PLAYS
When Jack Met Jill
You never know what moments will be pivotal. An existential crisis, or a change in your soda-drinking habits. An unfathomable loss, or a moment of uncertainty about whether you’re looking at a possum or not. For Jack and Jill, it’s all of the above, as moments across time (and sometimes, between realities) converge into a poignant collage rendering of their relationship.
**(Published by Stage Partners)
Heart of Snow
All around Lake Hayward, it’s snowing, so over the course of one extraordinary winter, the people in this New England small town turn to each other for warmth. They might find love, friendship, or even just advice on how to make a really good snow fort. But where will they be when spring comes? A series of surprising scenes converges into a playful, and ultimately uplifting dramedy.
**(Published by Stage Partners)
Hearts Like Planets
A very bright, very fast object is careening towards the Earth and in this moment of imminent death, our heroes and villains make big life and love choices. Dr. X leads a prison break. He and Orphan Drillnose are off to find the woman with the face like a plate. The New Crimefighters, Magpie, Hummingbird and Butterfly fight to restore order and save the world. Harry Hardnose, ace reporter, will record it all.
*sort of a sequel to Hearts Like Fists but stands on its own.
**Read more on Adam’s page on the New Play Exchange.
Love Letter to Seaside City
This play is brand new so it hasn't been done yet, but what I hope a reviewer will say is something along the lines of, "If Samuel Beckett had written a Richard Scarry book."
Julie gives us a tour of her new home, Seaside City.
**Read more on Adam’s page on the New Play Exchange.
The Sex Writer
Jane's father, an "important" writer has just died by suicide, and Jane goes home to her small town to deal with the details of death. Jane is a professor and writer of erotica and as she meets new possibilities and old loves, she narrates all her sexual longings. She struggles to deal with the grief from her father's death and the feeling that he deserted her a long time ago.
**Read more on Adam’s page on the New Play Exchange.
Young Love
Young Love, a play in two plays. The lives of two high school students become intertwined as they rehearse Romeo and Juliet in a classroom. In a graveyard, we chronicle the ups and downs of a couple over the course of twenty-six years.
**Read more on Adam’s page on the New Play Exchange.
Such Small Hands
Paul is cancer ridden and descending into dementia. He wants to take his own life while he still feels like himself. Marie, his wife, fights to prevent his suicide. A play about love, aging, selfishness and selflessness.
**Read more on Adam’s page on the New Play Exchange.
100 Things I Never Said To You
Julie has died. There is a school assembly and the students say things they never said to her.
**(Published by Concord Theatricals)
**(Double Edition with 2 One-Acts)
100 Love Letters I Never Sent
Sister play to 100 Things I Never Told You. This is a play about various ways to love that I hope is literally for everyone.
**(Published by Concord Theatricals)
**(Double Edition with 2 One-Acts)
New Love
While rehearsing a play, two actors fall in love. But the course of true love never did run smooth.
**Read more on Adam’s page on the New Play Exchange.
The Parking Lot
A couple decides their fate in a parking lot. A play meant to be performed outside by two actors quarantined together (1M, 1F) who can play a couple. It takes place in a parking lot and people watch from the safety of their cars.
**(Published by Broadway Play Publishing)
The Bookstore
A whimsical almost magical bookstore where people fall in and out of love. Flexible casting.
The Night Children
Dara died in a car accident and West is still mourning her. April climbs through his window. One day in the lives of the Day Children and the Night Children as they navigate death and love.
Old Fashioned Cold Fusion
Nine short plays about the pleasures (and sometimes hazards) of falling in love. From a sheriff and a criminal on opposite sides of the law in the Wild West, to a couple of pirates vying over a cache of buried treasure, to longtime acquaintances who decide to test whether a New York Times quiz can really make two people fall head over heels, sparks ignite in surprising and hilarious fashion in this inventive, witty collection.
**(Published by Stage Partners)
Stockholm Syndrome: Or, Remember the Time Jimmy's All American Beefsteak Place Was Taken Over By That Group of Radicals?
an immersive musical
That mouthful of a title is set, appropriately, at Jimmy’s All-American Beefsteak Restaurant – a fictional chain (the kind you love to hate) – whose employees and patrons suddenly find themselves in the midst of a hostage crisis…and a love story.
** (Published by Broadway Play Publishing)
Clown Bar 2
It's a year later and the Clown Bar is in disrepair and Happy has gone missing. Has he been offed by clown cowboy Brigham Bill or was it an inside job? Two cops who knew Happy when he was on the force go undercover as clowns in the Clown Bar to find out what happened.
** (Published by Samuel French)
The Wooden Heart
Mitch wants to be a carpenter. Heather wants to be a woodcarver. The wolf wants to be an intellectual. Ruby wants to escape the wolf. The woodcutter wants to escape the narrator. A fable-inspired play about love and wood and finding your purpose.
Marian, or The True Tale of Robin Hood
A gender-bending, patriarchy-smashing, hilarious new take on the classic tale. Robin Hood is (and has always been) Maid Marian in disguise, and leads a motley group of Merry Men (few of whom are actually men) against the greedy Prince John. As the poor get poorer and the rich get richer, who will stand for the vulnerable if not Robin? What is the cost of revealing your true self in a time of trouble? Modern concerns and romantic entanglements clash on the battlefield and on the ramparts of Nottingham Castle. A play about selfishness and selflessness and love deferred and the fight. Always the fight. The fight must go on.
** (Published by Samuel French)
Kodachrome
Welcome to Colchester, a town of dashed dreams and fervent hope, history and longing. And there's a hardware store too.
** (Published by Samuel French)
Rare Birds
The worst thing you can do in high school is admit you love something. A play about adolescent violence and your mother's new boyfriend.
**(Published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.)
Hearts Like Fists
Dr X is sneaking into people's apartments late at night and injecting lovers with a serum that stops their hearts. Lisa joins the Crimefighters, a group of crimefighting women, to stop him. Peter, a heart doctor, is trying to create an artificial heart that can be mass produced so no one will fear to sleep with their lovers again.
**(Published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.)
Clown Bar
a clown noir play
Long ago Happy left the Clown Bar and the organized clown crime world to work for the good guys. Now his junkie brother Timmy has been murdered and Happy returns to his old life to ask a few questions. But can he go home again without getting sucked into the seedy clown underbelly of vice and violence? Can he survive the gun toting clowns who used to be his friends or Blinky, the lady clown he left behind.
**(Published by Samuel French)
Where You Can't Follow
When his doctor tells him he doesn't have more than a month left to live, Matt realizes he's never been in love before. So he leaves home, flies to Paris and tries to fall in love before he dies.
**Read more on Adam’s page on the New Play Exchange.
Mercy
When Orville's pregnant wife is hit by a drunk driver, they are able to save the baby but not her. Will Orville be able to be a father to his child or will revenge get the best of him?
** (Published by Samuel French)
Sarah Sarah Sarah
Sarah is an author, rock star and religious leader played by a volunteer from the audience. The audience is divided into three and each group sees the play in a different order with a different Sarah. A story of a haunted person and the people she touched.
** Read more on Adam’s page on the New Play Exchange.
Violent Bones
Violent Bones is about being young, successful and broken. Kidnappings, stabbings, novel writing, a SWAT team and lots of interns.
** Read more on Adam’s page on the New Play Exchange.
7 Ways To Say I Love You, short plays
This collection of funny, sweet, silly, poignant and stylistically diverse short plays from New York favorite Adam Szymkowicz has something for everyone. From the awkwardness of asking out a pizza store clerk (Ambience Pizza), to a campy infidelity revenge comedy (Film Noir), to the couple destined to be together no matter the obstacles (John and April), this collection explores heart, grief, pain, and humor as the plays dance around the eternal human theme of love.
A Thing Of Beauty
A much despised art critic who is slowly going blind falls under the spell of a painter with an agenda of her own.
**Read more on Adam’s page on the New Play Exchange.
Incendiary
Elise is a pyromaniac fire chief who falls in love with Jake, the detective investigating her fires. Carrie, Elise's therapist, is trying to get her to stop lighting fires and Carrie's husband, Gary, is leading the life of a somewhat ineffective corporate spy.
**(Published by Broadway Play Publishing)
Elsewhere
When Teddy comes to Celia’s house to deliver a package, he doesn’t expect to be invited for dinner. When he comes to dinner, he doesn’t expect to be invited to live there. When he starts to live there, he doesn’t expect to be drugged or buried.
**Read more on Adam’s page on the New Play Exchange.
The Adventures of Super Margaret (A play for youth)
Super Margaret is having a hard day. She has too much Geometry homework, and the prom queen and king have been kidnapped. If she doesn't rescue them from the Nefarious Evil Genius, who will? Certainly not her wanna be sidekick, Louis who won't stop following her and narrating her life. Certainly not Super Lee who is busy enough at Central High. It's hard to be both super powered and super smart.
The Why Overhead
An office comedy. Karen, the boss, hasn't been heard from for a while. In her absence, Nigel and Annie are waging an escalating office war. Alan and Sid are battling for Jessica's affections and building a glass ceiling. Sam is falling in love. Donald, the former office manager is loading a gun and plotting revenge. Karen is thinking of taking her dog and leaving forever. But first, she's going to sing a hobo song.
**(Published by Original Works Publishing)
Pretty Theft
An autistic man obsessed with ballerinas. A kidnapper. A waitress. Two girls in a stolen car running from a funeral and some unpleasantness in a group home.
**(Published by Samuel French)
Nerve
A play about falling into a relationship on a first date. See modern dance and a marionette.
**(Published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.)
Food For Fish
Bobbie drops pages from his novel into the Hudson River. The pages tell a story of three sisters: a stalker, an agoraphobe (played by a man in drag), and a scientist with a plan to isolate and eliminate the gene for love.
**(Published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.)
Deflowering Waldo
Comedy about a 24-year-old ultra-phobic virgin.