| PLAYS BY WILLIAM BORDEN AVAILABLE FOR PRODUCTION
Please e-mail William Borden for scripts or further
information.
SYNOPSES
Ten-Minute
Plays
May Day
Maureen, a pregnant anarchist,
goes into the delivery room with all seven fathers of her baby. (Commissioned
by Actors Theatre of Louisville.) 5m, 3f. 10 min.
- Productions:
Love Creek Productions, New York, NY; Starfire Theatre New Play Readings
Festival, New York, NY.
Joe and
Al
A Muslim
and a Christian plot terrorism against a comon enemy. 2m.
Alice and Charley
A bartender
and a working girl consider patriotism under The Patriot Act. 1m, 1f.
Falling
Falling
imagines a dialogue between two of the people who were forced to jump
from the World Trade Center the morning of September 11, 2001. 1m, 1f.
"William Borden's
surprisingly successful Falling manages to extract meaning from 9/11 with
humor and without mawkishness." San Francisco Bay Guardian.
"A gently ironic
American Arab-Jewish instant romance in midair while jumping from the
twin towers," San Francisco Chronicle.
"It has the
poignancy of unrealized potential," Minneapolis Star Tribune.
- Productions:
Vital Theatre Company, New York, NY; Illusion Theatre, The Nine Eleven
Plays, Minneapolis, MN; Golden Thread Productions, ReOrient Festival,
San Francisco and Berkeley, CA; Herring Run Arts Fest, Middleboro, MA;
Playwrights' Circle, Palm Springs, CA; Winner, Palm Springs National
Short Play Festival
Breakfast
To Go
Marjorie catches
George philandering, but her reaction surprises him--twice. 1m, 1f.
- Productions:
Theatre Limina Summer Shorts, Minneapolis, MN.
Breakfast
Manners
Another
comedic twist on the philandering husband. 1m, 1f.
Recognition
High
school sweethearts meet for lunch after 20 years. Their spouses join them,
and secrets change everything. 2m, 2f.
- Productions:
Carrollwood Players Fifth Annual One Act Festival, Tampa, FL.
Quarks
A man and a woman meet
at a singles bar. His opening line, "Take off your panties,"
gets unexpected results. 2m, 1f. 10 min.
Quarks "is perhaps
the best ten minute play I have ever seen. And I see a lot of them. I
love the ten minute format because it's an exercise in control and very
challenging to do well. You did it beautifully." Bradley Hayward,
playwright.
- Productions:
Actors
Theatre, Santa Rosa, CA; The Original Theatre Company, Minneapolis,
MN; Theatre of the Invisible Guests, Fargo, ND; American Theatre of
Actors, Beckman Theatre, New York, NY; Samuel French One-Act Play Festival,
Nat Horne Theatre, New York, NY; Love Creek Productions, New York, NY;
The Naropa Institute, Boulder, CO; Doubleday Productions, Los Angeles,
CA; Cleveland Public Theatre, Cleveland, OH.
Something Lighter
A separated couple meet
to finalize the divorce in the wife's re- furnished house. They see each
other with new eyes. 1m, 1f. 10 min.
- Productions:
Theatre
of the Invisible Guests, Fargo, ND; Attic Theatre, Los Angeles, CA.
- Finalist:
1995 Actors Theatre of Louisville Ten-Minute Play Contest; Stages
'96 Festival of New Plays, Dallas, TX.
The Blues Street Jazz
Club Rehearses
Five would-be musicians
meet to "play" to recorded music. Their various loves intertwine
like strands of music, improvised and unpredictable. 2m, 3f. 10 min.
- Productions:
Alleyway Theatre, Buffalo, NY, Winner, Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition,
Alleyway Theatre; Love Creek Productions, New York, NY.
One Evening in Prague
It's 1911 in Prague.
At Berta Fanta's weekly salon an up-and-coming physicist, Albert Einstein,
meets a little-known author, Franz Kafka. 2m, 1f. 10 min.
- Productions:
Boca Raton Theatre Guild, Boca Raton, FL; P.A.C.T., New York, NY; Love
Creek Productions, New York, NY.
The Alien Hypothesis
Larry wonders why he
feels as if he doesn't "belong." Could he be an alien? If he
is an alien, why haven't the aliens told him? He gets a message–apparently–from
his alien wife, who lives in other dimensions, and news of the kids. 1m,
1 m voice, 1 f voice. 10 min.
Reunion
"The geek"
and "the slut" meet at their fortieth high school reunion. Have
they changed as much as they think they have? 1m, 1f. 10 min.
- Productions: Coastal Carolina University, Myrtle Beach, SC;
Yankee Rep, Pantheon Theater, New York, NY; Boca Raton Theatre Guild,
Boca Raton, FL; State University of New York, Brockport, Festival of
Ten; Theatre of the Invisible Guests, Fargo, ND; Vagabond Players Theatre
Company, North Hollywood, CA; West Coast Ten-Minute Play Contest, Irvine,
CA. Reunion filmed for theatrical release by Darinka Productions, 2004.
Muse
Cal, plagued by writer's
block, calls for a muse. He gets Ron, who is not what he expected but
who provides surprising inspiration anyway. 2m. 10 min.
- Productions:
"Creating a Scene" Festival, The Playwrights' Center, Minneapolis,
MN; State University of New York, Brockport, Festival of Ten; Drama
West, Los Angeles, CA; Expanded Arts, New York, NY; Heartlande Theatre
Playscape, Birmingham, MI.
Ledge
Mary could jump and end
it all if Tom, who also wants to jump, would get out of her way. A romantic
comedy on the edge. 1m, 1f. 10 min.
Moving Letters
It's moving day, and
as a mild-mannered professor reads his old letters we discover his secret
lives. 1m, 1f. 10 min.
- Productions:
Theatre
of the Invisible Guests, Fargo, ND; Theatre North Collaborative, New
York, NY; Love Creek Productions, New York, NY; Break a Leg Productions,
New York, NY.
Jumping
A man and a woman rejected
by love fall in love before one jumps into the ice-covered Mississippi
and the other jumps into the praxis of politics. 1m, 1f. 10 min.
- Over 60 productions,
including Canada, Norway, and Germany.
- JUMPING analysis
in Barbara Weller's thesis for her Referendariat, Krefeld, Germany,
1998.
Hangman
A condemned man must
build his own gallows. He helps his executioner write a poem. 2m. 20 min.
- Productions:
Creative Voices, New York, NY; Love Creek Productions, New York, NY.
Dirty Laundry
A woman on the run washes
her clothes—including the clothes she’s wearing—in a laundromat
as a young writer watches and wonders what he’s letting himself in
for. 1m, 1f. 10 min.
- Productions:
City Theatre Company Ten Minute Play Festival, Wilmington, DE;
CollaborAction Theatre Company, Chicago, IL. Finalist, Actors Theatre
of Louisville 1999 Ten Minute Play Contest.
Lunch
Bella invites Bob to
lunch to tell him that their spouses are having an affair. What should
they do? Tell them? Or have lunch again? 1m, 1f. 10 min.
- Productions:
Yankee
Rep, Pantheon Theater, New York, NY; Boca Raton Theatre Guild, Boca
Raton, FL; Drama West, Westwood, CA; None of the Above Theatre Company,
New York, NY; Heartlande Theatre One-Act Marathon, Birmingham, MI.
New Orleans
The hotel is full, and
Sally and Arnie have to share a room. They didn't really intend to begin
anything. 1m, 1f. 10 min.
Afternoon Delight
An affair gets an unexpected
beginning at the We Won't Tell Motel. 1m. 1f. 10 min.
Room Service
While Sally and Arnie
wait for room service, what are their spouses cooking up at home? 1m,
1f. 10 min.
Cocktails
Should Sally and Arnie
tell their spouses about their affair? Will it spoil dinner? 2m, 2f. 10
min.
- Productions:
Boca Raton Theatre Guild, Boca Raton, FL; ShowOff! Playwriting Festival,
Camino Real Playhouse, San Juan Capistrano, CA.
Dinner
They tell. What's for
dessert? 2m, 2f. 10 min.
- Productions: Boca Raton Theatre Guild, Boca Raton, FL.
Changing
Rooms
When Joanna
and Brian meet for their weekly tryst, Joanna suggests they see if other
couples are meeting for secret affairs in other rooms in the motel-and
wouldn't it be funny if they discovered his wife and her husband? 1m,
1f
True
Love
Cybele likes to fight before
she makes love. Robert's tired of it. Or is he? 1m, 1f
Night Watch
He
wants her to watch. She wants to read her mystery. Is the plot what we
think it is? And was that the denouement?
1m, 1f
|