• My Account
  • Quick Order
  • Cart
  • Checkout
 
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Clients

 
  • Home
  • The Plays
    • The Plays
    • Not Yet Published
    • Newly Published
    • Bestsellers
    • Classics
    • Collections
    • Bundles
    • Catalog
  • Performance Rights
    • Restrictions
    • Payments
    • Performance Rights
    • Upcoming Productions
  • Authors
  • FAQs
    • FAQs
    • Shipping Info
    • Refund Policy
    • Privacy Policy
    • Submissions
    • Wholesale Customers
    • Desk Copies
  • Blog
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
Menu
  • Home
  • The Plays
    • The Plays
    • Not Yet Published
    • Newly Published
    • Bestsellers
    • Classics
    • Collections
    • Bundles
    • Catalog
  • Performance Rights
    • Restrictions
    • Payments
    • Performance Rights
    • Upcoming Productions
  • Authors
  • FAQs
    • FAQs
    • Shipping Info
    • Refund Policy
    • Privacy Policy
    • Submissions
    • Wholesale Customers
    • Desk Copies
  • Blog
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
 

  • Home
  • The Plays
    • The Plays
    • Not Yet Published
    • Newly Published
    • Bestsellers
    • Classics
    • Collections
    • Bundles
    • Catalog
  • Performance Rights
    • Restrictions
    • Payments
    • Performance Rights
    • Upcoming Productions
  • Authors
  • FAQs
    • FAQs
    • Shipping Info
    • Refund Policy
    • Privacy Policy
    • Submissions
    • Wholesale Customers
    • Desk Copies
  • Blog
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
 
  • Home
  • >
  • The Plays
  • >
  • Kernel of Sanity

    Kernel of Sanity

    Kermit Frazier
    Trade Edition$15.95
    ePlay$15.00 + $10.00 per additional user
    Performance Rights

    Play Description

    In a small Midwestern city in the late 1970s, a young actor, on his way from New York to California, takes a detour for a surprise visit to a veteran actor — an actor he’s worked with in only one play but to whom he’s found himself inexorably, if nearly unwittingly, attached. In a taunt, tense 90 minutes, three people — a black man, a white man, and a white woman — clash over their contradictory senses of marginalization and betrayal and their contrasting perceptions of illusion and reality.

    Production Info

    Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male, Multiethnic Cast)
    Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
    Multiple Sets
    Contemporary Costumes
    Categories: The Plays Tags: 1970s
    • Reviews
    • About the Author(s)
    • About the Book
    • Special Notes
    • Productions

    Press Quotes

    “There’s an intriguing mystery at the heart of Kermit Frazier’s KERNEL OF SANITY … Namely, why does Roger, a black actor on his way to Los Angeles from New York, seek out Frank, an older white man he once shared the stage with? It’s no accident that Frank and Roger are actors. KERNEL OF SANITY turns on problems of identity (and, yes, sanity) … with the arrival of Roger, whose behavior is deliberate but strange, [the play] takes off.” —Rachel Saltz, The New York Times

    “Kermit Frazier is one of the most underrated, under-the-radar African American playwrights of his generation … [His] plays are both lyrical and richly theatrical. And while they typically deal unflinchingly with the landscape of African American life and the socio-political issues of that life, the scope of his work ranges far beyond that culture.” —Woodie King, Jr, Producing Director, New Federal Theatre

    “Kermit Frazier is a wonderful playwright — always willing to tackle controversial subjects through the portrayal of unusual and complex characters.” —Cassandra Medley

    Author(s)

    • Kermit Frazier

      Kermit Frazier has been a writer — especially playwright and television writer — as well as a teacher of writing, literature, and theater for more than 40 years. His latest play, MODERN MINSTRELSY, was a finalist (60 plays out of 1,450 submissions) for the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. Another new play, FIREPOWER, premiered at the Detroit Repertory Theater in 2017. Plays produced in New York include KERNEL OF SANITY, SHADOWS AND ECHOES, OUTSIDE THE RADIO, DINAH WASHINGTON IS DEAD, and CLASS REUNION. Those produced around country include LEGACIES, SACRED PLACES, INTERSTICES, AN AMERICAN JOURNEY (commissioned by the Milwaukee Repertory Theater), DREAM KING (commissioned by Baltimore Center Stage), and SMOLDERING FIRES (commissioned by First Stage Children's Theater). Also, LITTLE ROCK, a rock'n'roll musical inspired by events surrounding the desegregation of Little Rock's Central High School in 1957, which was commissioned by the Seattle Children's Theatre and performed in Seattle, Pittsburgh, Washington, DC, and Little Rock. He has also been commissioned to write living history plays for the Baltimore City Life Museum and the Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture. As a television writer, his series include the popular children's mystery series Ghostwriter (which he helped to create and was a head writer), Gullah Gullah Island (co-producer and executive story editor), Married People, True Colors, All My Children, The Misadventures of Maya and Miguel, The Magic School Bus, and The Wonder Pets. His articles, reviews, and short stories have appeared such magazines and journals as Green Mountains Review, The Chicago Review, American Theatre, Black World, Essence, and The New York Times Book Review. "Drive," the first chapter of his memoir, Piecing the Puzzle: Coming of Age in Anacostia, was published in Callaloo. Another chapter, “Snow,” was a runner-up in a 2018 national essay contest and was recently published in The Missouri Review. His play SMOLDERING FIRES is published by Dramatic Publishing. Four other plays have been published by Broadway Play Publishing: AN AMERICAN JOURNEY, LEGACIES, KERNEL OF SANITY, and FIREPOWER. He has taught writing and literature at Syracuse, Chicago State, and Morgan State Universities, Baruch and Williams Colleges, and the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center, where he also served as acting president. He has also taught playwriting and acting in Maryland public and private schools (through a program he helped develop at Center Stage in Baltimore) and in New York City area public schools through the Lincoln Center Institute. He has been a writer-in-residence at Williams College and at the Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture. A recipient of a McKnight Foundation Fellowship in Playwriting, Mr. Frazier has also twice had a play workshopped at the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. He has had artist residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Blue Mountain Center, Yaddo, Millay, Norton Island, and the Liguria Study Center for the Arts & Humanities in Bogliasco, Italy. A member of the Writers Guild of America, the Dramatist Guild, SAG-AFTRA, Actors Equity Association, and the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Mr. Frazier received his B.A. and M.A. in English from Syracuse University and his M.F.A. in acting from the New York University School of the Arts Theater Program. He is Professor Emeritus of English at Adelphi University, where he taught for thirteen years in the MFA program in creative writing.

    Book Information

    Publisher BPPI
    Publication Date 6/30/2014
    Pages 64
    ISBN 9780881455915

    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:

    Produced in New York at the New Federal Theatre

    In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:

    Kernel of Sanity is produced
    by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
    www.broadwayplaypub.com

    Upcoming and Recent Productions

    Professional


    11/12/2020 – 11/15/2020
    Shakespeare & Company
    Lenox, MA

    Nonprofessional


    10/1/2021 – 10/9/2021
    Northern Illinois University
    DeKalb, IL

    Related Plays

    1978, Squash
    Richard Nelson

    Play Description

    A married couple reflect on their opposition to the war in Vietnam.

    Production Info

    Cast: 2 total (1 female, 1 male)
    Short Drama (about 10 minutes)
    Single Set
    Contemporary Costumes
    1979, What I Did on My Summer Vacation
    Richard Nelson

    Play Description

    A man laments the seeming indifference of the next generation to the causes for which his generation fought.

    Production Info

    Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)
    Short Drama (about 10 minutes)
    Single Set
    Contemporary Costumes
    $11.95–$15.00
    Vanishing Points
    Martin Jones
    $11.95–$15.00

    Play Description

    In Nebraska in 1972, three members of the Peak family, father, mother, and teenage daughter, were murdered. Beth, an adult daughter, who was not home at the time the crimes were committed, must come to terms with the apparently senseless act and find a way to live with the horror.

    Production Info

    Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male)
    Full Length Drama (about 115 minutes)
    Minimal Set Requirements
    Contemporary Costumes
    $15.00–$15.95
    Mill Fire
    Sally Nemeth
    $15.00–$15.95

    Play Description

    The mysterious causes and devastating effects of a steel mill explosion are seen through the eyes of a defiant young widow.

    Production Info

    Cast: 9 total (5 female, 4 male)
    Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
    Single Set
    Contemporary Costumes
    $15.00–$15.95
    Red Train
    Robert Auletta
    $15.00–$15.95

    Play Description

    A theater professor is suspected in the murder of one of his students, with whom he was having an affair.

    Production Info

    Cast: 9 total (3 female, 6 male)
    Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
    Multiple Sets
    Contemporary Costumes
    $15.00
    Mummers
    Jack Gilhooley
    $15.00

    Play Description

    Every New Years the Mummers dress up in colorful costumes for the Mummers Parade in Philadelphia, one of the oldest folk traditions in America. MUMMERS is a sympathetic look at their attempts to cope with a changing world.

    Production Info

    Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male)
    Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
    Single Set
    Contemporary Costumes
    $15.00–$15.95
    Rundown
    Robert Auletta
    $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
    $15.00–$15.95
    Ping Pong
    Rogelio Martinez
    $15.00–$15.95

    Play Description

    Based on the true events surrounding the groundbreaking table tennis tournament that marked a decisive new chapter in US–China relations, PING PONG is the story of the extraordinary young man who played the game that changed the world and the political actors who were playing him. With Nixon and Mao on either side of the court, free-spirited hippie Glenn Cowan reaches across the net to usher in a fragile new friendship between two great countries in this funny, incisive, and wildly imaginative new play about the little moments of history that set up the big ones.

    Production Info

    Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male, doubling, bit parts)
    Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
    Minimal Set Requirements
    Contemporary Costumes

    Contact Info

    BROADWAY PLAY PUBLISHING INC

    148 W 80th St, NY, NY 10024

    Working Days: Monday – Friday

    Working Hours: 8 am – 6 pm EST

    Phone: 212­-772-­8334

    Email: info@broadwayplaypub.com

    Website: www.broadwayplaypub.com

    Company Info

    • About Us
    • Shipping Info
    • Refund Policy
    • Privacy Policy
    • Submissions
    • Contact Us

    Pages

    • Home
    • The Plays
    • Performance Rights
    • Authors
    • FAQs
    • Blog

    Newsletter Sign Up

    • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
    © Broadway Play Publishing Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

    ‹ › ×