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–$15.95Play Description
The play follows a group of strangers in the waiting room of an AIDS clinic over the course of several months.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (1 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
Sphinx & Amos, a country-pop duo, are the gay equivalent of Simon & Garfunkel. After their breakup, Sphinx pursued an unsuccessful acting career in Hollywood. Amos has finally had his first solo concert, and Leon, his manager, has arranged a surprise for him afterwards: Sphinx who has seen the error of his ways and wants them to get back together again.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (3 male)Short Comedy (about 35 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$19.95Collection Description
This collection includes seven one-act plays: 1920s: ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE, 1930s: THE RIVER JORDAN, 1940s: BILL BATCHELOR ROAD, 1950s: ODD NUMBER, 1960s: FOG, 1970s: FAIRY TALE, 1980s: POUF POSITIVE. UNTOLD DECADES is a unique concept: seven one-act plays, each in a different setting with different characters, which together trace the romantic comedy of gay male love over seven decades of the twentieth century. From the secret sophistication of the international gay scene in the ’20s through such variations as the poverty of the ’30s, wartime revelry of the ’40s, Cold War paranoia of the ’50s, ghetto ritualization in the ’60s, coming of age in the post-liberation ’70s, to the plague-filled ’80s, these plays range widely in style and tone. But all display the deft touch and dazzling insights of a masterful comic mind. 1920s: ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE: A writer and a fan are flattered and embarrassed when acquaintances try to fix them up at a black-tie party. 1930s: THE RIVER JORDAN: To earn a little money Ray goes with rich men but only when sufficiently drunk. His regular client, John-Bo, is giving him up to get married, and John-Bo’s friend Aegis arrives to take him to the wedding rehearsal. Ray persuades Aegis to take him home, and they continue to see each other. But after a trip to Europe together, Ray worries that Aegis will desert him when they arrive in New York. Ray, who still has to get drunk to have sex, has difficulty grasping that Aegis is in love with him and has no intention of letting him go. 1940s: BILL BATCHELOR ROAD: 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. 1950s: ODD NUMBER: Brad and Edgar realize they’re in love. Brad is in the Air Force and has a few months left to serve. An officer arrives at the house, which belongs to a lesbian couple who have been entertaining men from the air base, and the neighbors have reported it. The officer is a closeted gay man and blackmails Brad in return for not reporting him. 1960s: FOG: 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. 1970s: FAIRY TALE: Sphinx & Amos, a country-pop duo, are the gay equivalent of Simon & Garfunkel. After their breakup, Sphinx pursued an unsuccessful acting career in Hollywood. Amos has finally had his first solo concert, and Leon, his manager, has arranged a surprise for him afterwards: Sphinx who has seen the error of his ways and wants them to get back together again. 1980s: POUF POSITIVE: Bob, a playwright, tries to cheer up his ex-lover, Robin, who has AIDS. But the only thing it seems that will really cheer Robin up is for Bob to write a funny AIDS play.
Plays in This Collection
Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
LOOPED depicts an actual 1965 recording session in which an intoxicated Tallulah Bankhead required eight hours to dub a single line from her final movie Die! Die! My Darling! while antagonizing the film editor assigned to the job.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
What would happen if you found that impossible love was indeed possible? And what would happen if two of these couples were a drag queen and a woman, and a priest and a boy?
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (1 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00Play Description
A fantastical/political/historical exploration of life in the Soviet Union in the earliest dawn of Perestroika. In scenes ranging from the inner chambers of the Politburo to a secret chamber beneath Lenin’s Tomb to a medical facility near a radioactive disposal site in Siberia, SLAVS! considers the difficulty, the failure, and the abiding importance of Socialism and of ongoing efforts towards building collective societies and a more just world.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (3 female, 7 male)Full Length Drama (about 80 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Arrogant young Puerto Rican Fatima, who works as a counter girl at a fast-food restaurant, has been arrested for the murder of 14 people, poisoned at her workplace. Young attorney Jeremy has been assigned to defend her and asks a Latina colleague, Maritza, to be his translator. But Fatima refuses to talk to anyone but Maritza, and she's enough of a manipulator to get her way. Fatima claims she has been blessed — or cursed — with psychic powers. By merely clasping the hand of an individual, she says, she can immediately grasp everything about him/her including past, future, and innermost secrets. She tells Maritza that her murders were mercy killings: She “read” each of her victims and killed them because they wanted to die. Maritza is first incredulous, then indignant at Fatima's playing God. She firmly resists letting Fatima clasp her hand, but Fatima is persuasive, constantly shifting from pugnacious, foul-mouthed street girl to wise and wily seductress to gentle, compassionate young woman. Maritza finally offers up her hand, yielding her secrets and placing her fate in Fatima's grasp.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
The true story of two actors who hired themselves out to the Long Beach Police Department in 1914 to entrap “social vagrants” in public restrooms. Thirty-one men were arrested, and the ensuing scandal led to an ordinance against “oral sodomy” in California.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
Play Description
Dog and Buck, former lovers, run into each other at a bar. Both now have AIDS. Buck’s disease is in the advanced stages, and Dog refuses to recognize and acknowledge their shared past and, inevitably, their shared future.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (2 male)Short Drama (about 30 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00Play Description
Trapped in horrendous and cramped living conditions with his father and grandfather, Rosario Cortez battles to break his family's cycle of poverty and remove his son from the violence and squalor of the urban ghetto.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (1 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
When Papo, a tough-talking Puerto Rican hustler from the Bronx, meets Brian, a frightened young lawyer from the Midwest, Papo begins to glimpse the possibility of a romantic escape from his life on the streets. At the same time, Bobby, a 17-year-old runaway who has been repeatedly raped by his older brother, offers to take care of Papo and moves in with him in his fleabag hotel room. It is then when Papo suddenly finds his defenses melting and his heart torn in two directions. TRAFFICKING IN BROKEN HEARTS is a gritty, urban love story.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (3 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00Play Description
At the height of the AIDS crisis, Adam searches for answers, comfort, and a new place for sexuality as he witnesses the decline and inevitable loss of his beloved best friend.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (2 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes