BOOK BY LOUIS PHILLIPS
available from ARAN PRESS
MAN-0-WAR - NEW!!
by Louis Phillips
GOD HAVE MERCY ON THE JUNE BUG - NEW!!
by Louis Phillips
Cast: 6 men and 3 women. Comedy/drama. Full-length. Set: boarding house.
It is the summer of 1940. The Basta family runs a boarding house in Kendersonville,
NC. The point of view character is 17 year old Michael H. Basta, who is
trying to stage a play about a June Bug. His sister and mother are supportive.
His father, Morris, thinks Michael is a pansy wasting time. The central
tension, however, slowly builds with the revelation of the love affair of
Michael's mother and their Greek boarder Demetrius. Demetrius wants Mrs.
Basta to run off to Europe with him; an illness prevents her from leaving
at this time. These are real people living in a small town at the out-break
of World War II. Book $5.00. Royalty - $30 - $15.
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THE BALL-ROOM IN ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL
by Louis Phillips
Cast: 11 men and 6 women. Doubling possible. Comedy/drama.
Two acts. Set: area staging. Described by Emory Lewis as "a drama of
originality and glowing beauty," THE BALL-ROOM IN ST. PATRICK'S
CATHEDRAL focuses on a family of Greek-Americans in a small Massachusetts
town during the closing days of World War II. The N.Y. Times critic
Richard Eder wrote: "It is a naturalistic play, whose setting and details
of character could not be more specific and lifelike. Yet the variety of
moods and feelings working their way out is such as to give it a glittering
intensity that passes realism. It is astonishingly textured" BALL-ROOM
runs the scale of human emotions and like life itself you never know which
turn it is going to take. Book $5.00. Royalty - $30-$20.
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MAKING IT UP AS WE GO ALONG
Short plays for and about the theater
by Louis Phillips
Cast: Variable. Aburdist comedies. Three one acts. Set: area staging.
"The Coat" - three actors and the director disccus the faults
of the playwright. "Monday Night in Cleveland" - The Director
questions the audience about the play they have just given rousing applaud
for, a la political "focus groups." Results, the audience ends
up hating the play. "Provinces" - the most absurdist of the three
plays, finds a troupe of performers stranded in a twilight zone in which
they are contracted to perform their play for twenty years.
Book $5.00 Royalty - first performance: $25 for all three or $10 for each.
Subsequent performances: $10 for all three; $5 for the individual play.
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MAN-O-WAR
by Louis Phillips
Cast: 4 men and 2 women. Romantic drama. Two acts. Set: area staging.
A love story of a divorced couple. Set in Columbia, Mississippi in 1947.
The grip of World War II and its insanity is large on the psyches. A struggle
for meaning and dignity.
Book $4.50. Royalty $35-20.
16 POINTS ON A HURRICANE'S COMPASS
by Louis Phillips
Cast: 12 men & 4 women. Two acts. Comedy/drama. Set: area staging.
16 POINTS ON A HURRICANE'S COMPASS is a continuation of THE BALL-ROOM
IN ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL, which opened the stage saga of a Greek-American
family settled in a small town in Massachusetts. In 16 POINTS it
is August,1955, and Massacusetts is threathened by Hurricane Connie. The
Janetakis clan, headed by George and Pendakis, is in the business of creating
"a special mood-provoking environment for bars, lunges, restaurants
and all other establishments willing to take the plunge." They are
presently involved in setting up a hurricane environment for a bar co-owned
by Angelo DeSica and Rita Foscolo. Elaine Janetakis has decided to leave
George, and shows her independence by going off to the summer cottage for
a fling with a sailor she has picked up in a bar. Book $5.00. Royalty -
$30.00-$20.00.
***
POPCORN
by Louis Phillips
Cast: 2 men and 2 women. One act black comedy. Set: movie theatre lobby.
We are in the lobby of a movie house where Melvin Pilchnik's latest science-fiction
epic, HELL: AN ANALOGUE is sneak previewing to a capacity crowd. In the
lobby are Eleanor Monroe, a fifty-five year old silver-blonde temp worker
in charge of the candy counter; Jones the sixty year old movie house owner
and Morgan Spires, the fifty year old, white haired, producer of HELL: AN
ANALOGUE. Everyone in the audience has been given free
popcorn as an inducement to watch the movie. Things seem to be going well
until Alice B. Coverly staggers out of the auditorium and announces she
and everyone in the theatre has been poisoned- by the popcorn!! A theatrical
attack on the movie biz, POPCORN is guaranteed to keep your audiences
in the theatre rather than moving on to a movie, especially if you don't
give them popcorn.
BOOK: $2.00. Royalty $20-$10.
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TRAINWRECK IN SNOWSTORN WITH THE BRAKEMAN ENERGING
by Louis Phillips
Cast: 3 men and 1 woman. One act. Set: area staging.
One of the most imaginative humorists writing for the theatre today. Louis
Phillips has done it again. The main action of TRAINWRECK is a zany
conversation between a railroad brakeman who has just caused a trainwreck
and a railroad official. The railroad official discovers the brakeman failed
to throw the switch at precisely 10:16 A.M. because he didn't have a watch!
"A railroad man without a watch is like a prostitute without a bed.
If you didn't know what time it was, how could you possibly hope to switch
the Ten Fifteen at precisely ten sixteen?" BRAKEMAN: "I said I
didn't have a watch. That does not mean I don't know the time I go by instinct."
TRAINWRECK is great fun for a sophisticated audience. The play won
first prize in the Drury College 1993 One-Act Play Contest. Book $2.00.
Royalty $20-$10.
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