The PlayFinder™

"The conflict between the established artist and the adulatory fan who becomes a protégé, disciple, colleague and friend—and finally threatening rival—is one of those great topics…It resurfaces in Donald Margulies's provocative new play, COLLECTED STORIES, which confronts the prominent short-story writer Ruth Steiner with her student turned confidante turned competitor Lisa Morrison. What is new here is that the women are teacher and student both in academia and in life, that t... Read more

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 ta... Read more

A brood of famous and longing-to-be-famous creative artists have gathered at their summer home during the Williamstown Theatre Festival. When the weekend takes an unexpected turn, everyone is forced to improvise, inciting a series of simmering jealousies, romantic outbursts, and passionate soul-searching. Both witty and compelling, THE COUNTRY HOUSE provides a piercing look at a family of performers coming to terms with the roles they play in each other’s lives.... Read more

Winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

THE STORY: As described by New York Magazine: "Two married couples have been best friends for years. In their Connecticut home, Karen and Gabe, international food writers, are giving a dinner for Beth and Tom, which he doesn't attend. It emerges from the heartbroken Beth that he has left her for another woman. Gabe and Karen are almost as crushed, having expected 'to grow old and fat together, the four of us.' When Tom shows up ... Read more

The setting is the backyard of a Brooklyn tenement on the last day of summer vacation, where a group of children aged five to fourteen (portrayed by adult actors) are at play. Finding a dying bird they decide to have a ritual burial, which leads to the discovery of a bag of money, probably buried by a reclusive miser who had recently died in the adjacent building. This discovery, in turn, results in squabbles and bitterness among the children, as the microcosm of their games gr... Read more

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies has transported Sholom Asch's 1906 Yiddish melodrama from Asch's native Poland to the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1923 and in the process has transformed a classic morality tale into a drama of spellbinding power and sweep. Jack Chapman lives on the second floor of his tenement with his ex-prostitute wife, Sara, and seventeen-year-old daughter, Rivkele, and runs a brothel downstairs. The brothel has made Jack prosperous, bu... Read more

JULY 7, 1994 is a haunting hour-long exploration of a day in the life of a female physician working in an inner-city health clinic.... Read more

In L.A., a washed-up young movie star explains to a willing fan in a bar how he went from a happy, married young novice to a wealthy, gambling, overnight sensation and back to a hungry, divorced wanna-be who only wants to recapture his original dream of having "enough," and being married for life.... Read more

LAST TUESDAY, which finds commuters on a train from New York to New Haven absorbed with the sometimes comical, quotidian details of their lives as the horror of the outside world insistently—and shockingly—intrudes.... Read more

The setting is a new "luxury" high-rise apartment with Spanish décor in Coney Island, the home of a middle-class Jewish family struggling to put up a good front even though continually short of cash. The father, Herbie, who sells lighting fixtures, is chronically overworked and underpaid; his wife, Doris, tells herself (and whomever may be listening) that she loves her life—even though, as the play begins, she is shredding her wedding dress to make a Halloween costume; their ol... Read more

From Donald Margulies, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of such works as Time Stands Still and Dinner with Friends, comes a funny, unsettling, ultimately moving play about the limits of compassion and filial obligation. When troubled Billy appears out of the blue in his estranged brother David’s Wall Street office, he soo... Read more

A brilliant and bizarre black comedy about a pair of elderly Holocaust survivors and their outlandish, deranged daughter, which, in a series of sometimes hilarious, sometimes moving scenes, traces the pervasive, baleful effect of their earlier trauma on the "better life" they have tried to build. Having retired to Florida, Max and Lola are dismayed to find that their new condo is not yet ready for occupancy and that they are obliged to stay temporarily in a "model apartment" —a... Read more

When Peter finally gets a good break for his Hollywood script, he finds himself PITCHING TO THE STAR of the pilot show. Promised control over something he's worked long and hard on, he finds his integrity and his storyline attacked every time the star makes a suggestion to completely change his script and make the lead character exactly like herself.... Read more

The adventurous Louis de Rougemont invites you to hear his amazing story of bravery, survival and celebrity that left nineteenth-century England spellbound. Dare to be whisked away in a story of the high seas, populated by exotic islanders, flying wombats, giant sea turtles and a monstrous man-eating octopus. SHIPWRECKED examines how far we're willing to blur the line between fact and fiction in order to leave our mark on the world.... Read more

Jonathan Waxman is the artist as superstar, plunged into the exorbitant hype of the American art world where a publicist is as necessary as a brush and canvas. Just before his works are celebrated at an exhibition in London, Jonathan journeys to the village where his former lover, Patricia, lives with her British husband, Nick. Archaeologists working on a dig, their spare existence is spent sifting through a Roman rubbish heap to discover the past. In their cold, remote house, ... Read more

The SPACE in this play of the same name covers what comes between couples, what is out in the universe and even time spent between friends. Relating the story of his break-up with his girlfriend, one friend reveals to another how space—in whatever form—invades all his thoughts about himself and his world.... Read more

TIME STANDS STILL focuses on Sarah and James, a photojournalist and a foreign correspondent trying to find happiness in a world that seems to have gone crazy. Theirs is a partnership based on telling the toughest stories, and together, making a difference. But when their own story takes a sudden turn, the adventurous couple confronts the prospect of a more conventional life.... Read more

LA Weekly writes: "Donald Margulies' very Jewish Blithe Spirit is full of surprises…Opening at the end of shiva, the play is the story of grief-stricken dry-cleaner Mort, whose wife, Shirley, died the week before after choking on a tough piece of moo shoo pork, leaving a house full of extra furniture because she was in the middle of redecorating. His all-too-loving but increasingly less supportive family is telling him 'enough already, it's time to live your life.... Read more

Two WOMEN IN MOTION work together and take a tropical vacation together, surveying the territory and the men. When Monica reveals to Libby her crush on a co-worker, Mike, Libby takes little interest, but when Libby's island date sours, she interrupts Monica's fling to tell her Mike has no interest in Monica and, in fact, he gave Libby a long passionate kiss by the copy machine right before this trip. The women travel home in silence.... Read more

We meet ZIMMER in the record store where he advises young buyers about the real rock and roll, before their time. He knows it all, and imparts his storehouse of knowledge while relating his experiences growing up: the expectations, his family, the friends who freaked out, the expectations, where he was when Kennedy died, his Bar Mitzvah, his girlfriend, and maybe a few more expectations. Always there is the music to tie it together, and tide him over.... Read more