Good Egg
Play Description
Responsible Meg has always taken care of her bipolar younger brother Matt. But when she decides to get pregnant — and have her embryos screened for bipolar disorder — is she taking the idea of “being responsible” too far? A funny and surprising play about bioethics, siblings, and the limits of unconditional love.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (1 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
- Productions
Press Quotes
“… Instead of slipping into pedantic debate, the play successfully broaches these topics through subtle theatrical devices … [GOOD EGG] has a powerful message that addresses important social themes that need much attention.” —The Happiest Medium
“In a heated moment, Matt says to Meg that ‘ … when you have everything you want, sometimes you don’t like anything you get.’ Those words are powerful in a myriad of ways, all pointing to the value of restraint. Just because you have the power and every reason to do something, that doesn’t mean you should. [the play] hits this sentiment right on the nose.” —Stage and Cinema
“… a brilliant monologue that Fortenberry nails [is] the playwright’s attempt to share not only the human side of bipolar disorder, but also the scientific realities and questions about the illness … Fortenberry tells her story through the clever technique of juxtaposition and foil, which helps the audience feel both sympathy and repulsion for the chaotic but artistically passionate Matt as well as the dependable but perfectionistic Meg.” —Not As Crazy As You Think
“GOOD EGG thus effectively lays out the moral dilemmas involved in choosing whether or not to screen for hereditary disorders and diseases, as well as believably presenting a bipolar character who has a chance to describe the internal processes of the brain during high and low points … The science-driven arguments are refreshingly poignant … Particularly captivating is Matt’s monologue about his [bipolar] disorder.” —Theatre Is Easy
“Playwright Dorothy Fortenberry doesn’t try to teach us a lesson here. Is Matt’s illness an inner demon? From the perspective of those who must live with him — of Meg — of course, it appears that way. But, as he says later on, ‘Maybe I don’t want to be sane. Maybe sane is overrated.'” —BlogCritic
Author(s)
Dorothy FortenberryDorothy Fortenberry is a Los Angeles–based playwright and television writer. Her plays include PARTNERS, MOMMUNE, CAITLIN AND THE SWAN, GOOD EGG, and the play with music STATUS UPDATE. Dorothy's work has been developed at Arena Stage, Ars Nova, Geva Theatre, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival, among others, and produced by Center Rep, Chalk Rep, Live Wire, Red Fern Theatre, and The Management. She is a winner of the 2011 Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, and a two-time Finalist for the O'Neill Conference (for her plays STATUS UPDATE and MOMMUNE). Residencies include the MacDowell Colony, the Djerassi Program, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and Page 73. Dorothy is a member of the Playwrights Union, a founding company member of Tilted Field, and in the 2013 Warner Bros. Television Writers Workshop. She received an EST/Sloan commission and is currently working on a commission from Yale Rep. MFA, Yale School of Drama.
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:
World premiere by The Red Fern Theater Company, 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
TAKING CARE chronicles the last years of an elderly woman and the mentally ill adult son who has lived with her for almost three decades. Stuck in a cramped, one-bedroom apartment, Ma and Benny have spent much of the past thirty years pretending the other wasn’t there. Now that the old woman is more or less house-bound, she foists conversation upon her unwilling son and threatens to institutionalize him if he doesn’t clean up his act and start behaving more responsibly. When she breaks her hip, Ma convinces her alienated daughters that their brother is well enough to look after her in her “recovery.” Realizing that failure to do so could result in institutionalization for both them, Benny tries to rise to the occasion and care for his mother, even as she begins a quick decent into dementia. His new responsibilities test his limited capabilities and force mother and son to forge new bonds in the waning days of her life.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (1 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
A witty and touching play, inspired by the author's mother's battle with Alzheimer's.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (4 female, 3 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.95 Play Description
THE GABRIELS trilogy chronicles a year in the life of a neighboring family who reunite in real time at three different points across 2016 to celebrate, remember, and wait for the world to change. History and politics, art and culture, love and hate are all on the table as the Gabriels gather in the kitchen of the house they grew up in — ultimately revealing the deep, human impact of one of the most extraordinary years in American history. Part Three, WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE: It is election night as the Gabriels economic woes worsen. They have worked hard and played by the rules, and yet they are slipping from the middle class. Is there hope to be had?
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (5 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Virginia is getting married. As her wedding day approaches, unwanted ghosts of her mother’s past appear, unearthing a shocking past she never knew — nor wanted to. A comic nightmare about the mysterious hollows between parents and children and things that may be better left unsaid.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
MI VIDA LOCA — My Crazy Life — tells the story of members of a troubled family who are reunited at their home on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula as the father begins treatment for drug addiction.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$0.00–$15.95 Play Description
East meets West meets mayhem in this Muslim-American family comedy evoking universal themes of faith, culture, belonging, and desire. TEN ACROBATS adds a new chapter to the American immigrant narrative.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (4 female, 6 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
MERCY STREET is Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Anne Sexton’s only play and incorporates many of the themes that infuse her poetry, the deeply personal, the nature of madness, and the subjectivity of truth.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 75 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
Described by the New York Times as “a threatening portrait of urban insanity. A drug lord is king, corruption is endemic and parents instill offspring with perverse values. In Mr Brown’s Coney Island, everything is for sale.”
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 125 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00 Play 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–$15.95 Play Description
THE HOPPER COLLECTION follows the story of a married woman, Marjorie, obsessed by an encounter with the New England artist Edward Hopper
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 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
$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