Send me an email at jon@jondorf.com with the following information. Please provide ALL information requested below.
1. Your full name and your organization (theater company, school or other group). If you are a high school or college student, please include your teacher/professor's name.
2. A snail mail address and phone number for your organization.
3. When and where the production would be, and the number of performances.
4. When do you expect to make a decision about using my play?
5. Can you receive attachments as PDF files? (It's a free download--link below.) A non-printable PDF reading copy is free. If you can't read PDF files, I can mail you a copy of the play ($10 fee includes copying and postage). Email me for a mailing address to which to send your check.
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7. A statement that you understand that production of my work requires the payment of a royalty. See the note about royalties on the Plays for Production page.
About The Play
Ironic/tragicomedy. 2 males, 3 females. 90 minutes. Suggested settings. Suitable for college and older. Workshopped at UCLA and developed by Ensemble Studio Theatre-LA.
Synopsis
Pac, Violet and Candy squeegee car windows for their daily bread and live on the streets of a New York City that is being torn apart as two mayors fight it out for control after a disputed election. Candy, the patriarch of this makeshift family, comes back with the missing part for their television (which he guards like a child). He turns it on, and they see the Second Mayor, the “people’s mayor,” issue a call for her supporters to fight. Part-time hustler Pac, obsessed with both his pet rats and making his way to the Pacific Ocean, tells Candy and Violet, Candy’s “wife” who wants nothing more than to marry Candy for real and live in a nice clean little house, that he has discovered an abandoned Winnebago: it’s their opportunity to get to California.
But it turns out that the Second Mayor is a fugitive, and the First Mayor’s forces have sealed off New York until they find her. In the meantime, Candy seduces both Pac and Violet, playing one against the other over and over again. As the city descends into anarchy and riots, the order of the day becomes finding gas for the Winnebago before the parking authority, running amok as the First Mayor’s deputies, finds it and tows it, or before the fires that have started burning across the city reach them.
As conditions deteriorate, Candy, Pac and Violet seem trapped in their own little battles, but when Pac’s rats die, seemingly at Violet’s hands, Pac breaks free, taking the Winnebago. Candy tears up Violet’s precious wedding invitations, telling Violet that there never will be a wedding. The TV turns itself on, and as Candy and Violet descend into their own personal darkness, the First Mayor reassures them, over the television, that she’ll do whatever it takes—including the scorching the entire landscape—to capture and punish the fugitive Second Mayor and restore their beautiful city.
Online Playwriting Class Starts on May 21st! I will be teaching a month-long online playwriting class through Writers University beginning on May 21.
Festivals, Festivals, Festivals I am excited to be attending a number of national conferences in the coming months. First up, the International Thespian Festival in Lincoln, Nebraska in late June, where I'll be teaching a quartet of writing workshops and hanging out at the Playscripts booth!
The Locker Next to Mine Now Available
My new play, The Locker Next to Mine, is now available. It's a full-length drama, though spiked with humor, about teen suicide and dealing with loss. I'm looking for a group to stage the world premiere. Could that be you?
Though the one-act version, available from Playscripts, stands on its own (and is perfect for competition!), this play was always intended to be a full-length composed of three acts: Rumors of Polar Bears, Ursa Major and Northern Lights. Look for the other two plays in the cycle sometime in 2012.
Starting out as a writer? Get help by clicking here. You'll find playwriting instructional tips, links to young playwrights contests, sample query and cover letters and even a suggested reading list!
Can't figure out why your script isn't working? I can help. For a reasonable rate, I will give you detailed feedback to get your project back on track.