Morticians in Love
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
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“In the midst of death, there is life and love — sacred, profane, unrequited and almost always dysfunctional — in Christi Stewart-Brown’s very black, five-character comedy (counting two corpses). Scarcely fare for the squeamish, with its excursions into heterosexual and homosexual couplings among the living and dead, the play … nonetheless comes off as a caustic, funny, sharp-eyed and skillfully performed autopsy on the difficulties of love … MORTICIANS IN LOVE may be morbid, but it has a heart.” —Lawrence van Gelder, The New York Times
“… a morbid, pervy, and very funny farce … Sure, it’s strange, but strangely touching too.” —Joe Brown, The Washington Post
“What relationship is more tender and romantic than the one between a shy, sensitive female mortuary owner and a handsome, buffed, naked corpse? Christi Stewart-Brown’s charmingly morbid comedy is so cheerful and upbeat, you’ll hardly believe that you’re watching a play about bisexual necrophilia.” —Paul Birchall, Back Stage West
“I would like to add two names to my (rather short) list of favorite people. One is Christi Stewart-Brown, an East Coast playwright whose works include THREE MORE SISTERS, STEAK! THE MUSICAL, DO NOT USE IF SEAL IS BROKEN, and now MORTICIANS IN LOVE. She should make it on the strength of the names of her plays — the fact that she’s a brilliant wordsmith only solidifies her place there … MORTICIANS is a simple enough idea: the tender story of first love between two devout necrophiliacs. Now, the idea itself gets a laugh, but what’s a pleasure is that Stewart-Brown follows through and creates characters, dialogue, and stagings that are a real joy to watch. It’s so depressing to see ingenious ideas or plots wasted by paper-thin characters, or to watch great characters ruined by dumb dialogue. MORTICIANS scores on all counts, following up a great idea with solid writing.” —Matthew Richter, The Stranger (Seattle)
Author(s)
Christi Stewart-BrownChristi Stewart-Brown has had over 45 productions of her plays across the U.S., in Canada, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. Stewart-Brown is a four-time Helen Hayes Award nominee and her plays include: MORTICIANS IN LOVE, which ran Off-Broadway in 1995 at the Perry Street Theatre, THE GENE POOL, THREE MORE SISTERS, SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY, FULL OF GRACE, STEAK! (co-author), a country-western musical about cattle-rustling vegetarians, and DO NOT USE IF SEAL IS BROKEN, which was made into a film entitled Loungers. Loungers, directed by Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Monster's Ball, The Kite Runner, World War Z), was featured at the 1996 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where it won the Audience Award and placed second for the Jury Award. Stewart-Brown has also written a work of young adult fiction, entitled Kin.
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:
MORTICIANS IN LOVE premiered at Woolly Mammoth Theatre
in Washington, D.C. on April 10, 1992
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–$15.95Play Description
In the first play in LIMBO TALES, HIGHWAY, a man suddenly decides to drive to his girlfriend’s house, which is 200 miles away. He becomes obsessed with the thought that each car that passes may be his girlfriend coming to visit him — and as he begins to lose touch with time and place he becomes convinced that he has moved back to another century, another civilization. In the short INTERMEZZO, a Master of Ceremonies announces, in hilarious detail, all the exotic acts that will not be on the bill that evening. In the final play, HOTEL, a down-on-his-luck encyclopedia salesman sits in a flea-bag hotel room, eating Chinese food which is delivered by a disembodied arm, while listening to the squabbling of his neighbors and contemplating the aridity of his limbo-like existence.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (3 male)Full Length Drama (about 85 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Uncle Sam was a novelties salesman who died one night, alone and broke, in a Pittsburgh hotel. But he was also a larger-than-life figure, a mythic hero, to his nephew — who now seeks to discover his uncle's true story. His quest is a quixotic and picaresque one, involving a seductive nightclub singer who promises to marry Sam if he can locate his ne'er-do-well brother (who absconded with the proceeds from a robbery), and developing into a series of sometimes funny, sometimes hair-raising episodes as the nephew “becomes” his uncle in his youth and journeys to a remote lighthouse, a rather sinister university laboratory, an opium den, the clinic of a Mexican quack, and a very odd miniature golf course — all intriguingly distorted, as though viewed through a funhouse mirror. In the end it is really the landscape of the mind that is explored and illuminated, as the trail leads back to Old Sam and the disquieting knowledge that dreams and reality are, in the final essence, often one and the same, with the “truth” still remaining tantalizingly out of reach.
Production Info
Cast: 11 total (5 female, 6 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
They seemed like the perfect couple. Attractive. Well-educated. Affluent. Why did the husband brutally murder his wife and take his own life? Aaron and Henry, two young wannabe screenwriters at a writer's retreat struggle with crippling blocks as they seek to solve the mystery. Shawn, an academic teetering on the edge of insanity grapples with her own possible involvement in the killing, while writing a book about America’s obsession with violence. Meanwhile, the murder victim's sister attempts to reconstruct the truth from the ashes of her late sister's diary, becoming a celebrity in the process. What really happened that violent night, and will any of them come close to uncovering the truth?
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
M and G's new apartment is nothing special — it really could be any generic New York City apartment — but they're hoping it's a place of healing, a new beginning after a traumatic encounter with a former friend. Unfortunately, the previous tenant of this apartment isn't a man who likes to let go … and he wasn't ready to move out. First, it's little things: their mail disappears, it feels like someone's watching them, he stops by occasionally just to say hi and see what they've done with the place. But soon, when G is called out of town for business, M is left alone, and before they know it, they wake up to find themselves immobilized and watching as the previous tenant begins to make the apartment his own again.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male, 2 actors may be male or female or nonbinary)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
HICKORYDICKORY explores what would happen if we all had an internal clock telling us the time of our death. Someone has tinkered with Cari Lee’s mortal clock, so she’s stuck at 17 for eternity. Now she’s the same age as her daughter, Dale. But Dale’s worried about her own mortal clock — the one that tells her the day and time she’ll die. Dad’s an expert clock-smith, but some timepieces are not meant to be tampered with.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 150 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Trapped during a storm in a ferry terminal with no food, no electricity, and no cellular signal, these pilgrims of the night pass the time sharing salacious tales that range from adultery to a biblical flood.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 95 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
A fantastical “Kafkaesque” journey through time and space.
Production Info
Cast: 12 total (6 female, 6 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play 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
$0.00–$15.95Play Description
In WOLF IN THE RIVER, Adam Rapp explores love and neglect, the challenges of poverty, the dangerous cost of shiftlessness, the simple notion of leaving a place behind, and the value of a girl.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male, ensemble chorus)Full Length Drama (about 105 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00Play Description
A small theater company's next ill-advised production, a modern vaudeville, goes off the rails the night before opening. The cast rebels against Doc, the writer/director/star/producer, and chooses a midnight showing of the newest Star Wars movie over ironing out the show's kinks. Then, of course, they're sucked into a vortex and spit out into a world that resembles some of our most beloved films. It's up to Doc and his trusty sidekick, Boof, to go on a 3D adventure to rescue the cast and the show, and the entire theatrical art form. Part vaudeville, part Hope/Crosby Road Show, A 3D ADVENTURE is an inventive love letter to both the theater and the movies.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male, doubling, flexible casting, up to 15 actors)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play 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–$15.95Play 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