Books published by Samuel French Ltd

Jane Haley is the punny voice of the comic strip "King Tot," a three-panel strip about a nine-year-old pharaoh in Ancient Egypt. Jane has just been nominated for the Chuckling Willow, the single most important award for female cartoonists in New England. All seems to be going well until bleak news strikes the Haley household. As Jane tries to hide her coping by working extensively on her comics, her art suffers as her main character tries to find her way through the Land of the Dead to find her

Asian-American twins M and L have given up everything to get into The College. So when D, a one-sixteenth Native American classmate, gets "their" spot instead, they figure they''ve got only one option: kill him. A darkly comedic take on Shakespeare''s Macbeth about the very ambitious and the cut-throat world of high school during college admissions.

A group gathers at a remote ranch in the Texas Hill Country to mourn the loss of a friend they haven''t seen in years. As they mine through their pasts, it may be more than just the loss of a friend that binds them. The past and present begin to blur in Anne Washburn''s haunting exploration of friendship and loss.

Love is a Blue Tick Hound is a collection of four one-acts, three of which have received New York premieres, and all of which have won multiple festivals throughout the U.S. and Canada. All four pieces feature challenging roles for women and lend themselves to diversity in casting. Each play has a run-time of approximately 25 minutes and may be licensed individually or collectively (as assembled herein), to comprise a full evening of theater.

The Astonishing and Dangerous History of Mazefield the Frog, Old Folks, and The Lost Girl (or First Chair) were presented as part of Keen Teens 2015, a unique and free educational theatre program, run by the Drama Desk and Obie award-winning Keen Company. Keen Teens seeks to improve the quality of plays written for high school students by commissioning scripts from highly regarded playwrights, and gives students the opportunity to work with professional artists in an Off Bro

One of Manhattan''s most established play festivals, the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival fosters the work of emerging writers, giving them the exposure of publication and representation.The festival resulting in this collection was held August 2nd - 9th, 2015 at the Classic Stage Company in New York City.From the initial pool of over 1400 submissions, the Final 30 plays were chosen to be performed over a period of one week. A panel of judges comprised of celebrity playwrigh

Victor is a ruthless fashion designer in the 1970s at the top of his game. Esme, his glamorous protégé and muse, is pushed aside when an ordinary Midwestern woman inspires Victor to make his artistry accessible to the masses. A generation later, a woman grappling with a healthy dose of self-loathing must wrestle her own family demons to find her way through the world of fashion that won''t give a woman her size a second look. Skipping back and forth in time, Everything You Touch is a viciously

Eight-year-old Tina Denmark knows she was born to play Pippi Longstocking, and she will do anything to win the part in her school musical. Anything includes murdering the leading lady! This aggressively outrageous musical hit garnered rave reviews during its long Off-Broadway run. Revised in August 2015 to reflect the 2015 Off Broadway production.

The collection, Theater Masters'' Take Ten Vol. 1 is comprised of the following plays:DONNA''S FIRST BRAZILIAN by Lydia Blaisdell A recent divorcee returns to the dating pool and treats herself to a wax.ENGLISH LESSON by Paula VesalaA Finnish mother teaches her son English. When they keep meeting an old Puerto Rican woman, the only native language they share is the language of loss. THE BATTLE OF CONEY ISLAND by David JacobiNow in "People Heaven," Nicola Tesla and Thomas Edison dea

Revised Edition, 2015When a down on his luck middle aged man inherits an apartment in Paris, he plans to solve his financial woes by selling it. He arrives on the doorstep and discovers, to his dismay, that the elderly woman living there has lifetime habitation rights under an arcane French law and she is not about to give them up. Because he has no other place to go, she invites him to stay in the spacious apartment. A spiral of friendship, romance with the old lady's outspoken daught

Why Aren''t You Dead Already, Going Left, and Syd Arthur were presented as part of Keen Teens 2014, a unique and free educational theatre program, run by the Drama Desk and Obie award-winning Keen Company. Keen Teens seeks to improve the quality of plays written for high school students by commissioning scripts from highly regarded playwrights, and gives students the opportunity to work with professional artists in an Off Broadway setting. Contains: Why Aren''t You Dead Alr

In the Marshall family''s peacefully remote Colorado ski chalet, Erik and Helene are making themselves very much at home. So at home, they just might stay for good. At the edge of civilization, the lifestyles of the rich collide with the lifestyles of the aimless in the bubbling waters of a hot tub...but beware what lurks beneath.

In light of the George Zimmerman verdict, The New Black Fest commissioned six very diverse playwrights to write 10-minute plays on the topic of Trayvon Martin, race and/or privilege. Facing Our Truth''s purpose is to incite serious discussion in our collective communities around these urgent issues.The collection, Facing Our Truth: Ten Minute Plays on Trayvon, Race and Privilege is comprised of the following plays:THE BALLAD OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN text by Dan O''Brien music by Que

Having dedicated her life to religious service, Shelley runs a Bronx soup kitchen with unsentimental efficiency, but lately her heart''s not quite in it. Her brisk nature masks an unsettling fear that her efforts are meaningless. When Emma - an idealistic but confused college dropout - arrives to volunteer, her reckless mix of generosity and self-involvement pushes Shelley to the breaking point. With keen humor and startling compassion, Heidi Schreck''s play navigates the mystery of faith, the lim

A tranquil suburban evening in the early 1950′s: the kids are away on a Junior Cherokee camping trip and a string of coincidences leads to a spontaneous grown-up party in the basement of a new ranch house. Exotic cocktails are imbibed, raucous games are played, and new friends are made, but much is happening that no one is talking about. And something is stirring underground. Blood Play is a darkly comic thriller of post-war verve and pre-adolescent disquiet, created by New York's criti

This girl-loves-ghoul rock and roll Off Broadway musical is set in the atomic 1950s at Enrico Fermi High, where the law is laid down by a zany, tyrannical principal. Pretty senior Toffee has fallen for the class bad boy. Family pressure forces her to end the romance, and he charges off on his motorcycle to the nuclear waste dump. He returns glowing and determined to reclaim Toffee''s heart. He still wants to graduate, but most of all he wants to take Toffee to the prom. The principal orders him t

Faith, Hope and Charity comprise Evelina Fernandez's series, A Mexican Trilogy. The plays center around the Moraleses, a Mexican-American family. The trilogy deals in part with the impact that inspirational historical figures have upon the lives of the Morales family. Those figures specifically are Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and Pope John Paul II.Faith is the first play in the trilogy. Set a couple decades after the Mexican Revolution, F

It''s just after Labor Day, and Martha''s Vineyard has started emptying out, but you can still smell the suntan lotion (the expensive kind). And the expensive life is just what Simone is living these days, as personal assistant to Michaela Kell, trophy wife of an absurdly rich (and often absent) New York ad man. When Simone''s older sister, a social worker from blue collar Buffalo, comes to visit, lifestyles-and worlds-collide. This keenly observed comedy about class, family and the choices that sh

Genre: Dramatic Comedy Characters: 3 male, 1 female WINNER! of the 2011 Laurents/Hatcher Award for best new play WINNER! Outer Critics Circle Award - John Gassner Award Danny has written a complex new drama about an African American family trying to get out of the Projects, and it has just been selected for the nation's preeminent play festival. Problem is: Danny, a young white playwright, submitted the work under a pen nam

David Tuttle is moonlighting as a department store Santa so that he can buy his wife a fur for Christmas. He tells her he's working late at the office, but she finds out he isn't at the office. A suspected other woman, hypnotism, the notorious Santa burglar Kris Kreigle and his gun-toting fiancée, and a confused policeman add up to a rollicking tale that is hilarious Christmas entertainment any time of year.

With theatrical imagery and heightened emotions, this profound one act play leaves the impact of a grand Greek Tragedy. A father comes home after a 17 year absence with his new girlfriend in tow. His wife, displeased and scorned, decides to take matters into her own hands. But what happens when people believe that the only way to heal is to hurt?

This powerful adaptation, supported by a lyrical score, focuses the humor, warmth, and emotional intensity of Katherine Paterson''s Newbery Award-winning novel. Jesse, alienated from the pragmatism of his family and rural Virginian culture, draws and dreams of becoming something special. Leslie, the new girl from the city and the ultimate outsider, opens a world of imagination, art, and literature for him. Together they create Terabithia, a fantasy kingdom where they are safe from those who don''t

On death row, elder inmate Cleveland has taken young, mentally challenged Bradley under his wing and is trying to teach him to read. When word arrives that Bradleys new lawyer has arranged for him to take a mental competency test, Cleveland tries to convince Bradley that this is one test he does not want to pass.

Gladys, the elderly matriarch of the Green family, has run an art gallery in a small Greenwich Village hotel for many years. The management wants to replace her less-than-thriving gallery with a coffee shop. Always irascible but now increasingly erratic, Gladys is a cause of concern to her daughter, her son-in-law, and her grandson, from whose point of view this poignant memory play is told. A wacky and heartrending look at the effect of senility on a family, The Waverly Gallery was a success at

Ned, Marshall, and Casey, three co-workers, debate whether or not to notify authorities that the ΓÇ£red lightΓÇ¥ has turned on. A comedic take on responsibility vs. inconvenience.

Comprising four one-act comic vaudevilles and four short stories adapted for the stage by Michael Frayn, The Sneeze introduces readers to a less familiar selection of work by one of the greatest precursors of modern drama. First published in 1989, this reissue includes The Sneeze; The Alien Corn; The Bear; The Evils of Tobacco; The Inspector-General; Swan Song; The Prospect, and Plots. Michael Frayns translations of Chekhovs work marry the expertise of the translator with the innate understanding of a master dramatist and are widely regarded as the truest, most authentic renderings of Chekhovs work: His keen imaginative sympathy with the great Russian dramatist extends beyond translation ...But translation is an art at which he excels. Spectator

This remarkable play starred Constance Cummings in a Tony-winning performance on Broadway. Emily Stilson, seventy years old and a celebrated former aviatrix and stunt pilot, suffers a stroke and is plunged into a world of disorientation and grief. Memories flood in between painful attempts to relearn the basic functions of everyday life. Aided by a dedicated young therapist, Emily''s flights of memory and emotion create an evocative portrait of the ability of the human spirit to renew and survive

Geoffrey Jones, M.P. and sometime architect, is convinced that the Russians are about to launch a nuclear strike against England. He builds a bomb shelter equipped with everything he, his wife, and his wifes old mother will need to last out such a strike. They plan to try the thing out for a three week experiment when, inadvertently, they are trapped inside with the mother, the telephone installer and an Indian milkman. They try to make the best of the situation when who should enter through a side hatch but their next door neighbors who, ever striving to keep up with the Joneses, have now kept down with them by building their own abutting shelter. By a strange set of circumstances the neighbors are also trapped and neither neighbor wants to admit this to the other. Hilarious complications ensue until everyone gets out.

Herb, a Hollywood scriptwriter currently "at liberty," is surprised when his forgotten past reappears in the form of Libby, a teenage daughter who's trekked from Brooklyn with dreams of movie stardom. With Steffy, his sometime paramour, at his side, Herb decides to take another stab at fatherhood and hopefully this time, get it right.

Cal and Ellen are the owners and sole staff of a small, elegant gourmet restaurant. Cals main preoccupation is paying back the $75,000 it cost to start it up, and that means packing in the customers. Chef Ellen is preoccupied with the foods quality and stopping Cal from sampling the ingredients. The diners act out their own private dramas over dinner and their conversations are exquisite burlesques of contemporary attitudes. Theres a sensual middle aged couple who go into paroxysms of ecstasy just reading the menu and then theres three crass chic young career women. Finally, theres Elizabeth, a maladroit, shy and neurotic writer whos dining with her prospective publisher. Her actions and conversation are unintentionally hilarious and a delicious example of how not to act and what not to talk about while dining.