Spatter Pattern
Play Description
When a screenwriter becomes entangled in the life of a university professor under investigation for a grisly murder, what begins as self-interest soon gives way to empathy, and a bond between men from seemingly opposite worlds deepens. An eerie, grimly funny whodunit, SPATTER PATTERN is a brutally honest and touching elegy about survival and the guilt that accompanies it.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (1 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“Leave it to Neal Bell. So many recent plays have made forays into the noir genre — conscious or unconscious, spoofing or surrealist — that I had assumed there was nothing new to be gotten from it. But Bell walks in, boldly and knowingly, where legions have trod before, and instantly finds new paths to explore, new matches of tone and subject, new sources of moral perturbation. His title, from forensic medicine, describes both the directions in which blood has spurted from a fatal wound and the aesthetic tactic his script employs. His topic, achingly visible under the sprayed droplets of his story, is responsibility …” —Michael Feingold, The Village Voice
“Bell’s writing is so sharp, so focused and so consistently interesting — not a word is superfluous — that you come away with a surprisingly theatrical experience … This is a tense, beautiful, speedy drama set in a right-now world of urban menace and fear. It’s a theatrical discovery by a major talent. And it will stay with you long after the final, breathless blackout.” —Jacques le Sourd, The Journal News
“Neal Bell is one of those playwrights you keep expecting to hit big … The immaculate stylist writes clean, crisp lines for characters quivering with urban angst. His humor is droll and laced with self-deprecating irony, and while his central theme might be summed up as ‘spiritual alienation,’ his topics are usually timely, reflecting a macabre interest in crimes of passion and a rather academic curiosity about what compels humans to violence …” —Marilyn Stasio, Variety
Author(s)
Neal BellNeal Bell's plays, including SPATTER PATTERN (Edgar Award), MONSTER, TWO SMALL BODIES, RAW YOUTH, COLD SWEAT, READY FOR THE RIVER, SLEEPING DOGS, RAGGED DICK, ON THE BUM, and SOMEWHERE IN THE PACIFIC, have appeared at Playwrights Horizons and Classic Stage Company in New York, and at regional theaters including Berkeley Repertory, Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, and Actors Theater of Louisville, where his ten-minute play OUT THE WINDOW was a co-winner of the 1990 Heideman Award. Mr. Bell has been a playwright-in-residence at the Yale School of Drama, and has taught playwriting at New York University, Playwrights Horizons Theater School, and the 42nd Street Collective. He is currently a member of the Theater Department faculty at Duke University. A recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment and the Guggenheim Foundation, Mr. Bell was awarded an Obie Award in 1992 for sustained achievement in playwriting.
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 Playwrights Horizons, New York
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
Carter Bartosek, a foreign correspondent stationed in Beirut, returns to his Midwest hometown for the funeral of his best friend, a former congressman who apparently took his own life while high on alcohol and painkillers. Carter discovers that his friend had left the larger political arena in order to run for mayor of this town, which has transformed itself from an industrial community in decline to a high-tech hub, and that his progressive agenda might have alienated certain members of this now affluent municipality. Over the course of five days, Carter kicks through the ashes of his childhood and confronts those people whom he considers to be his extended family in search of the truth surrounding this alleged suicide. Was his friend murdered for his politics? And, if so, what does that say about Carter himself and this bucolic place he once called home?
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (4 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 140 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Fascinated by a serial killer’s poems to his victims, Nancy sets out to find him. When she discovers herself in his basement, she likes it.
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
Los Angeles, 1933. PI Frank Ellery doesn’t know it, but he’s taken on the strangest case of his life. A literary agent has been gruesomely murdered. The four suspects: his remaining clients, all writers for different pulp magazines. Frank dives into the mystery, and his world turns upside down as life begins to imitate literature. Science fiction, romance, adventure, horror … and one down-on-his-luck gumshoe who’s about to learn what really lurks between the lines.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (1 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$10.95–$15.00Play Description
A radio talk-show host is menaced by a threatening caller in this psychological thriller.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (1 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$10.95–$15.00Play Description
In Nebraska in 1972, three members of the Peak family, father, mother, and teenage daughter, were murdered. Beth, an adult daughter, who was not home at the time the crimes were committed, must come to terms with the apparently senseless act and find a way to live with the horror.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 115 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
Skewed family values and the deep and dark secrets they create become a life force for Valerie, the infamous butcher of Baraboo, Wisconsin. Once her husband has gone missing everyone suspects she played a hand, especially her nosy sister-in-law who just happens to be the town sheriff. Enter the drug-pushing pharmacist daughter who just might hold the key to the ultimate unanswered questions.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (4 female, 1 male)Full Length Comedy (about 110 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$10.95–$15.00Play Description
Poisonous mushrooms, red herrings, marital infidelities, and a mysterious Merchant of Death are elements in this English-style thriller with a fascinating, intricate plot.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$10.95Play Description
A masterpiece by one of the greatest writers of the Spanish Golden Age. When the people of the town of Fuente Ovejuna revolt against their tyrannical overlord and murder him, the authorities attempt to find out who is responsible, leading to one of the most memorable acts of resistance in world drama.
Production Info
Cast: 16 total (4 female, 12 male, flexible casting up to 8 women and 20 men)Full Length Drama (about 180 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
First performed around 430 BCE, Sophocles’ OEDIPUS THE KING remains as shocking a tragedy as it must have been to the ancient Greeks. Thwarted by the will of the gods and fate, Oedipus rises to become King of Thebes by killing his father and marrying this mother, thus fulfilling the prophecy that he has sought to avoid.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (1 female, 7 male, doubling, nonspeaking parts)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
A raucous comic exploration of the ironies and insanities of corporate America where even professional assassins are fighting for their benefits. When Abby, a star on the rise, is simultaneously denied a promotion and asked to kill another woman, tempers flare, guns fire and out comes a life-or-death game of Monopoly. KILLING WOMEN asks what happens when a woman is not taken seriously but has been given a gun.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male, doubling)Full Length Comedy (about 110 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes