Poetic License
Play Description
John Greer has a charmed life: he is a professor at a renowned university, a beloved father, and he is about to be named Poet Laureate. He owes much of his success to his wife, Diane, who aggressively shepherds his career. But when their daughter and her new boyfriend return home for the weekend, hidden secrets emerge that threaten to destroy the image he has cultivated in both his public and private lives. POETIC LICENSE is a biting drama set against the cutthroat “publish or perish” world of academia and explores how one person’s past can shape his art, his family, and in this case his future.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 80 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“It’s hard to imagine that a crackling drama could revolve around a poet laureate’s career. But Jack Canfora’s POETIC LICENSE manages to render a tale of artistic ambition and hidden secrets with the breathlessness of a well-paced thriller.” —New York Post
“Smart, unsettling drama … disturbing. ” —New York Times
“Clever … articulate … white-hot.” —Associated Press
“Exceedingly clever and entertaining … witty, articulate.” —Time Out New York
“Canfora’s dialogue teases as it enthralls, slowly bringing us closer inside the minds of his characters.” —TheaterMania.com
Author(s)
Jack CanforaJohn Lawrence "Jack" Canfora is an American playwright, actor, musician, and teacher whose works include PLACE SETTING, JERICHO, and POETIC LICENSE.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 5/15/2016 |
| Pages | 74 |
| ISBN | 9780881456608 |
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–$15.95Play Description
When Claudine meets Henry, a starving artist, she falls head over heels. Her mother, a financial guru, has her doubts. Is Henry everything her daughter has been looking for? Or is he after only one thing? A modern-day adaptation of Henry James's Washington Square, RICH GIRL is about women and their relationship to men, mothers, and money, in that order.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (3 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Joan moves from the city to the country with her air traffic controller husband and their twelve-year-old daughter in search of peace and safety. Instead the move creates a growing sense of anxiety in Joan. When young girls begin to disappear, her anxieties are confirmed and the growing tension begins to tear apart the family. Interweaving fairytales with Joan’s memories of her own sexual coming of age, DARK PART OF THE FOREST follows Joan back through her fears until she can emerge transformed.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Carol, an underappreciated and seemingly invisible suburban homemaker, finds herself wondering what the hell happened to her life. She rediscovers stifled thrill and passion in the secret, sexy world of cyberspace. As her husband obsesses over their local property tax assessment and the cost of their current kitchen renovation, the state of their marriage (along with their roof) is about to collapse under the weight of what they haven’t addressed. Their 17-year-old “activist” daughter, who is about to leave the nest and save the world, is torn between going to college or Tibet. Taking place in Pittsburgh during the summer of 2001, Carol solicits a face-to-face meeting with her online lover in New York City. When fantasy collides with reality in his studio apartment, Carol confronts the choices she’s made against the desires she has suppressed in the quest for self-fulfillment.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.95Play Description
Subtitled “A Comedy of Trans-Atlantic Manners.” An Englishman and his family live far-flung across the vast American continent. Brought together by tragedy, they find comfort in attacking their adopted country, ridiculing its crude ways and lack of standards. Humour and irony as well as the sense of loss and longing permeate this story of exiles unable to address a world that is passing by.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.95Play Description
BBC correspondent David Mazower (Sholem Asch’s great-grandson) described THE GOD OF VENGEANCE as “admired, translated, parodied, panned, banned, prosecuted, withdrawn, forgotten, revived, celebrated.” An international sensation after its 1907 world premiere in Berlin at Max Reinhard’s Deutsches Theater, Asch’s play quickly became the first Yiddish drama performed in translation across Europe and America. Notoriety was a key part of its success. Nearly every production sparked some level of controversy due to the script’s conflicting themes of hypocrisy and religious faith, rebellion and tradition, its brothel setting, graphic domestic violence, “gutter poetry” reminiscent of Wedekind, and an unprecedented erotic scene of lesbian seduction. This pre-Holocaust drama is today circumscribed by a very different post-Holocaust world, but THE GOD OF VENGEANCE remains one of the great urban dramas of the Yiddish Theatre repertoire.
Production Info
Cast: 12 total (7 female, 5 male, bit parts)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$11.95–$15.00Play Description
Based on A R Gurney’s novel Entertaining Strangers, the story is reminiscent of TARTUFFE. Set in academia, at a large technological institute in the Boston area, HUMAN EVENTS follows the rise of a visiting instructor, presumably from England, as he ingratiates himself into the Humanities department and snakes his way up the ladder of success.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 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
$11.95–$15.00Play Description
What happened at that party? College students become locked in an intense moral argument over how to treat a sexual encounter that happened in their midst.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (7 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 60 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Melissa figures she has everything: a thriving career, a devoted partner (who never overstays his welcome), and the freedom to enjoy whatever and whomever else she wants. But when an unexpected visitor brings equally unexpected news, Melissa's rollicking life turns into comic confusion, replete with surprising twists and a tantalizing resolution.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Michaela, an African American dean at a major American university, summons Alan, a renowned professor of cultural psychology, in response to student protest over his controversial paper on female initiation rites in sub-Saharan Africa. But dormant feelings from an affair years earlier turn a heated argument over science and cultural pluralism into a knock-down, drag-out fight. Rozin's provocative play shatters the ivory tower of academia, upending questions of privilege and Western morality.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Sally wants to leave home, as soon as possible, for art school in New York. Her mother seems increasingly distracted, or absent, and her younger brother, Christopher, is no help. Her successful father may or may not be involved with a younger woman at work. After Sally has a confrontation with her father, her mother suddenly disappears in the middle of the night. The play is about the last two weeks in the life of a perfect American family. But as this family unravels, as words and longings are misunderstood, and things fall apart, a larger spirit in each of these characters begins to show signs of life.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 130 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes