecting. CARNIVAL is a funny and beguiling 100 minutes, aimed at those eager for an experimental look into its themes. In the end the play merely reminds us of the obvious: we’re all destined to die. Yet it’s a message that bears repeating. Such great truths are too often ignored, and are best told with a nervous laugh.” —New York Times
“Comedies don’t come much darker than Diana Amsterdam’s CARNIVAL ROUND THE CENTRAL FIGURE, a hard-core but justified lampooning of the strange etiquette we adhere to when watching loved ones pass away. Amsterdam’s relentless script makes a glib burlesque out of the oblique religious platitudes, idle chitchat, and straight-up dishonesty we typically inflict upon the dying.” —Backstage
“CARNIVAL ROUND THE CENTRAL FIGURE will certainly strike a powerful chord …” —New York Post
Author(s)
Diana AmsterdamAmsterdam's plays have been produced in New York, London, Berlin, Montreal, Los Angeles and many American cities and been reviewed by the New York Times and Washington Post. Full-lengths and one-acts are published by Samuel French, Broadway Play Publishing, Playscripts Inc. and Smith and Kraus. Her new play THE DODGERS opens on Los Angeles' theater row at the Hudson Theater on January 21, 2016, produced by AKA Studio Productions and directed by Dave Solomon. She is currently writing a commission for Mildred’s Umbrella Theater Company in Houston, TX. She is a New York State Council on the Arts grant recipient and was selected for HBO's Stage to Screen series. She won the BBC American Radio Play Contest leading to three radio play commissions from BBC Radio 4. Her screenplay won 1st Prize in NYWIFT's 25th Anniversary Screenplay Contest. She has optioned screenplays to the BBC, Working Title, and producers Jodie Burke, Dan Lupovitz, Jon Finn, and John E. Ferraro and worked on projects with Marty Bregman, Wendy Oberman (BBC), Susan Seidelman and Eric Styles. Amsterdam maintains an active for-hire writing practice with a full slate of projects that includes a memoir based on the life of porn star Alec Metro, and two new screenplays written for private financiers/producers. Amsterdam is Director of Writer Programs at TRU (Theater Resources Unlimited, Inc.) and a guest lecturer at NYWIFT and NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 11/4/2011 |
| Pages | 50 |
| ISBN | 9780881455045 |
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 IRT Theater, New York
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–$15.95
Play Description
Susan is a career woman with a seemingly perfect life, complete with sensitive husband and a brand new bundle of joy on the way. Beginning at the moment a very pregnant Susan goes into labor, the play follows her journey as she becomes a new mother, with a frighteningly inexplicable newborn to care for. Employing both realistic and surrealistic elements, BABY’S BLUES explores one woman’s descent into postpartum depression, but also brings into focus the difficult challenge of becoming a mother for the first time, as well as the fine line that sometimes exists between health and madness.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (5 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
In this unabashedly sentimental comedy, a cat named Samantha has just started living with a guy named Shuman who she believes is her true love. At first everything seems to be going great. Samantha can't get enough of Shuman, and she can't get enough of him. But soon Samantha realizes that Shuman doesn't always seem to understand her. Worse yet, Shuman doesn't always seem all that interested in trying to understand her. Things become truly problematic when one night Oscar, a sexy alley cat, shows up at the door. Suddenly Samantha begins to wonder whether she's an indoor or an outdoor cat. To make matters more complicated, a quirky aspiring cat therapist named Matilda inserts herself into the mix, thinking she can solve everyone's problems but only seems to make things worse. Eventually Samantha finds herself on a journey, both physical and emotional, that leads her to discover what having a home and being loved really mean to her. INDOOR/OUTDOOR is an allegory about the difficulties and joys of all manner of relationships.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
The mysterious Mr Much contrives to convince ordinary Albert that he is a “little person” — but is he? Join one man’s struggle to distinguish reality from delusion in a world far more outlandish, but only slightly more absurd, than our own.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 75 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
In the second part of Tony Kushner's epic, the plague of AIDS worsens, relationships fall apart as new ones form, and unexpected friendships take form.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 220 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
A car crash. Three people dead. One of them naked. It’s up to a detective and a police officer to figure out what happened in this supernatural upside-down mystery.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
This witty and passionate play explores the story of a man with Alzheimer's and at the same time turns into “a travel guide to Middle America conducted by aliens from outer space.” The play has a wonderful comic sensibility, but this is a chillingly painful play addressing postmodern society's collective nervous breakdown.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
A romantic comedy with a Sci-fi twist. Troubled lovers, Roger and Susan, visit rural Vermont to work on their relationship. Possession by aliens was not on their list of problems … until they got there.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 120 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
When Monty's family moves from Louisiana to a large city in Southern California, he and his siblings encounter a dangerous landscape where cruelty thrives among their peers, offering little comfort from their abusive home life. This gripping drama embraces the good and evil young people face alone in their lives.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male, extras)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Recently deceased lawyer and all-around schlemiel Simon Ackerman suddenly finds himself desperate to get into Hell, which, God forbid, turns out to be the better place to both visit and spend eternity. Struggling against the demons before him as well as the demons within, Simon encounters other proud denizens of Hell, including William Shakespeare, Frank Sinatra, Vlad the Impaler, and a chic, fashionable Mother Theresa, among others. At the end of his journey, Simon finds himself face to face with the most timeless conundrum of all — what do you do when you are finally being held accountable for your actions on Earth, being held accountable to a completely different set of standards, and most importantly, where do you truly wish to end up when you leave it?
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male, some doubling)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
What if Blanche Dubois didn’t go crazy? Or the Three Sisters actually made it to Moscow? When he discovers he’s fictitious, a never-seen character in an Oscar Wilde play, Bunbury joins forces with Rosaline, Romeo’s never-seen obsession from ROMEO AND JULIET. Together they infiltrate and alter classic literature, including giving ROMEO AND JULIET a happy ending.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
This provocative chronicle, interspersed with fantasy sequences from Alice in Wonderland, traces the career of Charles Dodgson (better know as Lewis Carroll) from his first work on the immortal classic to his near downfall when accused of immorality.
Production Info
Cast: 11 total (4 female, 7 male, doubling)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
A time-bending love story between two physicists. Described by The Chicago Sun-Times as “a deft little romantic screwball comedy with a very brainy twist. It brings to mind some of Tom Stoppard's more intellectual theatrical hijinks. But it's also the kind of work that might have beguiled such 1930s and '40s era film directors as Frank Capra and Preston Sturges, who probably would have hired Albert Einstein as a script consultant.”
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (1 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes