Kraken
Play Description
KRAKEN explores the true-life encounter between legendary American novelists Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1856. Melville, in the midst of a spiritual journey to the Holy Land, stops to visit with his old friend Hawthorne, now the American consul in Liverpool. As they spend the evening together, they discuss and confront their, fears, failures, things of this world and the next, books and publishers, and all possible and impossible matters.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“Len Jenkin not only has a vivid imagination, but he also has an artist’s command of his craft.” —New York Times
“Len Jenkin has an unusual talent for reaching into shadowy places in the human psyche and coming up with evocative images.” —Journal American (Seattle)
“Jenkin’s plays have plenty of plot and delicious language, but the transience of experience is the main theme that runs through Jenkin’s work. He manipulates theatrical illusions with a playful manner that recalls Jorge Luis Borges, to disguise meditations on mortality.” —Village Voice (New York)
Author(s)
Len JenkinLen Jenkin is a novelist, playwright, director, and screenwriter. His novels include N Judah, New Jerusalem, and The Secret Life of Billy's Uncle Myron (with Emily Jenkins). Plays include DARK RIDE, PILGRIMS OF THE NIGHT, CARELESS LOVE, MY UNCLE SAM, LIMBO TALES, THE DREAM EXPRESS, and LIKE I SAY. His works for the stage have been produced throughout the United States, as well as in England, Germany, France, Denmark, and Japan. His films include Blame It on the Night, Welcome to Oblivion, and American Notes. He has received many honors and awards, including three Obie awards for directing and playwriting, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Award, a nomination for an Emmy Award, and four National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Mr. Jenkin holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from Columbia University. He's a Professor in the Dramatic Writing Department, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and lives in New York City.
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 Todd Mountain Theater Project
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
The story covers more than fifty years of the life and love of two artists in New York City, living in adjoining apartments. Their life and times constitute a small and memorable model of America from the victory years after World War II, down to the dubious battles of the twenty-first century.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (1 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
Set in a country weighed down by political, ideological and spiritual stagnation, Chekhov's compelling early play is rooted in the revolutionary atmosphere of Russia at the turn of the 20th century.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (4 female, 6 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Jane Austen’s mastery of manners and morals is on full display in Christopher Baker’s acclaimed stage adaptation of her beloved masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice. In the Bennet sisters’ world, marriage is the prize, but for second-eldest, Lizzy, companionship trumps blind courtship. Enter Mr. Darcy, and one of literature’s most iconic and tempestuous romances takes flight. Journey through a world quite unlike — and yet perhaps not so different from — our own, as Lizzy and Darcy learn that first impressions aren’t all they seem, and that second chances can lead to answers that have been there the entire time.
Production Info
Cast: 18 total (10 female, 8 male, 18 speaking roles or with doubling 14 actors)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
Play Description
A husband and wife stay together by force of habit, their relationship based on nothing solid. The wife’s aggression and bitterness and the husband’s selfishness and irresponsibility are revealed, and their ferocious animosity unleashes such powerful comedy that it obscures the underlying darkness.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Short Comedy (about 60 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Ibsen’s 1881 masterpiece finds a fresh interpretation in Anthony Clarvoe’s taut adaptation in which a woman has to face her legacy of religious and sexual repression when her grown son comes home to tell her that he has an incurable sexually transmitted disease and asks her to help him die with dignity.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle use logic and religion to fend off a seductive vampire in this fang-in-cheek comedy/thriller.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
Play Description
Veteran journalist Ambrose Bierce, whose wit is as sharp as a scalpel, is sent by yellow journalist William Randolph Hearst to the Pacific Western Railroad, the symbol of big business corruption at the turn of the century. Bierce has his hands full, not only with bought-off senators and railroad goons but with a son who has a dangerous proclivity for the ladies and a weariness with his incessant battle against “goodness.”
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (3 female, 6 male)Full Length Comedy (about 85 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
Strindberg’s chilling anatomy of a marriage — in which the two partners duel with each other until one is utterly defeated. Edgar and Alice, embittered husband and wife, live on an army base on a Swedish island: Alice calls it “Little Hell,” and it’s about to get worse. Written in 1900, THE DANCE OF DEATH is full of destruction and bitterness, laced with grim humor.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 140 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
Play Description
THE AWFUL TOOTH was the last new play of Feydeau to be produced in his lifetime, and its dentist’s chair offers a dose of sadistic hilarity. As translator Laurence Senelick notes, “Feydeau may be to dentists what Molière was to doctors.”
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (3 female, 6 male)Short Comedy (about 45 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
GIRLS IN TROUBLE is a striking and ferocious play which dares to explore the controversial history of abortion, through its life-changing affect on women across several generations. This darkly humorous, shocking work is sure to inspire spirited debate.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (4 female, 3 male, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$19.95–$20.00
Collection Description
This collection includes five long one-act plays: THE AWFUL TOOTH, BLASTED EVENT, DEAD WRONG, POTTY FAVORS, and SHE CAN’T BARE IT! Master Belle Époque farceur Georges Feydeau loosely based these brilliantly funny long one-acts on the failure of his own marriage. The plays, greatly admired in his time, were described by a prominent critic as “insane merriment, inextinguishable laughter.” With DEAD WRONG, the first play in the collection, Feydeau launched a new genre: the marital farce, the hell of couples. And “like the very great comic writers,” another critic noted, Feydeau “knows how to make the public laugh at his personal bitterness.” It was Feydeau himself who suggested that these five one-acts be collected under the title FROM MARRIAGE TO DIVORCE. This collection, which for the first time brings these plays together in English, honors that suggestion. Distinguished translator Laurence Senelick has taken care to preserve all of Feydeau’s stage directions as sure guides to staging the plays for maximum effect. DEAD WRONG: A husband and wife stay together by force of habit, their relationship based on nothing solid. The wife’s aggression and bitterness and the husband’s selfishness and irresponsibility are revealed, and their ferocious animosity unleashes such powerful comedy that it obscures the underlying darkness. POTTY FAVORS: Inspired by Feydeau’s wife’s obsession with giving the children laxatives, especially his eldest son, Jacques, every character is despicable for their moral cowardice and egoism, providing a hopeless (but hilarious) environment for child-rearing. SHE CAN’T BARE IT!: What to do about a wife going around the apartment in her nightie until lunchtime? BLASTED EVENT: Trapped in a misalliance, a husband is set upon by his wife, his in-laws, and the midwife. THE AWFUL TOOTH was the last new play of Feydeau to be produced in his lifetime, and its dentist’s chair offers a dose of sadistic hilarity. As translator Laurence Senelick notes, “Feydeau may be to dentists what Molière was to doctors.”
Plays in This Collection
Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes