Mollie Bailey’s Traveling Family Circus: Featuring Scenes from the Life of Mother Jones
Play Description
A musical presentation of magical and possible events in the lives of two women born in the 19th century.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male, up to 20+ actors)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Author(s)
Megan TerryMegan Terry's plays include BREAKFAST SERIAL, CALM DOWN MOTHER, KEEP TIGHTLY CLOSED IN A COOL DRY PLACE, HOTHOUSE, EX-MISS COPPER QUEEN ON A SET OF PILLS, THE PEOPLE VS RANCHMAN, GOONA GOONA, MOLLIE BAILEY'S TRAVELING FAMILY CIRCUS: FEATURING SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF MOTHER JONES, PRO GAME, BODY LEAKS, SOUND FIELDS, and OBJECTIVE LOVE. She has published over forty-five plays. Most have been translated and produced worldwide. She has won a number of major writing awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Obie Award for APPROACHING SIMONE. She was elected to lifetime membership by the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, installation at the Kennedy Center, Washington, DC, in recognition of: "Distinguished service to the profession by an individual of acknowledged national stature." In 1992 she was named Nebraska Artist of the Year. Ms Terry is photographer and co-editor of Right Brain Vacation Photos, New Plays and Production Photographs 1972 – 1992. Ms Terry has a degree from the University of Washington, certificates in acting, directing, and design from the Banff School of Fine Arts, Banff, Alberta, Canada, and was awarded the Yale-ABC Fellowship: Writing for the Camera at Yale University. She has had a long association with the Omaha Magic Theatre, in Omaha, Nebraska, as playwright in residence, photographer, performer, and musician.
JoAnne MetcalfJo Anne Metcalf is an American composer.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 8/1/1983 |
| Pages | 56 |
| ISBN | 9780881450101 |
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
On the docks of late 18th-century Rhode Island, two runaway slaves, Adjua and Dembi, plan a desperate and daring run to freedom. When a chance encounter triggers an unexpected collision of worlds, painful truths are uncovered, and the brutality of past crimes spills into the next generation.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (3 female, 7 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Anthony Clarvoe’s adaptation of THE WILD DUCK remains remarkably faithful to Ibsen’s masterpiece.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Single Set
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 Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
The play tells the story of a ragtag troupe of actors as they head West during the Gold Rush, seeking fortune and fame and performing Shakespeare for enthusiastic ’49ers. But with stiff competition, romantic entanglements, and an Indian chief who sees himself in King Lear, their ambitious cross-country adventure is complicated by the teeming challenges and glories of the new American frontier. Embracing elements of Shakespearean comedy and American vaudeville, HOW SHAKESPEARE WON THE WEST is a jubilant celebration of the human spirit.
Production Info
Cast: 13 total (4 female, 9 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
“ANTONY is not a melodrama, ANTONY is not a tragedy, ANTONY is not a stage play. ANTONY is an acting-out of love, jealousy and anger in five acts.” —Alexandre Dumas (père)
Production Info
Cast: 14 total (6 female, 9 male, extras)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Multiple Sets
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
BONDAGE takes place pre-Emancipation on a small island in the Caribbean. With the onset of puberty, Zuri must use her wits to outsmart the twisted desires of a drunken master and a sadistic mistress on a haunted plantation. Hierarchies of race and gender collide in this AfroSurreal tale of an enslaved girl who dares to follow her own instincts toward liberation by any means.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (4 female, 1 male, 2 of the female characters should always be played by black actors or those who identify as biracial/black)Full Length Drama (about 85 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Ibsen's rarely performed play, THE LADY FROM THE SEA, was written just before HEDDA GABLER. It is a powerful expression of a woman's search for her own identity, in a world where women are defined by who they are with, instead of who they are or who they could become.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male, extras)Full Length Drama (about 130 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
In celebrated playwright Richard Nelson’s bold adaptation of Ibsen’s classic, profound tragedy and surprising comedy combine to tell the story of the Ekdal family. Their peaceful lives are turned upside down when an idealistic family friend arrives. When the secrets unravel, powerful questions are revealed.
Production Info
Cast: 11 total (3 female, 8 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00
Play Description
A Play with Music — the music of Frederic Chopin. George Sand had many lovers — but the one to whom she was most attached, and who almost ruined her life, was Frederic Chopin. His illness and dependency, the rivalries of two artists living under the same roof, the conflicting demands of two careers, all these batter the relationship. But most damaging is what the affair does to her family. Sand is hailed as an icon of female liberation. In GEORGE AND FREDERIC we see what can be the consequences of that liberation. Her rebellious daughter, Solange, embraces the tenets of feminism as an excuse for wild behavior, eventually causing the final rift between her mother and her mother’s lover. To assert his own creativity in this maelstrom, Maurice, George’s doting and doted-upon son, creates puppets of each member of this explosive ménage, puppets who, throughout the play, comment wryly on all the heated goings-on with humor, irony, and wit.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 125 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Set in the 1850s, New Jersey transplant Bobby Hawkins marries Susannah, the daughter of a leading South Carolina family. They battle infertility, the challenges of plantation life, and a devastating flood. To keep the plantation afloat, Bobby begins impregnating slave women for sale. Their finances gradually get back on track. But after their son is born, Susannah is unable to breastfeed the sickly infant. When her husband “gifts” her a wet nurse, they descend into violence, jealousy, and rage.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (1 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes