PENNY CANDY

Perfect for Competitions!



75 min: 2 m, 7f. Fayette County, Pennsylvania. 1952. Sixteen-year-old Neely Cole, awkward and tongue-tied, has always suffered a poor comparison to his much-admired older brother, Adian. Now fighting a distant war in Korea, Aidan writes poetic letters home to his long-time girlfriend Regina Miller, who is unaware that Neely is playing secret go-between for Aidan and a different girl, Emily Abbott. At first, Neely considers the assignment a game to relieve his boredom, but as Emily's attachment to Aidan grows, he begins to struggle with a nagging conscience and his own unspoken wish to claim Emily for himself. Premiered at Imagination Stage, Bethesda. Can be expanded to include additional, nonspeaking roles or cut for competition. Available from Dramatic Publishing.

THE GRID

Long one act. 10 m, 8 f, multiple roles of either sex. The year is 2036 and the nation is in lockdown, as a distant war and a worsening refugee crisis lead to drastic measures to maintain civil order. Everyone is on the grid; and anyone who isn't, doesn't really exist. One of these is Joe, the embittered son of political dissidents, who hides in plain sight with a band of street kids. Guilty over the loss of his sister Lily years earlier, Joe recreates her by adopting a war orphan so traumatized she can't remember her name. One day, their world is rocked by the arrival of an unusual runaway: the son of a powerful military man who carries with him an access code to a government database and all the secrets it contains. At last Joe can find out what happened to the real Lily. But does he dare disturb the ghosts of his past?  First produced at Imagination Stage, Bethesda. Running time: 75 minutes. For licensing information, contact the author.

MIRACLE IN MUDVILLE
5-11+ males, 13-17+ females, 3+ either.  60-70 minutes.  Casey is the worst ballplayer in the Mudville Little League, the butt of jokes and an embarrassment to his Dad, who brags of his glory days in the outfield. But he's not alone in feeling inadequate; his friends Murphy and Hector suffer by comparison to their parents, too. Then a chance encounter with the ghost of the town's dead librarian throws Casey and his friends into a time warp--where they discover that some of their parents'  big adventures didn't quite happen the way they said... Available from Youthplays.com.

SECRET LIVES OF TOADS
Cast: 5m., 18w., expandable to 38 (includes 15 either gender, doubling possible.) Poor Harvey faces his first day at a brand new school, where things look none too inviting. The cool kids have staked out their territory on the playground and there's no room in their cliques for nerds or dweebs or other kids with weird attitudes—like that shy girl, Cissy, who never talks, or that tough girl, Barrie, who plays with frogs. When Harvey befriends these luckless souls, he is suddenly thrust into the middle of a simmering feud between them and the snootiest girl in school. Meanwhile, the frogs have their own ideas about what it means to feel stuck. The excitement peaks in the science lab, when frogs and kids find themselves thrown together on the wrong side of a locked door. Area staging. Approximate running time: 45 minutes. Available from Dramatic Publishing.