Lane Eric - Plays for Three

Whatever its three roles may be, a play with a triangle points to good drama. This is the tenth anthology weve edited for Vintage Books, and, as always, we read hundreds of scripts. The plays youll find here stood out in the crowd, made us laugh, moved us, and opened our eyes, hearts, and minds. Weve chosen six outstanding full-length plays and seventeen short plays, providing a lively mix of comedies, dramas, and experimental works. There are plays written for all-male, all-female, mixed-gender, and flexible casts, with roles for actors of various ethnicitiesAfrican American, Latino, Filipino, Iraqi, and Turkish, among others. When a characters race is unspecified, we encourage diversity in casting choices.

The full-length selections include A. Rey Pamatmats acclaimed Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them, an emotional, defiantly funny tale of three teenagerssister, brother, and brothers first loversurviving without parental support. Also mixing drama and comedy, Stephen Belbers hotel-room confrontation Tape takes on the hot-button topics of date rape and entrapment. Offering strong roles for actors and an exploration of masculine identities are Matthew Lopezs riveting, utterly fresh Civil War drama The Whipping Man and Craig Wrights Lady, a shaggy-dog story of loss and shifting loyalties that sets three longtime friends at a political crossroads. Teen actresses will discover three outstanding roles in Eric Lanes funny and heartfelt Ride, which follows two sisters and a friend on an unexpected, quietly life-changing road trip. In Madeleine Georges brilliantly original Precious Little, three actresses play ten roles, including a fortyish lesbian mother-to-be, her grad-student lover, the last speaker of a dying language, and an eloquent ape.

When you read as many short plays as we do, certain story lines crop up again and again. For three-character plays, the default setting seems to be couple plus waiter. Of the many contenders we read, the hands-down winner was Pete Barrys hilarious depiction of a first date from hell, Sex with a Mathematician. And then there are stories wed never imagined before, such as Anna Moenchs The Forest for the Trees, a morning-after encounter of forestry students with different approaches to mapping Armenias woods. If youre looking for laughs, youll find plenty in Rob Ackermans boozy Duncan and Troy Visit a Petting Zoo, David Riedys flirtatious Short Shorts, and Amlin Grays there-are-no-small-parts epic, Fakespeare. This Quintessence of Dust is Cory Hinkles pitch-black comedy about postapocalyptic slackers on the edge, Philip Dawkinss Ex Libris explores the living hell of too many books, and Nina Shengolds Troika follows three senescent blind mice into the Samuel Beckett Home for Retired Cartoons.

Mark Harvey Levines Shades works clever variations on a color wheel of human interactions, while Stephen Webbs near-wordless Move Like Ants offers directors and three brave actors of any gender or age a uniquely theatrical vision. The shadow of war hangs over Frank Higginss powerful and provocative The Questioning and Cesi Davidsons grief-soaked, life-embracing Entonces Vivamos. Domestic violence informs Catherine Fillouxs The Beauty Inside, which brings together a traumatized village girl who survived an attempted honor killing, her unforgiving mother, and a liberated woman determined to save her life. Kitt Lavoies blistering Good Enough offers a complex and compassionate view of a Christian family with very dark secrets, and Adrienne Dawess La Madia Cycle puts an original spin on Medea killing her children. In five compact scenes, Wendy Kesselmans delicate The Shell Collection explores attachment and cruelty between girlhood friends. Donald Marguliess subtext-laden Kibbutz stretches the friendship of two teenage boys to the breaking point when they spend a summer working in Israel.

Aspiring playwrights and anyone who loves to read plays will find many flavors of inspiration in these pages, and new and experienced actors will find a gold mine of wonderful roles. The final pages of this book contain an index with cast breakdowns and contact information for the playwright, agent, or publisher who represents performance rights for each of these plays. Please use it. If you wish to produce one of these plays, perform it anywhere outside the classroom, or seek permission to film or record it in any form, you must get permission and pay the appropriate royalty fee. In the Internet age, its easy to track down unlicensed productions, so do the right thing and pay hardworking playwrights the money they deserve. Some of these playwrights have had breakout early successes or long and distinguished careers.

Others are published here for the first time. All of them rose to the challenge of creating a thrilling theatrical world for a cast of three. We hope you enjoy their work. ERIC LANE AND NINA SHENGOLD