Books published by Samuel French Inc

$38,000 For a Friendly Face is a heartfelt comedy set in a funeral home. An unpleasant woman dies and her two estranged daughters arrive at a small town funeral home for the celebration of life. Matt is new in the funeral home business and is trying his earnest best to provide a good service. The women of the the last supper committee are preparing food for the event. A young woman arrives with a total three flowers for the service. It becomes apparent that no one else is coming. Relationships disintegrate over the morning. $38,000 For a Friendly Face takes a humorous look at what matters most in relationships -- in families, in friendships, and in celebrations of life.

All Groups / Comedy / 3f, 2m or 36 m or f, or an all female cast / Unit Set The Metropolitan Museum of Art has come to life! A fast-paced series of comedic plays and monologues based on 50+ exhibits at The Metropolitan Museum Of Art in NYC. Paintings, sculptures, antiquities, & fertility gods emerge from their molds & frames. Mix in some artists, guards, critics, lovers, curators and one very special night and you have this new comedic hit. In fact, even the artwork speaks to the audience! Usin

Dramatic Comedy / 3m, 2f / Simple Sets The play is based on the life of Saul Alinsky, who, starting out from Chicago's mean streets, became a master organizer in American cities from the '30's through the '60's. With his imaginative techniques, colorful language, and wild humor, Alinsky taught communities how to win over an indifferent "establishment" and resurrect themselves. His ideas are still a force today. We see Alinsky on the road in 1972, at the end of his career and exhausted after an off-day, weighing the worth of all his efforts. Alone in his motel room, he conjures up the trials and triumphs of past campaigns-in urban ghettos, middle-class neighborhoods, and colleges. He relives encounters with Al Capone, Mayor Daley, Marshall Field, Senator Joe McCarthy, Albert Einstein, Catholic bishops, and Vietnam vets. He revives his passion for democracy that enabled him time and again to succeed against the odds. The next day, rejuvenated, Alinsky sets out on what will be his final campaign for a "newer world." Advocating the simplest of means to effect change, he prevails on his audience to find within their everyday lives the tools to rebuild their communities and secure "something of what we are all looking for-laughter, beauty, love, and the chance to create."

Edited and adapted by David Birney / 3m., 3f., plus chorus 8 to 12 singers / Holiday Play with music /Simple Unit SetA Christmas celebration told in songs, stories, poems and tales by Dickens, Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Shaw, Longfellow, St. Luke and many others collected with a host of traditional carols and holiday songs. This piece provides a perfect evening to warm hearts, stir memories and give laughter during the holiday season.

Drama / 2m, 2f / Simple sets When They Quiet Down, I Start - A monologue from the perspective of a dead suicide bomber who now collects the newly dead suicide bombers to bring them to the afterlife. Clarisse and Larmon - A husband and wife are left with only a picture of their son's foot after he is killed at war. The Rich Silk of It - Based on a true story of a young actress who was killed by her ex-fiancee after she broke up with him. Two actors morph into different characters, primarily pl

Drama /2w, 3m, 1 female voiceoverIn high school, Neely was deemed "Most Likely to Succeed," but at 19, she's still working at the Amoco station and taking care of her meth-addicted younger brother (their mom ran out on them in search of herself). Her best-friend is a small-time drug dealer (also 19) who's taking care of the baby he had with a girl who has gone off to college abandoning them both. Into this mess strolls a new cop, who takes an interest in Neely and starts to date her. A swift-mo

Drama / 3m. 3f.A near-drowning accident sends Phoebe into a tailspin as she turns away from her marriage and toward her rescuer. Science teacher Victor loses his job and meets an unusual girl all in one day. While Ronnie is deciding whether to tell her newly single roommate Sebastian how she really feels. Through a masterful web of intertwined storylines and relationships, LIZARDS ... tells the tale of six twentysomethings adapting to stress - and on the brink of change.Performance licensing a

OFF-OFF BROADWAY FESTIVAL PLAYS, 31st SERIES A collection of short plays selected by New York theatre critics, professionals, and the editorial staff of Samuel French, Inc. as the most important plays of the Thirty-first Off-Off Broadway Original Short Play Festival sponsored by Love Creek Productions.

2m, 2f / Musical / Unit Set The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!) is a musical about musicals! In this hilarious satire of musical theatre, one story becomes five delightful musicals, each written in the distinctive style of a different master of the form, from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Stephen Sondheim. The basic plot: June is an ingenue who can't pay the rent and is threatened by her evil landlord. Will the handsome leading man come to the rescue? The variations are: a Rodgers & Hammerstein

Drama / Characters: 4 males, 5 females / Set Requirements:Simple The award-winning author of The Diviners, And They Dance Real Slow in Jackson, and Crow and Weasel describes his newest play as "A children's story for adults." When June's father dies, she prays for a healer to come to the small town of Gray, so that no one will ever suffer again; the next thing she knows, there's a tornado, and a man in a balloon blows into town claiming to be a doctor. At first, the new doctor cures anything

Comedy / 1m, 1f / Unit set"A Son's Illusive Search for His Mother's Happiness"In an exchange of hilarious letters between an overbearing mother and her adult son, he blames her for breaking up his marriage and ruining his life. She can't understand why things so trivial should bother him. The angst, aggravation and madness of the love/hate relationship between Sheldon and his mother, Mrs. Levine, unforgettable characters who are thousands of miles apart and still way too close. "Hilariousl

Comedy / 6m, 6f Winner! 14 DramaLogue awards including Best ProductionA black comedy about white trash! The author of Daddy's Dyin' (Who's Got the Will?) brings you a comedy that was nominated for over thirty awards during its long run in Los Angeles. When Peggy, a good Christian woman, hits her head on the sink and bleeds to death after tripping over her lover's wooden legs in a motel room, chaos erupts in Winters, Texas."[This play by] the master of Texas Comedy ... is maybe funni

Musical comedy / 3m, 4f (with doubling.) / Unit setHere is a lighthearted tribute to silent movies and Clara Bow that reinvents her 1927 film about a sassy department store salesclerk who wins an advertising contest held to find the girl with the elusive, thrilling quality know as It. Among those she enchants with sexy charm is the heir to the retail empire that employs her. "Perky ... with a savvy score.... Has the heightened melodramatic tone of a silent movie." - New York Times"Flapper

Music and Vocal Arrangements by Gary William Friedman. Book and Lyrics by Thomas Mitz. Based on an original concept by Andy Krey.Inspirational musical / 15 m., 3 f. plus SATB vocalist(s). / Int.Leonardo da Vinci has been commissioned to create a mural of The Last Supper and it is his first attempt at painting in ten years. He fears he has lost his artistic vision by squandering his gifts. An angel/muse inspires him to invoke the Apostles and ultimately their last meal with Jesus. By discoverin

Comedy / 4m, 4f / Unit set Charlotte and George Hay, an acting couple not exactly the Lunts are on tour in Buffalo in 1953 with a repertory consisting of Cyrano de Bergerac "revised, one nostril version" and Noel Coward's Private Lives. This backstage farce by the author of Lend Me a Tenor brought Carol Burnett back to Broadway co-starring with Philip Bosco as her megalomanic, drunken husband and leading man. Fate has given these thespians one more shot at starring roles in The Scarlet Pimperne

Comedy/Drama / 3 m. / Simply suggested setsCharles Durning, Dan Lauria and James Handy starred at Westport Country Playhouse of this portrait of up and coming Mafia soldiers: Bobby who does as he's told and never questions the legendary Boss and Max who is haunted by the screams of people they've killed. They whack the wrong guy in Grand Central Station and are seen driving to Vermont to confess their error. Short scenes chronicle the drive; settings en route are easily suggested with set piec

Review / 2m, 1f / Bare stageThree burlesque type performers (a straight man, a comic and a talking lady) "demonstrate" newly adapted versions of 12 classic burlesque standards. Compiled from authentic skits, the sketches have been edited and updated by Joey Faye's former straight man to retain the flavor of burlesque while catering to today's tastes and values. Individual sketches can be incorporated into vaudeville or musical variety shows or the entire collection can provide an evening's hil

Comedy thriller / 5m, 8f or 4m, 9f or 6m, 7f Thirteen people gather on Friday the 13th at the Travers mansion in New York for the reading of Josiah's will which is a wall chart rendered in the form of a rebus (a part word, part drawing puzzle) that almost defies solution. Instead of designating an heir, it offers the estate to anyone who can solve the will! The lights keep going out and people keep getting murdered. The audience will have a ball trying to untangle the puzzle faster than the ha

Drama / Casting: 1m, 1f / Scenery: Interior This fine work in the Pendragon cycle of plays enjoyed a sold out, critically acclaimed production at the world famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The play is set in a beach bungalow. The young man who lives there has pulled a lost young woman from the ocean. Soon, she finds herself trapped in his life and torn between her need to come to rest somewhere and her certainty that all human relationships turn eventually into nightmares. The struggle be

Mystery/Farce / 4m, 5f / Unit set The wealthy heirs of a wealthy but ailing old man named Sidney Holloway have purchased the Wild Moose Lodge in the Adirondacks as a place for daddy to live out his last days. During an innocuous game of "murder" suggested by one of the clan, mousey young Lorraine Holloway is murdered for real. Who done it? Could it have been the legendary "Butcher Moose" which haunts the mountains? Or, is it a member (or members) of the eccentric Holloway family itself? Before

Farce / 5m, 3f / Int. Rob Brewster's parents are very, very proud of their son the doctor. What they don't know is that Rob has used all the money they gave him for medical school to live on as he as has pursued his fledgling writing career. Inevitably, Rob's day of reckoning comes when his parents arrive for a visit. Quickly, he enlists the help of his secretary to be his nurse and his roommate Jimmy to round up his actor friends to pretend to be patients. Complications ensue when Jimmy decid

Full Length, Drama / 1m, 2f / InteriorBased on the short novel by D.H. Lawrence, two English women in their 30's are struggling to run an isolated farm, but the hens have stopped laying and the hen house is being raided by a fox. Enter a young soldier who is such an engaging and capable fellow that he is invited to stay on as a hired hand. Who is this mysterious man who eventually dominates life on the farm? "This is the rare adaptation that honors its source while having the guts to depart fro

Comedy / All Groups / 4m, 6f, plus 8 boys and 9 girls In this hilarious Christmas tale, a couple struggling to put on a church Christmas pageant is faced with casting the Herdman kids - probably the most inventively awful kids in history. You won't believe the mayhem - and the fun - when the Herdmans collide with the Christmas story head on! This delightful comedy is adapted from the best selling book and the only story ever to run twice in McCall's Magazine. "An American classic." -McCall's

Paul Kester, based on the famous story by Samuel L. Clemens High school / Comedy / 13 m., 8 f. / 2 ext.The familiar character and scenes of the book are well handled and properly condensed in order to give dramatic point to the whole play. This refreshing epic of American boyhood will be welcome to audiences of grown ups as well as young people. FEE: $75 per performance.

3m, 2f / Platforms, moveable propsAmerican College Theatre Festival Winner. Base on the life of Margaret More Roper. The political and ruthless male hierarchies of Henry VIII and the Church are offstage forces imprisoning Meg, a unique woman isolated from her time and environment through the gift and curse of her developed intellect. MEG intertwines several themes and levels: It is the story of Sir Thomas More seen through his daughter's eyes, it's about a young wife and mother - and it's also

Comedy / 5m, 6f / Int. When produced in summer stock at Dorset, Vermont, this comedy broke all records. It concerns Stanley Nichols who writes successful children's stories under the pen name of Grandma Letty. He is voted "Grandmother of the Year" and his house is besieged by reporters and photographers. Afraid that exposure as a juvenile writer will jeopardize the chances of his serious new novel, Stanley has to produce a Grandma. After all else fails, he impersonates the lady.

Comedy / 2m, 4f, 1f child / 2 Ints. An acerbic comedy by the famed cartoonist and author of KNOCK KNOCK and LITTLE MURDERS. It's about a middle-aged journalist who has, at last, grown up - only to find he's trapped in a world of emotional infants. "A laceratingly funny play about the strangest of human syndromes - the love that kills rather than comforts. Feiffer's vision seems merciless, but its mercy is the fierce comic clarity with which he exposes every conceivable permutation of smooth-ton

Drama / 10m, 4f, extras This evocative play charting the rocky romance between headstrong farmgirl Laurey and cocky cowhand Curley in a tale of early America during the settlement of the midwest was the basis of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! Using the colorful vernacular of the period, Green Grow the Lilacs paints a picture of pioneer farmlife with colorful characters and language, presenting a dramatic challenge to professionals and amateurs alike.

Comedy / 5m, 7f / InteriorThe Reardons are a typical American family whose eccentricities, ifhilarious, are only normal. Laura, the mother, is a social climber. Theyoungest, Penelope, is a demon with a slingshot and the piano. Harry,the son, is positive he is the second coming of Shakespeare. Reginald,the father, would rather tinker with the automobile than ticker tape;and Nana, the wisecracking grandmother, is only concerned withBing Crosby records.

Mystery Comedy / 8 m., 8 f. / Int. Once famous mystery writers involve the audience as they apply their individual methods to solving various murders. They include a couple who write sophisticated murders, a young author of the James Bond school, a retired writer of the hard hitting method and an aging queen of the logical murder. "Ingeniously packed into the script is a parody of every mystery plot, hero, and villain created in the past fifty years. The story alternates between reality and ima