What’s hot at Broadway Licensing Group? Check out the top trending titles of the week from Broadway Licensing, Dramatists Play Service, and Playscripts
Little House On the Prairie, The Musical by Rachel Sheinkin, Rachel Portman, & Donna Di Novelli
The Story: This heartwarming musical follows the Ingalls family’s journey westward and settlement in De Smet, South Dakota where Ma and Pa Ingalls hope to make a better life for their children. It tells the story of their struggle to keep their land claim. In story, song, and dance, we see the Ingalls weathering the hardships of winter blizzards and prairie fires as well as rejoicing in the settlement of land and town. Most of all, the story follows Laura as she grows from a wild child who loves to run free into a woman who embraces the responsibilities of her own future while struggling to remain true to herself.
Trap by Stephen Gregg
About: Menachap, California. An incomprehensible event: every person in the audience of a high school play falls unconscious–every person but one. Using interviews with witnesses, loved ones, first responders, and the investigators pursuing the case, a theatre ensemble brings the story of the strange event to life, documentary-style. But as the strands weave together into an increasingly dangerous web, it becomes clear that this phenomenon might not be entirely in the past. Unnerving, exhilarating, and wildly inventive, you’ve never walked into anything quite like Trap.
The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler
About: An Obie Award-winning whirlwind tour of a forbidden zone, The Vagina Monologues introduces a wildly divergent gathering of female voices, including a six-year-old girl, a septuagenarian New Yorker, a vagina workshop participant, a woman who witnesses the birth of her granddaughter, a Bosnian survivor of rape, and a feminist happy to have found a man who “liked to look at it.
Little Women by Kate Hamill
The Story: Adapted from the novel by Louisa May Alcott. Jo March isn’t your typical Victorian lady. She’s indecorous and headstrong, and one day she’s going to be a great American novelist. As she and her sisters grow up in the middle of the Civil War, they strive to be brave, intelligent, and imaginative young women. But as adulthood approaches, each sister must negotiate her private ambitions with society’s expectations. In a war-torn world defined by gender, class, and personal tragedy, Jo March gives us her greatest story: that of the March sisters, four dreamers destined to be imperfect little women.
Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and Other Identities by Anna Deavere Smith
The Story: In 1991, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, a Hasidic man’s car jumped a curb, killing Gavin Cato, a seven-year-old black child. Later, in what appears to have been an act of retaliation on the part of a faction of the black community, Yankel Rosenbaum, a Hasidic rabbinical student, was stabbed and killed. The ensuing riots that wracked Crown Heights’ previous atmosphere of tolerance for its divergent cultures made national headlines and pointed to the growing friction in racial and cultural relations across America. Drawing verbatim from a series of over fifty interviews with Crown Heights’ residents, politicians, activists, religious leaders, gangs, street dwellers, victims, and perpetrators alike, Anna Deavere Smith has created a theatrical event distilling the lives and voices of twenty-six of the incident’s survivors into a visionary amalgam, the import of which touches upon every American regardless of race, color, or beliefs.
Coney Island Christmas by Donald Margulies, based on “The Loudest Voice” by Grace Paley
The Story: Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Margulies weaves together nostalgia, music, and merriment in this new seasonal classic. A holiday show for people of all ages and all faiths, CONEY ISLAND CHRISTMAS introduces us to Shirley Abramowitz, a young Jewish girl who (much to her immigrant parents’ exasperation) is cast as Jesus in the school’s Christmas pageant. As Shirley, now much older, recounts the memorable story to her great-granddaughter, the play captures a timeless and universal tale of what it means to be an American during the holidays.
Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music by Lee Blessing
The Story: Eve Wilfong, who lives over the “Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music Bar,” is paid a visit by her niece Catherine Empanger, a novice nun who’s been asked to leave her convent. It seems Catherine suffers from a curious compulsion to yell obscenities at the wrong moment, and even, on occasion, bark like a dog. Roy, an honest if simple fellow from the bar downstairs, wants to court Catherine whether she’s a nun or not. Eve feels she should give her niece the benefit of her experiences with men before allowing her to venture back into the mad modern country world. What follows is not simply comic and well-observed, but romantic and affecting as well.
Kafka’s Metamorphosis adapted by Steve Moulds
The Story: Gregor Samsa awakes from horrible dreams to find himself transformed into colossal vermin. So begins Franz Kafka’s most celebrated work–and this play that takes us inside Gregor’s head to reveal the existential dread smoldering there. An ordinary family must cope with surreal tragedy when their son (who’s also their breadwinner) becomes a disgusting creature. How strong will their loyalty to him prove? And what’s the value of a human life… once it’s no longer human? This large-cast adaptation raises questions that are as relevant now as they were when Gregor Samsa first crawled out of bed.
I Don’t Want to Talk About It by Bradley Hayward
The Story: Being a teenager is hard, and nobody wants to talk about it. Confronting the daily challenges of growing up, this series of monologues and scenes offers a look at a multitude of issues — including dealing with parents who just don’t get it, rumors, bullying, and suicide. By turns funny and tragic, the gritty details of adolescence surface — exposing the things teenagers can’t, won’t, and don’t want to talk about.
War of the Worlds: The Panic Broadcast adapted by Joe Landry
The Story: An alien invasion throws humanity into chaos in the classic sci-fi novel The War of the Worlds–but all it took to cause real-life panic in the streets was Orson Welles’s 1938 radio adaptation, which listeners took for news. Now, ten years later, the WBFR radio ensemble recreates the colorful events surrounding the infamous evening, including the full original broadcast. Complete with vintage commercials and live sound effects, this radio-play-within-a-radio-play is a thrilling homage to the form’s golden age and timely reminder of what fear can do to a society.
