John is a Father
Play Description
Recovering alcoholic John Owens was estranged from his family for decades before his son, a Marine, was killed in Afghanistan. Now, six years later, he receives an invitation to meet his widowed daughter-in-law and his grandson for the first time. From the streets of Los Angeles to a cramped apartment in Phoenix, he prepares to face the ghosts of his past. But nothing can prepare him for the people he'll really meet along the way — and their capacity for forgiveness.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (1 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“Myatt excels at using small details to evoke larger truths … JOHN IS A FATHER explore[s] fatherhood, mortality, the post-recession economy and the illusory nature of the American dream … In impeccably spare dialogue rarely longer than single-sentence exchanges, fragments of John’s troubled past come to light during his encounters on a trip to reconnect with what’s left of his estranged family … It’s utterly compelling naturalism rendered with economy and grace … Myatt’s new play offers a quiet vision of hard-won hope amid adversity …” —Philip Brandes, Los Angeles Times
Author(s)
Julie Marie MyattJulie Marie Myatt's play SOMEDAY premiered as part of Cornerstone Theater Company's Justice Cycle in June 2008. Her play WELCOME HOME, JENNY SUTTER recently premiered at Oregon Shakespeare Festival and will tour to the Kennedy Center in July 2008. Her play BOATS ON A RIVER premiered at the Guthrie Theater in May 2007 and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her play MY WANDERING BOY premiered at South Coast Rep and was featured in the 2007 Summer Play Festival in New York City. Her ten-minute play, MR AND MRS premiered at the 2007 Humana Festival. Her play THE SEX HABITS OF AMERICAN WOMEN was produced by the Guthrie Theater, Signature Theater in Arlington, VA, Synchronicity Performance Group, and premiered at the Magic Theater in San Francisco, and was recently published by Broadway Play Publishing Inc. She received a Walt Disney Studios Screenwriting Fellowship, a Jerome Fellowship at the Playwrights' Center, and a McKnight Advancement Grant. Her other plays include ALICE IN THE BADLANDS, COWBIRD, 49 DAYS TO THE SUN, and THE PINK FACTOR (also published by BPPI). She is a member of New Dramatists.
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:
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 groundbreaking masterpiece of the modern theatre. The play tells the tale of a poor soldier, a barber in the army, who is overwhelmed by the military and forced to become a human guinea pig for quasi-medical research. Consumed by jealousy over his lover’s infidelity, Woyzeck is driven to despair, to madness, and to murder. Poignant and grotesque, insightful and all-too-human, the play broke every theatrical mold of its time, paving the way for theatre as we know it today.
Production Info
Cast: 16 total (4 female, 12 male, doubling, bit parts, children, extras)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
WORLD SET FREE is the story of the top-secret race to produce the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. Brilliantly eccentric Hungarian scientist Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi tell the story of the fevered work of a unique collection of scientists that were gathered at the University of Chicago in April of 1942. WORLD SET FREE explores the meeting place between the scientists' secret culture, the popular culture of the time, and a world on the brink of atomic power.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
A boy’s best friend has died after an accident whilst cleaning his gun. It is Christmas Eve, and he talks to his friend’s father after a church service. Next day he goes to his friend’s house to give cookies to the father and the brother of the dead boy. He is soon caught up in a whirlwind of events. First they all go and see the grandmother, then they go to bail out the mother from jail, and all the time he is being used as a sounding board for a family who have not yet come to terms with the death
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
It is Armistice Day, 1962. Three veterans of the World Wars exchange army stories, lament the vagaries of age, and wait for the arrival of Harry, their old army buddy. OLD SOLDIERS is about friendship, loyalty, and the very personal realities of war.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (1 female, 3 male)Short Drama (about 50 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
High atop a railroad trestle that spans a bone dry creek, two teenagers plan to race across the bridge against an oncoming locomotive. At first their scheme adds excitement to life in a small factory town during the Great Depression, then sensual experience awakens dangerous passions in an era of stifled ambitions. With theatrical flourish and lyrical finesse, Naomi Wallace delves into a world where people struggle to change lives that bear down upon them.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
In this lyrical, searing one-act, an American soldier has an unexpected encounter with two Afghan sisters who are ready to embark on a new life. Their fates — and his — become entangled as the lines between their divergent realities become dangerously blurred.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 50 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
RUNDOWN is the story of Pay, a Vietnam veteran, who is involved in a civilian massacre, and his best friend, Spear, a radical antiwar activist, whose activities lead to the death of two American soldiers.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (1 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
Set in a cornfield in the Midwest, HIDDEN PARTS depicts the troubled reunion of a young concert pianist, his estranged farmer parents, and their teenage gypsy niece.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
An urban family of three is faced with a medical crisis upon a second financial crisis. Structured as a memory play, this story for four actors highlights the surfacing identify of a young man caught between filial loyalty and freedom. As the mother attends to both men, a domineering father is in free fall.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$0.00–$15.95
Play Description
Two college professors have left their homeland for a country that soon devolves into a war zone. They're accustomed to lives of comfort, but it's hard to get comfortable when you're chained to a radiator. HOSTAGES explores the intricacies of human nature when it's deprived of personal contact and torn from the pleasantries of everyday life.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (3 male)Full Length Drama (about 80 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
Rural Central Texas, 1962. Dave, still lives in the old family home that his father built. The family is still the only Jewish family in this isolated country town. As his son Nathan faces the (to him) bizarre prospect of becoming Bar Mitzvah, his wife Rachel faces an even greater crisis of faith. As Dave encounters the remoteness of his community, and the even further distance from the faith of his father, his entire family faces the legacy left behind by their immigrant forebears: What do the Jews believe? This is a fictionalized account of the next generation of the family introduced in THE IMMIGRANT, and the second play in Mark Harelik’s Texas saga of one Jewish-American family.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes