Winner! 2006 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival National Student Playwriting Award Winner! 2006 Paula Vogel Award Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival From the author: "To anyone who has ever gotten a beat down for looking like a woman, being a woman, looking like a queer, being a queer, not being manly enough, being too manly, or having the audacity to be any race other than Caucasian, here's the last laugh!" Social Darwinism is a socio-political absurdist comedy that follows a familial group: an Alpha Male, Alpha Female, Second Banana (Subordinate Male), Subordinate Female, Adolescent Male, Adolescent Female, Outside Male, and Outside Female as they move through several different social classes as viewed by a Field Scientist and his Assistant:

Art and life become disturbingly interchangeable when a sculptor of baby dolls meets a woman desperate to recreate the past. This dark comedy takes an unsettling look at work, latex, and the power of creation.
Nominee 2011 Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award, Best Original Script

Brodie, a gifted linguist, learns unsettling news about the baby she carries. Unable to get comfort from her girlfriend, she finds it in the two least likely sources imaginable: the elderly speaker of a vanishing language...and a gorilla at the zoo. Madeleine George's irreverent and charming new play reveals the beauty and the limits of human language.

2005 Baker's Plays High School Playwrighting Competition
Looking for the thrill of exploration, gold, and adventure in a faraway land, Maria accompanies her Uncle Francisco to Peru only to watch him turn from brave captain to a greedy ruler.

In this unique study of the process of filmmaking, director Edward Dmytryk blends abstract film theory and the practical realities of feature film production to provide an artful and elegant analysis of the conceptual foundations of filmmaking and film studies. Dmytryk explores the technical principles underlying the craft of filmmaking and how their use is effective in developing the viewer's involvement in the cinematic narrative. Originally published in 1988, this reissue of Dmytryk's classic book includes a new critical introduction by Joe McElhaney.

A teenage high school senior, Michael Lee, struggles with homework, dating, her reputation and her self-esteem along side her best friend, Nickie. Michael's precocious eleven-year-old sister, Kay, attempts to help her solve her dilemmas with the simple wisdom of prepubescent innocence and common sense. "Best All 'Round" is a story about growing up in Texas, circa 1958.

It is 6pm and the Douglas family is busily preparing to be invaded by their quirky relatives for their annual Christmas Eve dinner. After robbing a neighborhood liquor store, high strung and irritable Tony, and his dim-witted side-kick Vinny, find themselves in need of a place to briefly hide out. Using a ruse to gain entrance into the Douglas home, they suddenly find themselves in charge of an ever-growing list of family members that they are forced to hold hostage. From smart-aleck teenagers, to nosy neighbors, and bickering adults - the laughs (like the flow of people) are non-stop and we soon wonder who is holding who hostage? With outrageous characters, laugh-a-minute-dialogue, and a surprise, heart-felt ending - Mr. Franco has created a comic treasure that is sure to leave your audience in stitches while celebrating the true meaning of Christmas.

Winner 2005 Samuel French Canadian Playwrights Contest
Isobel Lomax and Dolly Biddle are two "mature" cable-access cooking show hostesses who have hated each other for 30 years, ever since Larry Biddle dated one and married the other. When circumstances put them together on a TV show called The Kitchen Witches, the insults are flung harder than the food Dolly's long-suffering TV-producer son Stephen tries to keep them on track, but as long as Dolly's dressing room is one inch closer to the set than Isobel's, it's a losing battle, and the show becomes a rating smash as Dolly and Isobel top both Martha Stewart and Jerry Springer

A pivotal meeting between a daughter and her father.
""Paris" is the work of a writer entirely deserving of exposure. I can hardly wait to see what Clara Mamet comes up with next." - "Backstage"
"Paris" premiered at The Ruskin Theater in 2011, originally directed by Paul Sand and starring Clara Mamet and John Pirruccello.

A new play from critically-acclaimed young playwrights Clara Mamet and Jack Quaid. In "The Solvit Kids," Bradley Phillips and Annie Wyatt are the stars of the world-renowned "Solvit Kids" movies - a series based off the popular children's books, the author of which dies just as he is finishing the last installment. Annie and Brad are then left with the rights to release it. However when something goes horribly wrong it is up to the former "Solvit Kids" to come up with a solution.

Bertolt Brecht scholar Dick Fig has been terminated by his university and is having an excruciating exit interview with Eunice - a decidedly droll administrator. Downs' witty play ricochets through Brechtian interludes, a pair of politically-radicalized cheerleaders, a pompous newsman, communiques from God, and debates on religion, science and politics before reaching its surprising conclusion.

It is December 1936 and Broadway star William Gillette, admired the world over for his leading role in the play Sherlock Holmes, has invited his fellow cast-members to his Connecticut castle for a weekend of revelry. But when one of the guests is stabbed to death, the festivities in this isolated house of tricks and mirrors quickly turn dangerous. Then it's up to Gillette himself, as he assumes the persona of his beloved Holmes, to track down the killer before the next victim appears. The danger and hilarity are non-stop in this glittering whodunit set during the Christmas holidays. Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Play!

" Agnes Under the Big Top: A Tall Tale " explores the intersecting lives of several immigrants in a US city. It is a magical tale of hope and disappointment, identity and reinvention, narrated by an itinerant subway busker. Against the subterranean rhythms of a subway train, a Liberian home care worker, a former Bulgarian ringmaster and his wife, an Indian call center escapee, and a bed-ridden American woman, find and redefine themselves in today's America.

Contemporary European Science Fiction Cinemas charts the evolution of European science fiction cinema in the 21st century, a period in which Europe itself has faced myriad crises. Key to this study is an exploration of how European science fiction responds to prevalent issues such as the financial crisis, political extremism and violence, large-scale migration and indeed the potential breakup of the European Union itself. What futures does science fiction cinema envision for Europe? Is it capable of moving beyond dystopian visions of a continent beset by seemingly omnipresent turbulence? Emphasising science fiction's unique ability to estrange, exploit and reflect upon popular concerns, this book directly engages with such questions, accounting for ongoing mutations in the very nature of the European project as it does so.

Cats have quite a few opinions, but with easy-to-follow instructions and helpful diagrams, this book will teach you how - and how not - to elicit approving purrs, mews, and chirps. From "The Booty Lift Pet" to the "I Need That Catnip on My Desk Yesterday Pet," learn over 20 tips and tricks to be the person your cat wants you to be. With bonus insights into cat sounds, body language, and more - as well as charming, full-color illustrations - this fun, lighthearted book will delight cat lovers of all kinds!

"Together Again" spans a touching and stormy relationship through three reunions. When Chrissie and Joe meet, something both dreadful and wonderful occurs. The story begins in the apartment of an aspiring young actress. Chrissie, an acting student, is about to host her acting class' fifth reunion, when her hero, Joe, a rising young Hollywood star, arrives an hour too soon. Ten years later, at the fifteenth reunion party, Chrissie is still studying drama, while Joe has won an Academy Award. The third reunion, ten years later, finds them together yet again in the hours before the reunion party. She is now a successful stage actress, he a recovering alcoholic.

Nominee 2012 Drama League Award for Distinguished Production of a Play
In "Seminar," a provocative comedy from Pulitzer Prize nominee Theresa Rebeck, four aspiring young novelists sign up for private writing classes with Leonard (JEFF GOLDBLUM), an international literary figure. Under his recklessly brilliant and unorthodox instruction, some thrive and others flounder, alliances are made and broken, sex is used as a weapon and hearts are unmoored. The wordplay is not the only thing that turns vicious as innocence collides with experience in this biting Broadway comedy.

Midsummer/Jersey is the hilarious high-octane re-telling of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream set on the boardwalk of a seaside town in modern-day New Jersey. The story revolves around the impending marriage of the Governor of New Jersey, the love affairs of four beach-bound high school crushes, a lively crew of fairies and the staff of the local beauty salon (run by Patti Quince and Stylist Nikki Bottom). The night takes a magical turn when Oberon and the impish Puck arrive on the scene armed with a powerful love potion and a desire for mischief making. With several weddings and the acting careers of six beauticians hanging in the balance, the lovers take to the boardwalk, backed by pop music and an iPhone-obsessed wood sprite.

This book explores comic performance in Pakistan through the vibrant Indo-Muslim tradition of the Punjabi bhand which now holds a marginal space in contemporary weddings. With irreverent repartee, genealogical prowess, a topsy-turvy play with hierarchies and shape shifting, the low-status bhand jostles space in otherwise rigid class and caste hierarchies. Tracing these negotiations in both historical and contemporary sites, the author unfolds a dynamic performance mode that travels from the Sanskrit jester and Sufi wise fool, into Muslim royal courts and households, weddings, contemporary carnivalesque and erotic popular Punjabi theatre and satellite television news. Through original historical and ethnographic research, this book brings to life hitherto unexplored territories of Pakistani popular culture and Indo-Muslim performance histories.

Meet Roddy Bodkin. Age 43. He has recently lost his job. His long-term girlfriend is tiring of him. He feels he is getting old and life is passing him by. Can things get any worse? Oh boy. Definitely. Yes. Because he now wants to try his hand at becoming a stand-up comedian. Set in Galway, on the west coast of Ireland, 58% Cabbage chronicles the hapless adventures of a middle-aged Everyman as he grapples with both a sense of loss and a loss of sense while attempting to pursue his comedy dreams. Calamity and hilarity accompany Roddy Bodkin on his odyssey through funerals, sex, friendship, part-time employment, memory, bad TV, family and Ireland.

Covering the years 1945-2017, this alphabetical listing provides details about 3,000 unaired television series pilots, including those that never went into production, and those that became series but with a different cast, such as The Green Hornet, The Middle and Superman. Rarities include proposed shows starring Bela Lugosi, Doris Day, Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Orson Welles, Claudette Colbert and Mae West, along with such casting curiosities as Mona Freeman, not Gale Storm, as Margie in My Little Margie, and John Larkin as Perry Mason long before Raymond Burr played the role.

This book offers a descriptive and practical analysis of prosody in dubbed speech, examining the most distinctive traits that typify dubbed dialogue at the prosodic level. The author's unique perspective - as both a translation studies researcher and a voice-over professional - helps to bring these two aspects of the dubbing process together into a coherent study for the first time. Supported by corpus analysis of English and Spanish episodes of US TV show How I Met Your Mother, she examines aspects of prosody in source and target languages, including features such as intonation, loudness, tempo, rhythm and tension. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of translation and interpreting, media studies, television and film production, as well as dubbing professionals.

The MOM crew is at it again "MOMologues2: Off to School" offers a frank and funny look at the true tales of motherhood, from homework hell to multitasking mania. Four separate characters tell their individual stories, either directly to the audience in monologues, or in scenes with each other. Moms everywhere will laugh in recognition at the playdates gone wrong, the crazy way to get a Mom day off, how to stalk a potential babysitter, and much more.

" Vengeance Can Wait " navigates Japanese sub-culture as it charts a different kind of love story. A couple has the ideal domestic relationship: he spends his days planning the perfect revenge, while she awaits her perfect punishment. Dark, twisted, and touching, the couple comes to understand the "kinks" in their relationship - and embrace them.

Neorealism and the "New" Italy centers on neorealist Italian artists' use of compassion as a vehicle to express their characters' interactions. Simonetta Milli Konewko proposes that compassion as an emotion may be activated to unify certain individuals and communities and investigates the mechanisms that allowed compassion to operate during the postwar period. Aiming to produce a deeper understanding of the ways in which Italy is re-encoded and reconstructed, this book explores the formation of Italian identity and redefines neorealism as a topic of investigation.