Looking at Christmas
Play Description
Christmas Eve. New York City. An aspiring writer and a struggling actress meet while looking at the famous holiday windows, and the characters in the displays come to life and look back at them, including a lecherous elf with eyes for Mrs. Claus; Scrooge and Tiny Tim arguing about being portrayed as zombies; a street-wise Little Match Girl; Jim from “The Gift of the Magi” enjoying his wife’s new androgynous haircut; and a jealous Joseph The Carpenter. A smart, sweet, slightly twisted holiday romantic comedy.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male, flexible casting, up to 17 actors)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
- Production Stills
- Productions
Press Quotes
“Original, brash and bursting with theatrical energy … The irreverent but charming characters and occasional pokes at tradition in LOOKING AT CHRISTMAS make this play a very good gift.” —NYTheater.com
“For audiences seeking a Christmas holiday show with a sly and witty New York point of view, LOOKING AT CHRISTMAS is just the ticket. A real treat.” —Theaterscene.net
“Absolutely charming and impressive … Remarkably heartwarming … Characters are whimsical delights that spur the broadest smile.” —TheaterMania
“You would have to be a major league Grinch not to be charmed … A sharp, contemporary New York holiday story … A delightful mix of sentimentality and cynicism that is the perfect representation of Christmas in Manhattan. If you’re looking for a holiday show with a slight edge, you will love LOOKING AT CHRISTMAS. It has the feel of a new Christmas perennial.” —Connecticut News
Author(s)
Steven BanksSteven Banks is an Emmy–nominated writer of SpongeBob Squarepants. He wrote and starred in the critically acclaimed one-man play HOME ENTERTAINMENT CENTER which was filmed for Showtime, and won LA Weekly, Dramalouge and Bay Area Critic's Circle Awards. His books include King of the Creeps published by Knopf. Other plays include LOVE TAPES (co-written by Penn Jillette), HER LAST REQUEST, BILLY THE MIME, AMERICA LOVE SEX DEATH and PILOBOLUS'S SHADOWLAND.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 12/6/2016 |
| Pages | 78 |
| ISBN | 9780881456875 |
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:
First Presented in New York City by The Flea Theater
Jim Simpson, Artistic Director; Carol Ostrow, Producing Director
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
Production Stills
Upcoming and Recent Productions
Nonprofessional
Related Plays
$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
Three couples gather on the back deck of a very modest suburban home for a mid-summer barbecue where the hosts, Mike and Deb, struggle with feelings of inadequacy about their home decor, their clothes, their careers, their culinary skills, and pretty much everything else. Ash is a successful yuppy with impeccable taste but annoys the hell out of his wife, Lulu, who likes to get very drunk, very quickly. Win mistakes his obnoxious confidence for charm, and his new girlfriend, Glory, is just too young and beautiful to be tolerated by other women. Throughout the first act feelings are hurt over the difference between “Organic” and “All Natural” beef, who’s pregnant and who’s just put on a little weight, and a nearly crippling iPhone addiction. The superficial, neuroses-laden interpersonal squabbles bubble over to a flash of inept violence when Win makes what we learn is just one in a series of passes at Deb. As the act closes, the group discovers that the rest of the world has been literally falling apart during their little, terrible barbecue. Act Two takes place on the same deck for another barbecue to celebrate their one-year post-apocalypsiversary. In a year where the only way to measure success is survival, roles have reversed, and we explore how each character’s basic nature has allowed them to adapt and thrive or has pushed them to the brink of extinction.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Part murder mystery, part unrequited romance, and part absurdist debacle about the denial and transcendence of death, TRANSATLANTICA tells the story of Dr Reginald Reinhold, whose psychoanalytic session with an eccentric patient, Ilyria (of the land of Ilyria), is interrupted by his wife with news that she is dying. By coincidence, Ilyria too is dying, as is every subsequent visitor to his home — a parade of increasingly eccentric guests. With death dancing at every door, Dr Reinhold is forced to confront his own peculiar relationship with mortality. The setting is the parlor of Dr Reinhold's mansion (festooned with mythical taxidermy and curious artifacts) on the shores of the fantastic continent of Transatlantica, a topsy-turvy world where gardens are planted with cake and lovers grow into trees.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Offbeat drama of a mother, father, and adult daughter living together inside an upscale Manhattan apartment. Daughter plays a cello and has a personality disorder. Her alter ego seduces her father who is a political media guru. Mother is conflicted in how to stop this awful charade.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
Two teens living in 19th-century Denmark are separated when the boy, Christian, mysteriously departs with Nina, an exotic older woman. The girl, Analiese, fearing Christian may be in danger, begins to search for him in a small boat, her only traveling companion being a small insightful Toucan. Alvarez reveals a world that is boldly theatrical and classically intelligent.
Production Info
Cast: 15 total (9 female, 6 male, flexible casting, nonspeaking roles)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
Play Description
When Monty's family moves from Louisiana to a large city in Southern California, he and his siblings encounter a dangerous landscape where cruelty thrives among their peers, offering little comfort from their abusive home life. This gripping drama embraces the good and evil young people face alone in their lives.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male, extras)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Loosely based on a Grimm fairy tale, THE HANDLESS MAIDEN weaves together three stories, that of a miller and his wife who have fallen on hard times and whose story includes devils, wizards, and cross-country treks; that of an ambitious New York lawyer who decides to give it all up and travel to Seattle to see Bill Gates' mansion, her magic castle; and that of a man who is about to be married in Seattle but decides he must first see an old lover. Their stories ultimately converge in an enchanted diner.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$0.00–$100.00Play Description
Christmas Eve, 1932. Three New York wise guys on the run from a hotheaded racketeer journey from a Manhattan speakeasy to a swanky Long Island mansion to a ramshackle barn in Pennsylvania, inadvertently spreading holiday cheer everywhere they go. Based on two short stories by Damon Runyon (GUYS AND DOLLS), this effervescent comedy fizzes with laughter and heart.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (2 female, 5 male, doubling or flexible casting, up to 4 females, 10 males)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
A quirky, inventive, and fun play in which time is out of joint as married couple Jeff and Joan contend with ghosts, beasts, and witches banging on their windows, wafting through their rooms, and wielding butcher knives.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$25.00Play Description
Welcome to the Annual Holiday Variety Show and Christmas Pageant at St. Everybody's Non-Denominational Universalist Church, where all faiths are welcome because we'll believe anything. But there's a problem: none of the acts scheduled to perform have arrived, so three members are pressed into service to perform the entire Variety Show and Christmas Pageant by themselves. An irreverent yet heartwarming trip through the holidays, THE ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS SHOW (ABRIDGED) is festive, funny, physical, family fun as these Three Wise Guys send up and celebrate our favorite holiday traditions.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (3 male, or 3 female or any combination of males and females and number of actors)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
In the second part of Tony Kushner's epic, the plague of AIDS worsens, relationships fall apart as new ones form, and unexpected friendships take form.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 220 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes