One-Act Plays

In the plays I write, logic sometimes takes a short sabbatical, but they are all grounded in the desire to make audiences laugh. I strive to create interesting theater that also makes the audience think about what they're watching. My plays frequently feature wordplay, puns, bizarre characters and odd structures. You don't have to be a college graduate to enjoy my plays, but it helps.

That said, my one-act plays are as follows, and in no particular order:

A-Typical Conversation
  • 10 pages
  • 4 characters -- open casting
  • Very much an experimental piece, written while I was in England.

    * Advance Knowledge

  • 21 pages
  • 4m, 1f
  • A play in three scenes, all about a modern-day school for assassins and the people who run it. The final scene has been expanded from previous versions.

    After All

  • 10 pages
  • 4 characters -- open casting
  • My most recent play. I'll say more about it later.

    * The Arbitrary Arbiters of Abrogation

  • 8 pages
  • 1m, 1f
  • The first play I completed after a long dry spell. It's kind of hard to describe, but on the most superficial level it's about a couple having a peculiar discussion over breakfast.
  • This play was performed for the first time in the Lawrenceville Ten Minute Play Festival, October 3-12, 2003, along with the perennial Platform Shoes.

    * Away from Home

  • 20 pages
  • 2m, 1f
  • A play all about a son's first Christmas away from home and the lengths to which he'll go to hide the fact that he's being robbed when his mother calls to check up on him Christmas morning.
  • This play was produced in the Brick Playhouse's second ITmas, December 7-16, 2001. It was directed by Laura Gross and featured Jeremy Chacon, Steve Lippe and Linda Palmarozza.

    * Bad Reception

  • 21 pages
  • 4m, 1f -- some double-casting
  • A play in one scene about Roger, a particularly incompetent receptionist for Ducks and Drakes, Inc., and the people who have to put up with him.

    ** By the Book

  • 18 pages
  • 2m, 1 voice -- could be male or female
  • This play is about a writer who has to be cajoled into doing the "complete and unabridged" book-on-tape version of his first novel.
  • This play was first performed in the March 1999 Glue at the Kumquat Theater in Philadelphia. I co-directed and performed the piece with Dallas J. Powell and C. Jason Clark.
  • The play was then showcased in the Brick Playhouse's Independent Theatre series, November 12-14, 1999. It was directed by Laura Gross and performed by Steve Lippe and Scott Wolfson (with a brief cameo by the author). This production was also featured in The Best of IT, June 9-11, 2000.
  • FUN FACT: The text of the book that is being put on tape features portions of the Ineptitude novel that was later abandoned to the fates. Well, the fates finally found another use for them.

    * The Danish Play

  • 12 pages
  • 2m
  • A play in three scenes set in an alternate reality where Macbeth is Shakespeare's most produced and respected play and Hamlet is the one with the curse on it.
  • This used to be a longer play with two more scenes and two more characters, but I have since taken the scissors to it.

    Das Box

  • 25 pages
  • 5m, 2f -- 1f double-cast
  • The first play I wrote that ever got produced. The length is a bit deceptive because the play is around 40 minutes in performance. The story is about a large box that is left in the middle of the sidewalk and the various people who agree to watch over it.
  • Produced by the Sterling High School Drama Workshop, October-November 1991, directed by Dan Patrick.
  • This play is published by Brooklyn Publishers, which is based in Texas. (Of course.)

    Dead, Dying or European

  • 16 pages
  • 6 characters -- open casting but the parts are written for men
  • A play consisting of three seemingly unrelated scenes that deconstruct the works of Nietzsche (Part One: Nietzsche Is Dead), Beckett (Part Two: At Beckett's Call) and Sartre (Part Three: The New Existentialist).
  • First produced as part of the Glue Performance Series, December 1997. I directed the play and performed it with Dallas J. Powell. The first two parts were then re-used in And Three Other Plays, performed with Said and Done during the 1998 Philadelphia Fringe Festival.
  • Click here to see the virtual scenery created by my friend, Kevin Pease, for Part Three of this production.

    ** Dead Letter Office

  • 18 pages
  • 2m, 1f
  • A play in one scene about a man named Harold who gets hit by a bus and ends up in the title office in the afterlife. This play is undergoing rewrites...again.

    * Dry Running

  • 11 pages
  • 3m
  • My second Fly by Night play, originally developed under the name Practice Run, August 3-4, 2001. The story concerns two fraudulent campaign managers and their unstable candidate on election night. This one was a real crowd-pleaser, and closed the evening very successfully. The play was directed by Anne George and featured Ian D. Buterbaugh, John McIlvain and Nick Fracaro. All did a wonderful job and I'm pleased as punch with the results. The only thing I didn't like was my original title, but Kevin Pease helped me fix that.

    * In a Pickle

  • 10 pages
  • 3m
  • My most recently-completed play (although its conception preceded Dry Running), this was written in response to a Fly by Night challenge (but not in the usual way). It's about kidnapping, torture and lunch meat, but not necessarily in that order.

    Ineptitude

  • 44 pages
  • 3m -- 1m is a brief, non-speaking role
  • Two spies are holed up in their safe house, waiting for headquarters to call and give them their next assignment. References to Pinter's The Dumb Waiter, Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and other plays abound, while still remaining very much its own story.
  • Ineptitude started life as two short scenes entitled Confused Spies, one of which was co-written with Robert J. Anderson. I started working out more of the story in novel form, and that quickly mutated into a full-length screenplay, which was then pared down to this one-act play. One might say it's come full circle.

    It's My Duck

  • 10 pages
  • 1m, 2f
  • Written in collaboration with Kevin Pease & Matt Johnson back when we all attended Trenton State College (back when it was still called Trenton State College). It was written to replace a scene that used to be in Pardon Me, But You're Sitting on My Duck, but it has never been performed...until now.
  • Standing on its own, It's My Duck was given its world premiere by Atlantis Playmakers of Billerica, Mass., in its 2002 Short Attention Span PlayFEST, June 22 & 24.

    * Litmus Test

  • 9 pages
  • 1m, 2f
  • A short play about a guy picking up his date for the evening and meeting her disapproving roommate. This is a gimmick play, but I refuse to give away what the gimmick is because the whole point of the play is that it is kept from the audience for as long as possible. Confused? Good.
  • This play was first performed in the Colonial Playhouse's secpmd annual short play festival, More Colonial Quickies!, July 11-13, 2002. This time it opened the show.
  • This play is my second to be published by Brooklyn Publishers.

    * Miracle Play

  • 27 pages
  • 3m, 2f (one of which is a voice only)
  • Written in collaboration with Dan West, this was our submission for the Brick Playhouse's 1999 Fringe project, which was to be an evening of plays about God.
  • Dan and I produced this play on a double bill with Carolyn West's Persistence of Vision October 6-7, 2000, at the Episcopal Cathedral in Philadelphia. The play was directed by Tracy Cross and featured Scott Wolfson, Steve Lippe, Emily Shirner, David DelBianco and Carolyn West. It's amazing what you can do on a shoestring budget if you have a creative director and a game cast.

    * Options

  • 9 pages
  • 2m, 1f
  • A road comedy featuring husband and wife Harve and Elly and their run-in with an "irresponsible" driver. At least, that's the way Harve sees it.

    The Overtow

  • 8 pages
  • 2f, 1m
  • An experimental play, conceived, written, rehearsed and performed in less than 24 hours as part of Thieves Theatre's Fly by Night program, July 6-7, 2001. It was an interesting process and the resulting play is definitely different. The play was directed by Alan Gerstle and featured Mary Pat Coll, Susan Triggiani and Josh Brookreson.

    Pardon Me, But You're Sitting On My Duck

  • 31 pages
  • 26 characters -- open casting, but most parts are written for men
  • This isn't a play so much as it's a revue show made up of 11 sketches with 6 brief linking bits in between. One sketch was co-written with Matt Johnson and Kevin Pease (see above), and another was co-written with C. Jason Clark and Russ DelCorpo. Matt Johnson also helped me with the ending.
  • This play was first produced in October 1992 as part of An Evening of Shorts at Trenton State College. My directorial debut.
  • I have also written a screenplay adaption of Duck which I someday hope to shoot.

    ** Platform Shoes

  • 9 pages
  • 2m, 1f, some extras
  • A short play about a man who finds a pair of shoes stuck to the floor in a subway station. One of my more surreal efforts, actually.
  • This play was performed by the City Theater Company of Wilmington, Delaware, as part of its 1999 10-Minute Play Festival on July 26. The production was good and it was great to finally see the show up on its feet.
  • This play was also performed in the Colonial Playhouse's first annual short play festival, Colonial Quickies!, July 12-14, 2001. It went over very well and was an excellent closer for the evening.
  • The Montgomery Theater Project in Souderton, PA, also produced Platform Shoes in its short play festival Get Into Our Shorts Again!, October 11-26, 2002. No production details available.
  • Most recently, this was performed in the Lawrenceville Ten Minute Play Festival, October 3-12, 2003, along with The Arbitrary Arbiters of Abrogation.

    Puff of Smoke

  • 19 pages
  • 4m
  • This was written for the Fictitious Theatre Company's inaugural Philly Blunts Festival, but wasn't selected.
  • This play was read in a Writer's Circle at the Brick and will be revised accordingly some time in the future.

    Questions Later

  • 4 pages
  • 5m (2 non-speaking), 1f
  • My contribution to the Brick's 1999 Fringe project on the topic of gun control. I didn't expect it to get in (indeed, they ultimately abandoned the idea of a night of plays on the subject), but I hope by submitting it that I made my point.

    ** Reconciliad

  • 15 pages
  • 1m, 1f
  • A play about a couple -- imaginatively named He and She -- who break up and get back together again a number of times over the course of a single conversation. My antidote to all the break-ups in literature that seem to occur for no good reason.
  • The second reading of this play didn't go as well as I had hoped, so I have changed the ending substantially. Time -- and hopefully a production somewhere -- will tell whether it's better now than it was before.

    ** Said And Done

  • 24 pages
  • 2m
  • This is a play about the end of the universe and how two guys -- Phil and Howie -- happen to miss out on it. This is my most bizarre play to date, featuring rampant puns, wordplay, a loopy structure and a deranged hand puppet named Mr. Flibbertigibbet.
  • This play was first produced as part of Said and Done, And Three Other Plays at the 1998 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, with Dallas J. Powell playing Howie and me playing Phil. And Three Other Plays consisted of two of the scenes previously done in Dead, Dying or European plus "Right Now," which can be read in my Sketch Pad. Although the production itself is over (looooong over), you can still check out the page designed by Kevin Pease.
  • This play was subsequently produced by the Desert Players Theatre of Tucson, Arizona, as part of their Millennium One-Act Play Festival, January 21-30, 2000. Check out their nifty page of photos from the production.

    ** Snooze

  • 8 pages
  • 2m
  • Another brief play -- this one concerns two fairly new roommates who have completely different sleeping habits, as is evidenced when one of their snooze alarms goes off early on a Saturday morning. A play for anybody who has ever had the "Roommate from Hell."

    * Stakes

  • 14 pages
  • 2m
  • Another play for two males, this one is about a nervous young man named Clive who believes a vampire is after him. His friend Bob stops by to try to talk sense to him... Or does he?

    * Unpleasantries

  • 26 pages
  • 2m, 2f
  • This play used to be called Revelations and Suchness, a title which revealed little. It also used to be 30 pages. It's still about a couple trying to have a pleasant lunch and their brush with a boorish acquaintance, though. Some things don't change.

    * Wait and See

  • 18 pages
  • 2m, 3f, some extras
  • This play received the best reading I've probably ever had in the Brick's In-Between Stage. It's also my highest-scoring play by far.
  • Accordingly, this play was showcased by the Brick Playhouse in the first ITmas, December 10-12, 1999. It was directed by Ruthanne Ankney and featured Nicole DeRosa and Vincent Quintiliani, among others.

    * indicates a play which has been read once in the Brick Playhouse's In-Between Stage.
    ** indicates a play which has been read twice in the Brick Playhouse's In-Between Stage.

    Last updated 11/03/03

    Click here to return to the plays page.

    For more information about any of these plays, you can e-mail me at cjclark1973@yahoo.com.