David’s Redhaired Death
This play is available below and is also included in the collection:
Play Description
Two women find that they have everything in common until the death of a brother drives them apart. Part stand-up comedy, part stand-up tragedy for two. The redhaired mythology that glorifies and empowers two women leads them into a big love, but can't lead them safely out again. A play about the heaviness of the things we carry.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“… Sherry Kramer’s inventively structured, colorfully written and frequently lyrical play … The narrative fluidly shifts back and forth between the present and the span of a few days two years earlier, when Jean and Marilyn met and Jean received the fateful phone call from home informing her of David’s death … this thoughtful meditation on loss …” —Douglas J Keating, The Philadelphia Enquirer
“… Kramer is working with some provocative material: Jean and Marilyn, a pair of red-haired temptresses (or so they like to think), meet in an enchanted boudoir setting of bent willow and diaphanous draperies, find that they share a million and one likes and dislikes, old boyfriends, nasty habits and family patterns, and fall in love because of that almost magical twinship … Kramer does, however, have a way with verbal imagery. Woven through the script are wonderful references to fairy tales — Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel … The playwright is also adept at monologues chock-full of telling details …” —Pamela Sommers, The Washington Post
“… All the scenes are interspersed with lines from previous scenes and foreshadowings of things to come, so there is a coiled, spiralled tension instead of the suspense of an ordinary linear plot. Except for their monologues about death — and the one opening the second as is a stunner — the actresses are always in duet … DAVID’S REDHAIRED DEATH is a stirring, annoying and difficult piece of work. But an absorbing one …” —Elizabeth C Donahoe, The Washington Blade
“… Kramer’s play is like a puzzle: after slowly and painstakingly connecting a series of dots, one uncovers an integrated image out of what appeared to be chaos …” —Mary Shen Barnidge, Reader (Chicago)
Author(s)
Sherry KramerSherry Kramer's work has been seen at theaters across the country and abroad, including the Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Yale Repertory Theatre, Soho Rep, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York's Second Stage, Woolly Mammoth, and The Theater of the First Amendment. She holds an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and an MFA in Playwriting from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop. She was the first national member of New Dramatists. She is also an affiliated writer at The Playwright's Center. She is a recipient of NEA, New York Foundation for the Arts and McKnight Fellowships, the Weissberger Playwriting Award, and a New York Drama League Award (WHAT A MAN WEIGHS), the LA Women in Theater New Play Award (THE WALL OF WATER), the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award (DAVID'S REDHAIRED DEATH), and commissions from The Moscow Arts Theatre/Iowa International Workshop (THE DREAM HOUSE) and the Audrey Skirball Kenis Foundation (THE MAD MASTER). Other plays include: WHEN SOMETHING WONDERFUL ENDS, HOW WATER BEHAVES, THINGS THAT BREAK, A THING OF BEAUTY, ABOUT SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION, NAPOLEON'S CHINA (music theatre piece with Ann Haskell and Rebecca Newton), THE MASTER AND MARGARITA (music theatre adaptation with composer Margaret Pine), THE RELEASE OF A LIVE PERFORMANCE, PARTIAL OBJECTS, THE WORLD AT ABSOLUTE ZERO, HOLD FOR THREE, CAKE, NANO AND NICKI IN BOCA RATON, IVANHOE, AMERICA, THE LONG ARMS OF JUPITER, THE RULING PASSION, THE END OF RADIO, THE LAW MAKES EVENING FALL, and THE BAY OF FUNDY: AN ADAPTATION OF ONE LINE FROM THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE.
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:
Originally produced by Woolly Mammoth Theater Company, Washington DC
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
A satirical piece which turns its sharp eye on political correctness, office politics, sexual harassment, religious persuasions, and societal and cultural norms. The actors don’t know which role they’ll play until the audience decides for them at each performance. The actors forge their own unique interpretations in any one of the 40,320 possible casting combinations that could confront them, creating a unique and hilarious interpretation of the show every night.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male, flexible casting)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
The first female president feigns an extramarital lesbian affair to advance the gay rights agenda and bring down the religious right.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 115 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
Fag and Stud meet up in Central Park. Stud describes how when he first arrived in New York as an intellectual he couldn't find a partner, so he took up body building. Now he can't find a partner because men are afraid of him.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (2 male)Short Comedy (about 20 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00 Play Description
A young man who is dating an attorney feels himself drawn more and more to an older blind man in his search for intimacy.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
When Trent brings Felix home to New Orleans to meet his father and homophobic grandfather, the family’s demons come slithering into the light. Watchful ghosts, sinister hustlers, and a myriad of parasites lead Felix on a Southern Gothic journey to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (4 male)Full Length Drama (about 105 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00 Play Description
In JERKER, alternatively titled “The Helping Hand, A Pornographic Elegy with Redeeming Social Value and A Hymn to the Queer Men of San Francisco in Twenty Telephone Calls, Many of them Dirty,” J.R. and Bert’s anonymous telephone-sex relationship continues to evolve into something deeper until Bert’s health begins to fail.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (2 male)Full Length Drama (about 70 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00 
Winner of the 1993 Tony Award for Best Play
Play Description
In the first part of Tony Kushner's epic, set in 1980's New York City, a gay man is abandoned by his lover when he contracts the AIDS virus, and a closeted Mormon lawyer's marriage to his pill-popping wife stalls. Other characters include the infamous McCarthy-ite lawyer Roy Cohn, Ethel Rosenberg, a former drag queen who works as a nurse, and an angel.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 180 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
Bill and Bob entertain young troops who are to be sent overseas to fight. They keep photo albums and correspond as often as possible. The young men put down Mrs B Batchelor as next of kin so that Bill and Bob will be notified if they're killed. When the father of one of the dead soldiers arrives, seeking to discover who Mrs B Batchelor is, he is stunned to learn that his son took part in gay parties and sex.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (3 male)Short Comedy (about 45 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Eric Bentley’s gay adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s LA RONDE set in 1970’s New York.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (8 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
AS THE BEAVER takes as its premise that Ward and June Cleaver’s youngest son, The Beaver, is gay. Joel Drake Johnson then spins this seemingly slight premise into a smart and funny and ultimately enriching exploration of American society and family.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (3 female, 7 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$100.00 Play Description
A paean to gay life and its idiosyncrasies, TEN PERCENT REVUE has proven a hit across the country with audiences of all persuasions. An uncompromisingly delightful musical revue.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 75 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes