Megacosm
Play Description
An industrialist in the near future utilizes every means possible to get an inventor to sign over his revolutionary creation that will inevitably change the world. Corporate greed never met creative angst with such dramatic and hilarious results.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (1 female, 3 male)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“The great joke of the universe — well, there are lots of great jokes of the universe. But one of them, certainly, is that human beings can’t be trusted with the things they’re capable of creating. We build combustion engines and choke on them, split atoms only to irradiate ourselves. Brett Neveu’s new farce does a fine, crazed, funny job of telling that joke. Chris is an inventor who’s come up with something astonishing. He takes it to Britt, who develops and markets astonishing inventions. Trouble is, some of Britt’s previous astonishments have wreaked so much havoc that his corporate headquarters is under violent siege from all sides. Chris’s sit-down with Britt turns into something out of Jurassic Park — assuming the park were run by General Jack Ripper from Dr Strangelove.” —Tony Adler, Chicago Reader
Author(s)
Brett NeveuBrett Neveu's work has been produced by a number of theaters, including the Royal Shakespeare Company, A Red Orchid Theatre, Strawdog Theatre Company, TimeLine Theatre Company, American Theater Company, Spring Theatreworks, Aardvark Theatre and 29th Street Rep. He has developed plays with The New Group, Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Victory Gardens Theater, The 42nd Street Workshop Theater, Marin Theatre Company and is a resident-alum with Chicago Dramatists. He has been commissioned by The Royal Court Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club (Sloan Commission), Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Goodman Theatre, TimeLine Theatre Company, Writers' Theatre and Strawdog Theatre. Mr. Neveu is the recipient of The Goodman Theatre's Ofner Prize for New Work and the Emerging Artist Award from The League of Chicago Theatres. He is also an ensemble member of A Red Orchid Theatre. Several of his plays have been published through Broadway Play Publishing. Mr. Neveu has taught writing at Northwestern University, DePaul University, and Second City Training Center.
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 A Red Orchid Theatre, Chicago, IL, in January 2012
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
O LOVELY GLOWWORM is about the history of the world as perceived by a stuffed goat who remembers his life from his perch at the edge of a domestic trash heap behind a derelict cottage in rural Ireland, circa 1918. It’s an exploration of consciousness through a lens as myopic as Mr. Magoo’s, as slapstick as the Three Stooges, as intelligently raucous as the Marx Brothers, and as lyrical as the yearning Irish tenor of John McCormack. “It’s about how very small in the end we are — that seen in regard to the whole huge universe, we and our struggles are so endearingly pathetic it’s laughable.” —from Glen Berger’s Journal
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
A very black and hilarious comedy about love in Lydia’s Eternal Acres Funeral Home, which is enlivened by two amorous morticians and a couple of really attractive corpses.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male, 1 male and 1 female are corpses)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 
Play Description
A fabulist comedy-drama of a future city-state made up of Tijuana and San Diego after a great California earthquake. The world greets the first Mexican Pope who leads the region back into recovery.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (6 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 110 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Four businesspeople — Landry, Owens, Sanders, and Weaver — arrive in the morning at their skyscraper office and soon learn that their company is on the brink of collapse. At first upset and panicked at the news, they decide that this can instead be a chance to finally prove themselves — they'll come up with a proposal, a new business plan that will impress the company chairman and save both the business and their careers. What follows is an antic all-day, all-night effort, as the four race to complete the proposal by the next morning. At first they all work together. But after that effort collapses amid acrimony and finger-pointing, they break into two competing teams, each trying to outdo the other and win the chairman's final approval as they work feverishly all through the night. ENTERPRISE is fast-paced, edgy, semi-surreal comedy about business, ambition, skyscrapers, and office bathrooms.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male, flexible casting, up to 4 females or 4 males)Full Length Comedy (about 65 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
A kaleidoscopic, surrealistic overview of contemporary America, set forth in the bizarre, highly theatrical style which characterizes this writer's distinctive voice. Produced by New York's highly regarded Public Theater, the play employs brilliantly imaginative avante-garde techniques to highlight both the dreams — and delusions — which infuse and motivate our modern world. The play is made up of a series of concurrent actions, some set in a tacky motel, some elsewhere, involving a group of disparate but curiously related people. There is the young night clerk, Pauline, who studies her high-school English Lit notebook, while growing increasingly fearful of the unseen and unwanted suitor who lies in wait in the motel parking lot; a raucous carnival barker touting his giant crocodile, Bonecrusher; a pair of seedy bar denizens who occasionally break into song; a dim-witted handyman, Chuckles, who performs pointless errands; a deranged scientist who believes that he is in contact with creatures from outer space; an abandoned woman who waits restlessly for a lover who will probably never return; and a mysterious drifter, Faber, who, somehow becomes the catalyst which fuses all these divergent elements into a cohesive, and often wildly funny whole. And, in so doing, makes the play both an encapsulation of the American myth and, at the same time, a telling comment on what is right — and wrong — with this myth.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (3 female, 7 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
NO GOOD DEED revolves around the interconnecting stories of three troubled heroes, including a Richard Jewell–like security guard; a firefighter who has rescued a toddler from a well; and lonely teen Josh Jaxon, a budding graphic novelist whose “Hellbound Hero” comes to life as his alter ego.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (2 female, 6 male, doubling)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
A brilliantly conceived and highly theatrical experience in absurdist drama, in which the audience is taken on a wild and funny metaphysical journey into the fertile imaginations of the diverse characters whose bizarre stories are deftly interwoven into the fabric of the play. DARK RIDE is comprised of a series of vignettes involving characters who, at first, appear to bear no relation to each other. A mysterious figure gives a scholar an ancient manuscript to translate; a thief steals an enormous jewel; a woman assures us that life is all coincidence; a dream-like waitress serves her customers all manner of thoughts and suggestions but no food. The images are bizarrely funny and provocative and, in time, coalesce into a pattern of driving concerns and obsessions that come into focus when the various characters finally meet at an oculists convention in Mexico City. Phantasmagoric, the play takes us on a journey that, in the final essence, transcends the physical world to explore the inner recesses of the mind.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (4 female, 6 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
FIVE OF US deals with the parallel lives of New York tenement dwellers, who live next door to each other but whose paths do not cross until one fateful moment, which spells disaster for them all. One apartment is occupied by Mark, a young writer who churns out pornography while planning the “big novel” he will someday write, and his live-in girlfriend, Lee, an anthropology grad who works as a waitress. Their next-door neighbor is Herman, a mentally deficient messenger who speaks in a language all his own and amuses himself by calling 800 numbers to make hotel reservations he has no intention of keeping. When Lee is offered a chance to join an anthropological expedition to Sri Lanka, Mark is faced with a crisis — the loss of both her companionship and her income. With the connivance of his ex-con buddy, Eddie, a street-smart would-be mercenary, Mark decides to prop up his finances by robbing Herman's apartment, in the misguided belief that the poor eccentric has been hoarding money. But, instead, what they find is the bizarre detritus of a stunted life — a life which is abruptly ended when Herman, coming upon them, is startled into a fatal epileptic fit. Fearful and guilt-ridden, Mark and Eddie try to cover their tracks — but as the play ends it is also clear that no matter how far or fast they flee they will never escape the spectre of the lonely misfit whose pathetic world they have so thoughtlessly and fatally shattered.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
In this gripping ghost story an eccentric librarian discovers a weather-beaten book in a return bin — 113 years overdue. Sparked by a message left in its margins, she embarks on a magical quest that takes her around the world and 2,000 years into the past. With astonishing twists and turns, UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL draws us into an unforgettable odyssey.
Production Info
Cast: 1 total (1 female)Full Length Drama (about 65 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
HOW IS IT THAT WE LIVE OR SHAKEY JAKE + ALICE traces the arc of the lives of two lovers through the years, from the first kiss to the last goodbye and everything in between. On the road, in an indelible American landscape, Shakey Jake + Alice launch themselves on a poetic quest as they dance to the end of love.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male, doubling)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
A roller-coaster ride through the American scene, from the Fascination Parlor to Leroy Smiles the Crab-boy, and from the movie set to the tattoo parlor to Frankie the Finn. A concert for actors.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (1 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes