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
$11.95–$15.00 Play 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–$15.95 Play Description
A play about love, sex, ambition, and the Arab American experience, ROAR is the story of a Palestinian American family living in Detroit in the wake of the first Gulf War. Karema and Ahmed Yacoub work long hours in their liquor store while their teenage daughter, Irene, relentlessly pursues a career as a pop star. All hell breaks loose when a notoriously sexy and scandalous relative, Hala, gets thrown out of Kuwait and arrives on the doorstep without a return ticket.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00 Play 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–$15.95 Play 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
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Meg and Jack were childhood sweethearts, who got married, and when their daughter, Hannah, was born, Meg stayed home with her, while Jack worked. They were happy. Then their church hired a new pastor. Flash forward … Jack is dead, and Meg is fighting the church she fled for custody of Hannah. Now that Meg is about to see Hannah for the first time in two years, the clock is already ticking. She will only have 12 visits to convince Hannah, who is openly hostile toward her, to leave the church she loves and its promise of salvation, to live with Meg — the mother who left her behind.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (3 female, 1 male, doubling)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play 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–$15.95 Play 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
$15.00–$15.95 Play 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
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
Lorca's extraordinarily powerful drama, the last he wrote before his assassination, explores the darkness at the heart of repression. When Bernarda's husband dies, she locks all the doors and windows. She tells her grown-up daughters to sew and be silent. “There are eight years of mourning ahead of us. While it lasts not even the wind will get into this house.” But locks can't hold back the growing tide of desire.
Production Info
Cast: 11 total (11 female)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
At an elite women’s college in Massachusetts, two minor crises emerge during the fall semester: the philandering head of the English Department decides to callously end his affair with a colleague, and an aging professor is caught making unwanted sexual advances toward a student. But in the academic world of the early 21st century, there is no such thing as a minor crisis. For Jacob Freundlich, an English professor approaching middle age, the sudden necessity of making moral choices, rather than just teaching books about them, leads him into a devastating midlife crisis of his own. A comedy about the necessity, and the exquisite pain, of making choices.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (5 female, 5 male)Full Length Comedy (about 105 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.95 Play 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 Play 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