Spain
Play Description
Barbara, recently deserted by her husband of five years, discovers a Conquistador in her living room. Though she has had vivid fantasies about Spain, the Conquistador and his cruel and bloodthirsty approach to life were never part of them … until now. Through him and a maze of real and imaginary characters — including her best friend Diversion, a Mayan Ancient, and a very familiar guitar player — Barbara sorts through the leftovers and finds her Duende. A seriously magical comedy.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“Knable is an imaginative dramatist with a supple talent for the bizarre. His text is a maze, or perhaps a mirrored hall in an amusement park, where nothing is what it appears to be … outrageously funny.” —Robert L Daniels, Variety
“You will feel warmed by the demented cheer of this story of a wife whose strange and entrancing dream helps her cope after her husband leaves … SPAIN bears great similarities to Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz in its rendering of a bizarre dreamscape where truth lies hidden in the madness … At its cockamamie heart, the play is a sweet story about an angry, cast-adrift woman who finds in dreams strength and resources she didn’t know she had … If you are looking for a bit of warm-weather diversion, SPAIN is the place to be.” —Jayne M. Blanchard, The Washington Times
“Knable has landed somewhere on the map close to Christopher Durang and John Patrick Shanley.” —NY Theatre Wire.com
Author(s)
Jim KnableJim Knable's play SPAIN was professionally produced at MCC Theatre (dir. Jeremy Dobrish 2007), Summer Play Festival (2006), Woolly Mammoth Theatre (2001), Actor's Express in Atlanta, New Jersey Rep, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, Phoenix Theatre of Indianapolis, and various other regional and university theatres. TRUE AND SOLID GROUND was produced at Soho Rep (SummerCamp 2001). EMERSON HIGH was workshopped at NYU with Eduardo Machado (dramaturg) and produced at Half Moon Theatre 2009. GREEN MAN was selected for National New Play Network showcase 2006; workshopped at Ars Nova, Premiere Stages and The River Stage; produced at STAGEStheatre, Los Angeles, 2015. Knable was commissioned by Firefly: Theater and Film to write the Houdini-related plays PRINCE OF AIR and THE GREAT BEYOND, which have been workshopped at Geva Theatre, Walnut Street Theatre and Open Fist Theatre; PRINCE OF AIR was one of three finalists for the Terrence McNally New Play Award in 2013. He was commissioned to write four plays for young audiences by The Playwrights Project and The Hangar Theatre; commissioned to write the children’s opera THE MAGIC FISH with composer brother Sunny Knable in 2012 by Half-Moon Theatre — performances 2012-2015 there and other venues in New York and the Mondavi Center at UC Davis. Young audience play HYPER-FOCUS is published by Samuel French; THE BEST MISTAKE published by Dramatic Publishing; THE TRUTH ABOUT DINOSAURS and LOST IN WORDS published by Playscripts, Inc. SPAIN, GREEN MAN, and SALTIMBANQUES are published in an acting edition collection by Samuel French as “The Imaginary Plays by Jim Knable.” SPAIN was included in Smith and Kraus' Best New Plays 2008 Anthology. As a songwriter, Jim Knable has independently produced and released one solo album (Miles) and two albums (Golden Arrow and Redbeard) with his band The Randy Bandits (www.randybandits.com). He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and sons.
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 the Woolly Mammoth Theater Co, Washington DC
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
Play Description
Wilson is searching for his deceased son, James. With the assistance of two experts in reincarnation, he finds a young woman, Jaime, but is she really his son reincarnated?
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
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–$15.95Play Description
In the Bolivian jungle, Che Guevara is captured and held in a one-room schoolhouse. For two days neither the Bolivian President nor the U.S. State Department is able to decide Che’s fate. The young schoolteacher of the village insists that she be given permission to speak to the famous revolutionary. Her conversations with Che — based on historical fact — are the heart of the play.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
What would happen if you found that impossible love was indeed possible? And what would happen if two of these couples were a drag queen and a woman, and a priest and a boy?
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (1 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
ESPERANZA RISING is the story of a young girl who is uprooted, transplanted, and re-grown in alien soil. The glorious, live music of Mariachis carries Esperanza (whose name means “hope”) across the dividing line that cuts through the center of this play. That line (both literal and figurative) divides two countries, two cultures, and two languages. It also separates Mexico and California, the year 1930 from 1931, and Act One from Act Two. Brought up in the lush and beautiful world of the Mexican aristocracy and then torn away and replanted in the impoverished world of a migrant labor camp in California, Esperanza ultimately fulfills the promise of her name.
Production Info
Cast: 11 total (6 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Carlotta is not afraid to search with eyes open for the first time, inspired by Saint Teresa of Avila and her publisher, Becky, a Jewish lesbian from New York. Carlotta is resolute on resolving her marital uncertainties with Andrés, a Catalan artist living in Barcelona, where the women make a stopover on their way to Avila. Carlotta is uncovering her own sense of self while further investigating the life of this impassioned revolutionary female of the sixteenth century. Santa Teresa de Avila was an empowered mystic, feminist heroine who defended divine law above man's law. During a time when the Inquisition was in its fervor, and the Saint’s spirituality could easily have been interpreted as heresy, this woman of Jewish ancestry, singlehandedly reformed a branch of the Catholic church, the Discalced Carmelite Order, to its strict original intentions of fraternity, silent prayer, and service. Teresa also founded over a dozen monasteries and wrote some of the greatest classical Spanish literature. Becky's independent spirit illuminates Carlotta's view of a persistent dysfunctional dynamic that she has been willingly exchanging with her estranged husband, Andrés. Carlotta arrives with intentions of working things out but the charming, stimulating banter and fiery provocations now dissatisfy her starving heart. The two women return from Avila with a clear allegiance of passion and understanding, but Andrés, who all along repudiated authority and moral restrictions, now proves otherwise.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 65 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00Play Description
Set in the desert of Barstow, California, where Gabriela, the wife of career soldier Benito, dives into a surreal fantasy world during her husband’s prolonged absences and imagines the mating rituals between a coyote and a cat.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Collection Description
This collection includes 15 short and very short plays. BEA AND MAY: Bea does not want her beloved, May, to marry Jerry, but Jerry’s rich, and May has a plan. CELESTED: Lou’s ex, Celeste, shows up at his wedding. DING: Three people sit in a waiting room waiting for the bell to go ding! ERNESTO THE MAGNIFICENT: Tonight Ernesto the Failure will become Ernesto the Magnificent. ETHAN’S GOT GAME: Ethan’s going to be a millionaire by the time’s he twenty-one. GOODBYE: Hijo is leaving his family to pursue being an actor in New York. JIMMY: Danny’s rough trade, Jimmy, might be more than he bargained for. JODY’S MOTHER: Jody has made a terrible mistake, and Jody’s mother is paying for it. LILI MARLENE: Lili Marlene knows what’s wrong with this country, the lack of glamour. POPS: Tomas’s father was a busboy at Windows on the World. SILENCE 1: Robin is not speaking to Sandy, and it’s driving Robin crazy. SILENCE 2: Sandy’s not speaking to Robin, and Robin makes a meal out of it. SMILING: Ernest can’t wipe the smile off his face. SPEED DATING FOR THE LATINO ACTOR: A group of actors rediscover hope in their chosen profession. THE SUBSTITUTE: This substitute teacher has had enough, and he’s going to make sure his students think twice about ever bullying anyone again.
Plays in This Collection
Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Cuba. Two brothers, both writers, meet again after a long absence. What follows is a fierce and hilarious fight to determine who has the right to tell the family’s story. In the middle of this is a mysterious sister whose needs, like the country she lives in, seem to have been neglected.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
A childless Latino couple kidnap a young girl in order to create a family, but the little girl has ideas of her own, and when her imaginary friend, the Grinch, comes to life to help her, the couple ends up with far more than they bargained for. A dark, gothic fairy tale for the contemporary world.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 95 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Bernardo Solano updates the classic tale of Zorro to the 21st century, complete with immigrant laborers, a sadistic chief of security, and an ineffective computer geek who’s taken in by a homeless man who claims to be the original Zorro.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Set against the backdrop of Puerto Rico's struggle with the issue of statehood, a young woman, who speaks no Spanish, moves in with her 105-year-old great grandmother who speaks no English. Both women deal with problems of love — the younger with two new suitors and the older with the ghost of her husband's mistress.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes