4/18/2026 From the Bookshelf: DPS Broadway Book Club Collection # 14
ONE LAST BOOK CLUB COLLECTION
Thank you for joining me for a deep (ish) dive into seven more scripts from the Dramatists Play Service Book Club. This quarter, the default curator was once again “Staff Picks” so there was not a familiar title in the group, but there were definitely familiar (and favorite) writers. Most of these were shorter pieces, even one-acts, and all ventured into unconventional spaces and styles, so my reading pleasure was, to fall into another cliché, through the roof.
On the other hand, DPS was recently acquired by Concord Theatricals (along with Samuel French, Tams Witmark, and other theatre libraries), so this may just be the final entry. There was, after all, no February collection. This makes me sad.
Most of these are small-cast, small-scale productions that would enhance any theatre’s season, but they would be especially comfortable in a black-box venue, and the shorter pieces would be perfect for an evening of one-acts or in competition
(To paraphrase the same words I copy/paste every time I collect these sketches, script publisher Dramatists Play Service runs (ran?) a book club, where, once a quarter, they would deliver to your doorstep a box of scripts, curated by an established playwright, brimming with talent and creative life force. I looked forward to every shipment as I love reading scripts, even those for plays I know not and may never see brought to life on stage. Since the titles are unannounced in advance, opening each box is like opening a giftbox!)
A DELICATE SHIP
By Anna Ziegler
Originally Produced by Cincinnati Playhouse , March 2014
First New York Production at Playwrights Realm, August 2015
Read the New York Times review of the NYC production HERE
One of the few full-length pieces this quarter, this gentle little reverie of a play looks at three characters in their early thirties blindly navigating the shoals of love and commitment and memory. To an older reader like me, they all possess that endearing (if irritating) ability to give equal weight to Kierkegaard and cheese doodles, to comfortable attraction and thorny passion, to old friends pushing aside current lovers and current lovers staking an unearned claim. Sarah and Sam are in the early stages of a relationship and are decorating for their first Christmas together. Into their quiet retreat storms Nate, a childhood friend of Sarah, who insists he has always loved her and she has always loved him. Nate is like a puppy you can’t forget but can’t quite fit into your life. All three characters move back and forth through time, telling us what’s going to happen, what they think should happen, what they wish had happened.
Ms. Zeigler (Photograph 51, The Minotaur) has always had a way with heightened dialog grounded in character, dialog that tells more about the character than they may know themselves, and I’ve been a fan of her work, despite never having seen any of it on stage. Her Antigone (This Play I Read in High School) was recently at Manhattan’s Public Theatre.
AM I BLUE
By Beth Henley
Originally Produced by Circle Repertory Co New York City January 1982 as part of a triple bill entitled Confluence
Written and premiered at Southern Methodist University in 1972
Read “Am I Blue: Forty Years Later” from the SMU Archives HERE
Read the chapter on “Am I Blue” from The Plays of Beth Henley: A Critical Study by Gene Plunka HERE
This is a sweet little play that provides a glimpse at the student output of a young Beth Henley (written when she was an undergraduate at Southern Methodist University LONG before her Pulitzer-Prize-winning Crimes of the Heart). It shows her early passion for Southern Eccentricity and the Sorry/Grateful ambivalence of young love.
John Polk is turning eighteen and his frat “buddies” have bought a night at a New Orleans brothel to celebrate. He is wound tighter than an unripe pawpaw and delays his fate in a dive bar, waiting until the dreaded midnight hour when he becomes legal. Storming into the bar is a bundle of energy named Ashbe, a young woman who one could describe as either “whacky” or “clinically schizophrenic” depending on your empathy or your level of mental-health background. They escape the rain at her nearby wreck of an apartment, where they indulge in cheerios and Blue Rum-and-Cokes. These are fringe characters who, in a sane world, would have no hope of even meeting, let alone connecting. But in Ms. Henley’s young imagination, a connection is the most logical and inevitable choice, even if it’s only for a few hours on a rainy night, hiding from a brothel fate worse than inevitable penicillin shots.
This would be great for a one-act festival, despite needing a handful of “street characters” in background roles.
I’ve been a long-time fan of Ms. Henley’s work and even played Barnette in Crimes of the Heart back when I was … well, not quite young enough for the role but when I still LOOKED young enough for the role. It was a true pleasure to read this glimpse into the developing mind of a future Pulitzer winner.
CROCODILE DAY
By P.C.Verrone
No Original Production listed, but I found this note on P.C. Verrone’s website: “Crocodile Day was commissioned by the Urbanite Theater in Sarasota in 2020 and workshopped in 2021. It was a part of AlterTheatre’s Arts Learning Project in 2022.”
Visit P.C. Verrone’s Website HERE
This is a re-imagining of Peter Pan from the perspective of Neverland’s indigenous tribe. It poses and answers a number of questions. How can a Plains tribe follow the Buffalo and end up on an island? Is the Crocodile the villain, or the one who grants all favors and fortune? And who are the idiotic Pirates and children who make their island so … well … alien?
TBH Peter Pan has never been one of my favorite stories, and this does little to change my mind about that. OTOH, I really like how its main characters, brother and sister Tho and Satesan, see their world, how the culture of the tribe is fleshed out, and how the changes in that culture may not be the worst thing in the world. It’s also good to see the stereotypes stripped from the characters created by Barrie in the original and given a life of their own.
IN FIREWORKS LIE SECRET CODES
By John Guare
Originally Produced as part of a One Act Festival by the Lincoln Center Theatre Company at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre in New York City, March 1981
Watch Part One of the 2015 Director’s Festival Production HERE
This may have been the most difficult to read (the characters have no names, just numbers *), but it is filled with Guare’s damaged Upper-Middle Class characters, his on-the-edge-of absurd ideas, and his can-be-recited-to-a-soundtrack rhythmic dialogue. Seeing the (badly) videotaped production on YouTube really helped “flesh out” the characters and reveal the strengths of the play.
Very short (literally the length of a partial Fourth of July fireworks display), it gives us a group of friends on a Manhattan West Side penthouse terrace enjoying Macy’s fireworks display over the Hudson River. It is about comfortable adults wallowing in their comfort and revealing a certain shallowness of spirit. They spend the party calling out the colors and shapes of the display and sharing various anecdotes that fail to leave any impression on each other, but show a basic lack of empathy for ... well ... anyone.
Indeed, why should they be given names when they hardly even have hearts and souls? So why do I find them so compelling? That is truly Guare’s genius – making us connect with characters who have little at all to warrant such a connection.
* It really drives home the reality that (when reading) our mental image of a character is bound up in a name (especially gender). All five characters are on stage for the entire play making it doubly problematic to maintain character arc and plot sequence dramaturgy.
KILLERS AND OTHER FAMILY
By Lucy Thurber
First Produced by the Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre New York City January 2001
Read the Theatre Mania review of the 2001 production HERE
This is an ugly little play that was a hard slog to get through, and one of the few Book Club scripts I hope I never have to see come alive (so to speak) on stage.
Playwright Thurber has created a (semi) sympathetic heroine in Lizzie, a promising PhD candidate living a life of bliss with her partner Claire. Until her brother and his best friend show up on the run for murdering a woman. What follows are a series of poor choices, violent encounters, and contrived plot points that, to my mind, have no connection to any human I have ever known or even imagined. It all seems designed designed to punish women for, well, for trying to hold onto some dignity and agency. Or even for attempting to "rise above their station." After my quick read (I was never so in a rush to finish a script), I couldn’t decide if Ms. Thurber were venting over this harsh reality, or if she were somehow sympathetic to it. I certainly hope the former.
To be honest, I don’t even want to even think about this play anymore, least of all make a coherent snapshot of its lack of appeal. Some plays are just too difficult (maybe even wrong-headed) to even talk about. The irony is, if a production came about, I may just want to see it, if only to see if living actors in these roles show my knee-jerk reaction to this reading completely off-base.
THE PAST IS PAST and
GETTIN’ IT TOGETHER
By Richard Wesley
The Past is Past was first performed at the Billie Holliday Theatre in Brooklyn NY in 1974. It was later produced on a double bill with Gettin’ It Together at the Los Angeles Actor’s Theatre in 1977
Watch the Post Stream Conversation with playwright Wesley and with that stream’s actors HERE
Richard Wesley is an African American playwright and screenwriter who made a splash in the 70’s with his screenplays for Uptown Saturday Night and Let’s Do It Again. Here are two one-act gems that reveal his penchant for the tensions and strains of black family life.
In The Past is Past, a young man fresh out of college visits a pool hall to encounter an older man who may be the father who abandoned him and his mother years before. In Gettin’ it Together, we meet a seemingly happy couple picnicking in a Newark park, a couple with a long history and a child. She wants a commitment from him to their family, he wants more security before making such a commitment.
In both plays, strong characters, jazzy dialogue, and long hidden resentments are the fly in the ointment of true happiness. Indeed, what does love have to do with it?
These two plays (both two characters) would be a wonderful double bill as they were in LA in 1977, and I would love to see them come alive on stage.
WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE SEA
By Jeff Augustin and the Bengsons
First Produced by Manhattan Theatre Club New York City November 2022
Read the New York Times review of the original production HERE
Read the StageBuddy review of the Original Production HERE
This was my favorite of this group of plays. A musical about a father and son, about being an immigrant, about being a black gay man, and about finding (through music) a connection to your past.
Jean is an immigrant from Haiti, waiting in Miami for his wife to join him. He eventually remarries and crosses the country with his new (and pregnant) wife.. Meanwhile, in the future, his son Jonah crosses the country in reverse, trying to make a connection to his father whose ashes he is going to claim.
Told through monologues and music, the two characters meet America in different eras and with different expectations, both finding a connection with the “mountain music” that evokes the sounds of their Haitian roots. (Music is by husband and wife team The Bengsons – and I wish oh wish there were a recording of it to be had).
This is a totally moving, totally involving piece that experiments with narrative, with sound, with style, and with the unspoken ties that bind us to family, even across time.
Watch “I Was Too Late” in rehearsal and performance here. (A joyful song about regret? Yasssss!)
(Stay tuned afterwards for a series of excerpts and “Behind the scenes” videos from the production. They truly give a sense of the show mush better than my feeble description.)
So. Because this may be the last look at DPS Book Club Selections, I thought I’d add a few thumbnails of additional scripts that have crossed my field-of-attention recently, two of which have had Atlanta productions (and full reviews from me). Sometimes I indulge in reading a script from a show I loved in the (usually) valid assumption that my joy in a show begins on the page. Before I get to those, let me start with a script from a writer I always enjoy seeing come to life on stage. As far as I know there have been no area productions of this one, nor are any planned.
THE OLDEST BOY
By Sarah Ruhl
Commissioned and First Produced by the Lincoln Center Theatre October 2014
Read the StageBuddy Review of the original production HERE
Watch a Teaser Video of the Lincoln Center Production HERE
This is an elegantly constructed meditation (literally) on East/West themes, Tibetan Culture Tropes, and (especially) the nightmare of a mother and child dis-union.
An American Mother, married to a Tibetan exile, is awakened to the possibility that her three-year-old son may be an ancient teacher reincarnated. A Lama appears on her doorstep and convinces her that her only option is to turn the boy over to him for (permanent) training in Tibet. On a spiritual journey herself, she is torn apart by her conflicting impulses – keeping her child close and keeping her spirit on its planned trajectory.
Ms. Ruhl makes no bones about the Lama’s claims being correct – she (apparently) wanted to write a play about motherhood, not about the intellectual/philosophical debate about reincarnation.
Subtitled “A Play in Three Ceremonies,” it is steeped in Tibetan cultural traditions, including three very specific ceremonies in the journeys of Mother and Son. More to the point, to underscore his “old soul” reality, the boy is played by a puppet, manipulated and voiced by an adult man.
I found the whole thing compelling, lyrical, and moving, and only wish the script better conveyed the musical tropes and dance stylistics that would be required in any production. And I especially enjoyed reading her spirited (if you will) afterward, which echoed (more than) a few of my own thoughts on ethnic/non-ethnic casting, its limits, its rewards, and its pitfalls.
I’m not especially familiar with Buddhist philosophy, and I’m not sure I’d approve of it if I were – why is it always a male child? Ms. Ruhl has a sly joke at the end when Mother rejoices that her next child will be female. Still and all, there is a lot to process in this piece, but I found it well worth the effort.
EQUIVOCATION
By Bill Cain
Originally Produced by Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2009
New York Premier by the Manhattan Theatre Club February 2010
Atlanta Production at the Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse May 2016
Read the New York Times Review of the Manhattan Theatre Club Production HERE
Read our Review of the Shakespeare Tavern Production HERE
(Click on 2016 and Search for “EQUIVOCATION”)
England is still reeling from the infamous 1605 Gunpowder Plot, and Prime Minister Robert Cecil is anxious for England’s premiere playwright to tell the story. Here called “Shagspeare” (or simply “Shag”), the bard is hesitant to put reality on the stage, as it’s not especially “actable.” And he is resistant to being the tool of propaganda (his treatment of Richard III and Joan La Pucelle notwithstanding). He also has to deal with resistance from his fellow actors, antipathy from his daughter, and the growing realization that the “facts” of the plot don’t align with common sense or reality. OTOH, if Cecil can get the country united in opposition to Catholicism, King James would no doubt be a much happier monarch.
This is a brilliant piece that I truly loved after seeing it ten years ago at the Shakespeare Tavern, with sequences both brutal and tender (I especially loved the final reconciliation between Shag and his daughter – a hint as to why the late canon is rife with father-daughter stories and themes. Sure, Mr. Cain makes no effort to purge his dialog of contemporary idioms and rhythms, but that can be forgiven owing to the sheer theatricality of the script – Four actors play all the members of the Globe acting troupe, all the “conspirators” and guards, AND all the royals and politicians.
So, how is a poor actor/producer/writer to navigate the razor thin line between resistance and treason, between reality and artifice, between a well-paid commission from the king and a struggling theatre troupe? The key, as the porter in a certain Scottish play written about the same time, is equivocation, the ability to hide the truth without telling a lie, to determine what is REALLY being asked and answer that question, even if the questioner is hiding a deeper intent. No small task!
I’ve already read this twice and will probably read it often.
MAYTAG VIRGIN
By Audrey Cefaly
First Produced by Quotidian Theatre Company in Bethesda MD October 2015
Produced by Aurora Theatre Co Lawrenceville GA January 2018
Produced by CenterStage North Marietta GA August 2024
Find a Sarasota Magazine Review of a 2022 Florida production HERE
Read our Reviews of the Atlanta Area Productions HERE
(Click on 2018 or 2024 and Search for “MAYTAG”)
This is a pleasant and memorable two-hander about two damaged people finding their way into a relationship. I’ve seen it twice at two theatres and loved both productions in equal measure and for a variety of reasons.
Lizzy is a widow “of a certain age” who is taking a leave of absence from her teaching job to recover from her husband’s accidental death. Another teacher, a widower, moves into the house next door. Through a full year, they spat and spar, bond and kvetch, and discover their idiosyncrasies ... well ... sorta kinda mesh in a new and exciting way.
These are very specific, very sharp characters who carry their baggage like medals of honor, but together find openings to share, to commiserate, to actually listen.
This is, in essence, a love letter to the necessity of some incompatibility to make a relationship work.
I can’t see or read this play too many times. It is literally my favorite romantic play of the last {whatever} years!
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I hope you get a chance to check out any (or all) of these plays and hope you find them as satisfying to read as I did. Better yet, I hope they create a desire to see them live on stage!
As usual, thank you for indulging my Bibliowallow! Cross your fingers that Concord Theatricals see the value in this club abd will keep it going.
-- Brad Rudy (BKRudy@aol.com #DramatistsPlayService