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Featured image for “Top 10 Plays About Family”
September 25, 2017

Top 10 Plays About Family

Did you know today is #FamilyDay? In celebration, we’ve compiled a Top Ten list of our plays and musicals that capture the complex, tumultuous, and beautiful relationships that come with being a part of a family.
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Featured image for “Getting the Dirt on Sweet Smell of Success”
September 19, 2017

Getting the Dirt on Sweet Smell of Success

Scott Miller at New Line Theatre, St. Louis talks about their experience performing The Sweet Smell Of Success.
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Featured image for “Top 10 Female-Driven Musicals”
September 18, 2017

Top 10 Female-Driven Musicals

We’ve created a list of 10 musicals that are each a perfect, and unique, showcase for your school or community’s most talented leading ladies!
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Featured image for “Political Theatre: Revisiting Joe Orton’s Loot”
August 16, 2017

Political Theatre: Revisiting Joe Orton’s Loot

Political theatre doesn’t always break records at the box office. We’ve got to keep the lights on and often rely on commercial, well-known works to sell tickets. So where do we turn? Perhaps now is a good moment to look again at Loot by Joe Orton.
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Featured image for “Theatre of NOTE’s Welcome To The White Room: The Future of Artificial Intelligence?”
August 16, 2017

Theatre of NOTE’s Welcome To The White Room: The Future of Artificial Intelligence?

White Room has the unique ability to bring you into that world with ease and keep you there as the story unfolds on many levels.
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Featured image for “Writing the “Lesbian” Play: Audrey Cefaly Reflects on THE GULF”
August 10, 2017

Writing the “Lesbian” Play: Audrey Cefaly Reflects on THE GULF

Deepwater Horizon had just blown up, killing 11 crewmen and gushing oil into the Gulf. It was all anyone was talking about.The Gulf. The Gulf. The Gulf. I thought to myself, what a great name for a play.
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Featured image for “Takeaways from The Sweet Smell of Success”
August 2, 2017

Takeaways from The Sweet Smell of Success

Scott Miller explores what he learned when working on Sweet Smell of Success.
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Featured image for “A Feminine Ending”
July 25, 2017

A Feminine Ending

Treem reminds us that the underlying problem still lurks: could it be that, no matter how hard Amanda works, or how talented she is, she will always come in second, simply for being female?
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Featured image for “Oscar Wilde in America”
July 25, 2017

Oscar Wilde in America

“America is not a country, but a world,” Wilde said admiringly. It was a world that welcomed him and gave him an audience, that allowed him to develop his nascent thoughts on art, that gave him the opportunity to travel and live off his considerable wits, and that took him seriously and produced his first play.
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Featured image for “8 Plays to Celebrate Your Inner Geek”
July 13, 2017

8 Plays to Celebrate Your Inner Geek

Happy Embrace Your Geekness Day! For those out there who have a passion for World of Warcraft, enjoy live action role play, or are a Comic Con enthusiast, here is a list of our top eight plays and musicals for you!
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Featured image for “Top Ten Patriotic Plays and Musicals”
June 28, 2017

Top Ten Patriotic Plays and Musicals

Happy Fourth of July! For the star-spangled occasion, we’ve compiled a list of our top ten favorite plays and musicals that celebrate and reflect on American life
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Featured image for “Sharing Civil War Stories with Amelia”
June 28, 2017

Sharing Civil War Stories with Amelia

I had that chill, just as I had experienced in the Library of Congress reading room. There was this palpable feeling that I was connecting, being pulled towards another time and place.‘Rumor has it a woman has come in here after her man.’
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Featured image for “Top 15 Play to Musical Adaptations”
May 10, 2017

Top 15 Play to Musical Adaptations

We have compiled a list of some Samuel French titles that may surprise you when you learn that they were the source for some well-known or otherwise musicals.
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Featured image for “Looking Back: The Creation of Rose Colored Glass”
May 8, 2017

Looking Back: The Creation of Rose Colored Glass

Janice Goldberg, one half of the writing team behind Rose Colored Glass reflects on creating and mounting the touching play.
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Featured image for “Dangerous Species”
April 26, 2017

Dangerous Species

“The Night of the Iguana is a play,” Tennessee Williams said, “whose theme, as clearly as I can put it, is how to live beyond despair and still live.”
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Featured image for “Playwright Interview: Helen Richardson on Ubu in 2017”
April 18, 2017

Playwright Interview: Helen Richardson on Ubu in 2017

2017 has left many Americans stunned by our nation’s politics, and artistic communities around the country are finding ways to get politically involved on a local level. Today we chat with playwright, professor, and theatre historian Helen Richardson. Richardson is an authority on most things theatrical, and she joins us today to talk about her adaptation of Alfred Jarry’s seminal play, Ubu.
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Featured image for “Top 8 Stage Adaptations To Obsess Over”
April 11, 2017

Top 8 Stage Adaptations To Obsess Over

In this article you’ll find a list of eight screen-to-stage, stage-to-screen and page-to-stage adaptations that we’ve been obsessing over lately. A few are from the last few years, while others stretch back 50 years or more. What other adaptations would you add to the list?
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Featured image for “Beyond the Ingénue: Top 20 Roles for Leading Ladies”
March 27, 2017

Beyond the Ingénue: Top 20 Roles for Leading Ladies

Theatre has always provided a wealth of great roles for women of all ages, but especially for those who’ve outgrown the role of ingénue.
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Featured image for “Lust ‘n Rust: A Duet Between Romance and Corporate Greed”
March 20, 2017

Lust ‘n Rust: A Duet Between Romance and Corporate Greed

Nearly 18 years ago when Frank Haney, Carol Kimball, and Dave Stratton got together to write a country-western musical set in a trailer park, they knew that the loss of jobs due to corporate outsourcing had to be central to the story.
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Featured image for “Female Writers & Feminism: The Awakening of Kate Chopin”
March 10, 2017

Female Writers & Feminism: The Awakening of Kate Chopin

From the start, Rosary envisioned this play as a tour de force of obsession, rooted in the real life of the famous first great American novelist, based on detailed and shocking facts from her life.
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Featured image for “Heathers The Musical (High School Edition) Now Available for Licensing Through Samuel French”
March 7, 2017

Heathers The Musical (High School Edition) Now Available for Licensing Through Samuel French

According to Murphy, the Off-Broadway version was R-rated, “If we wanted Heathers to work for high schools, we’d have to find new ways to tell the same story in a PG-13 context. So we wrote and workshopped a brand new draft with the fantastic support of Samuel French and iTheatrics, and were surprised to discover that many of the changes turned out to be improvements.”
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Featured image for “Get to Know Present Laughter”
February 27, 2017

Get to Know Present Laughter

Paddy Briggs writes about the new production of Present Laughter including reporting on extended interviews he had with the Director Stephen Unwin prior to the first rehearsals, at the first night and later in the run when it arrived in Richmond.
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Featured image for “The Waverly Gallery: Kenneth Longergan’s Most Personal Work”
February 22, 2017

The Waverly Gallery: Kenneth Longergan’s Most Personal Work

The Waverly Gallery revolves around a family’s experience as their matriarch slips further and further into dementia. Despite the gravity of the subject matter, the play is filled with comedy and delightful characters.
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Featured image for “Beautiful: The Multi-Generational Draw of Heathers The Musical”
February 3, 2017

Beautiful: The Multi-Generational Draw of Heathers The Musical

A high school student’s perspective on the joy and purpose of performing Heathers The Musical.
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Featured image for “Incomprehensible & Fascinating: Presenting Junior High School Crime Onstage”
February 2, 2017

Incomprehensible & Fascinating: Presenting Junior High School Crime Onstage

In many plays written about young people, some by writers I admire, one can feel the adult hand shaping a moral universe for the characters to inhabit. I chose to avoid this when writing Hazelwood Jr. High. I wanted the play to feel as if it were written by a junior high school student.
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Featured image for “The Accidental Inevitability of the Writing of Caddie Woodlawn”
February 2, 2017

The Accidental Inevitability of the Writing of Caddie Woodlawn

At its core, Caddie Woodlawn is about family. It tells the story of a year in the life of a young pioneer girl, growing up in Wisconsin. Her tomboyish struggles with her strictly traditional mother and her devotion to her more indulgent father are at the heart of this coming-of-age tale. 
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Featured image for “The Journey of BOMB-ITTY”
February 1, 2017

The Journey of BOMB-ITTY

The four-time Emmy nominated, Writer’s Guild Award nominated, and Peabody Award winning writer, Erik Weiner, documents the explosive rise of his college project, The Bomb-itty of Errors.
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Featured image for “SUPER SIDEKICK: A Big-Hearted Adventure for the Whole Family”
January 18, 2017

SUPER SIDEKICK: A Big-Hearted Adventure for the Whole Family

When famous superhero Blackjack the Bold is kidnapped by an evil sorcerer, it’s up to his assistant Inky to step up and save the day!
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Featured image for “Super Sidekick: A Bighearted Adventure for the Whole Family”
January 18, 2017

Super Sidekick: A Bighearted Adventure for the Whole Family

Simple enough for young audience members but witty enough for their parents, this bighearted adventure will thrill the entire family. Plus, there are ninja koalas.
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Featured image for “Finding Their Voice: A Feminine Ending”
January 12, 2017

Finding Their Voice: A Feminine Ending

Amanda dreamed of being a famous composer – not the daughter of an almost-divorce, the fiancée of an almost-celebrity, the ex of an almost-lover, and the writer of mediocre jingles. Maybe it’s a ridiculous dream – after all, how many brilliant female composers are there?
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Featured image for “His Happy Days: Bringing A Last Dream to Life”
January 10, 2017

His Happy Days: Bringing A Last Dream to Life

A story of a man’s final dream to put on a play. He chose Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days.
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Featured image for “A Resolution for 2017: Don’t Be Afraid To Talk”
January 6, 2017

A Resolution for 2017: Don’t Be Afraid To Talk

Samuel French’s Literary Associate Garrett Anderson discusses Bathsheba Doran’s The Mystery of Love and Sex.
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