Plays – Page 3 – The Coachella Review

Reina: A One-Act Play

By Joe Bulvid

Cast
(In Order of Appearance)
Jeff: A young male, dressed in business casual
Quinn: A young male, dressed in business casual
Reina: A mysterious young female dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and a leather jacket

SETTING
A bar in New York City. There are numerous barstools. It is 7:30 pm in July.

AT RISE
QUINN and JEFF sit at barstools
C. REINA sits at a barstool
RC. BARTENDER works behind the bar.

JEFF: Stay for one more? Come on, Quinn!

QUINN: Jeff, you’re killing me. Pamela’s gonna think I got mugged in the subway. And I don’t want to text her because then it becomes a thing.
(mimics his wife)
“You really should have told me about going out with Jeff. I could have gone to the 7pm cycle class or had some me time with my new vibrator.” If I just go home, she may be pissed, but it’s like she doesn’t think about what she could have done.

Egg In Spoon

By Rachael Carnes

CAST OF CHARACTERS
Leah – A mother, in her 40s
Sophie – A girl of 15
Janet – A grandma, in her 60s
Eleanor – A great-grandmother

SETTING
In a public park, on a pleasant spring day.

TIME
Late afternoon

At rise, SOPHIE is sitting behind the picnic table, on her phone.

LEAH: Will you please put your phone down?

SOPHIE: In a minute.

LEAH: There are people here who want to talk to you.

SOPHIE: I’m in the middle of making plans for later!

LEAH: Put it away or I’ll take it away.

SOPHIE: You’re not taking my phone away.

LEAH: I’m counting down.

SOPHIE: I’m 15 years old! You can’t “count down” on me. (snorts)

Times Change

August 1, 2019 Plays TCR Daily The Coachella Review

By Bruce Shearer

CAST OF CHARACTERS
Bob Dylan, musical legend and survivor
Fan, A music lover who may or may not be a journalist

SETTING
The play is set in a backstage corridor.

SYNOPSIS
A fan or journalist meets Bob Dylan in a backstage corridor and asks him a few questions.

BOB DYLAN IS WALKING DOWN A BACKSTAGE CORRIDOR WHEN A FIGURE STEPS OUT OF THE SHADOWS AND SPEAKS TO HIM.

Fan: What was it about Donovan that so upset you, Bob?

(BOB STOPS AND ALMOST STEPS BACK.)

Bob: Who are you?

Fan: I’m a fan.

Bob: Not from Rolling Stone?

Fan: We’re all rolling stones, Bob.

The White Card by Claudia Rankine – A Conversational Review

May 21, 2019 Book Review Plays TCR Daily The Coachella Review

By: AM Larks & AE Santana

Claudia Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry, two plays, numerous video collaborations, and is the editor of several anthologies. Rankine has won the PEN Open Book Award and the PEN Literary Award, the NAACP Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the National Book Award for her book Citizen. Rankine is the recipient of the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts, in addition to other honors and awards.

The White Card by Claudia Rankine is two-scene play that features one black character, Charlotte Cummings, a Yale MFA graduate and a highly successful contemporary artist; and four white characters: Charles Hamilton Spencer, a “well-respected philanthropist” and “lover of contemporary art,” his wife Virginia Compton Spencer, the Spencers’ son Alex Compton-Spencer, an activist who is “deeply involved in current American politics,” and Eric Schmidt, the Spencers’ trusted art dealer. The Spencers invite Charlotte over to dinner in an attempt to convince her to sell her art to them.

The Coachella Review contributors A.E. Santana and A.M. Larks reviewed this play in an interview style with questions, responses, and replies in order to capture the conversation that theater, and specifically The White Card, is meant to evoke.

Schrödinger’s Gun

May 3, 2019 Plays TCR Daily The Coachella Review

By Greg A. Smith

CAST OF CHARACTERS
Roland – Male, Caucasian, Twenties
Freeman – Male, African-American, 50+
Griggs – Female, African-American, 25-40

SETTING
A small, bare room. Modern day.

Production History:
Staged Reading – Itinerant Theatre, LA; 2017
Staged Reading – City Theatre, FL; 2018

Awards:
City Theatre National Award for Short Playwriting – 2018 Finalist

A small, bare room. A metal table in the center, a beaten-up briefcase laid flat on it. Two men sit either side – ROLAND (Caucasian) and FREEMAN (African-American). Both wear civilian clothes, FREEMAN open-carries a gun in a holster. ROLAND appears a little nervous, antsy.

A moment’s uneasy silence.

See Rock City

March 28, 2019 Plays TCR Daily The Coachella Review

By Kelli Lynn Woodend

CAST OF CHARACTERS
Gayle, Female, 50s-60s
Gator, Male, 65+

PLACE
All-you-can-eat buffet

TIME
Present

SYNOPSIS
At the KFC buffet, Gator is pleasantly surprised by a complete stranger’s generosity. What he doesn’t realize is that her gift isn’t at all what it seems.

GAYLE, a rugged, biker chic type stands at a KFC buffet table with a paper plate and plastic knife and spork.

Toss of the Dice (Excerpt)

February 2, 2019 Plays TCR Daily The Coachella Review

David L. Saffan

CHARACTERS:

DOUG 20 years old, a college student

JEFF 20 years old, a college student

CHUCK 21 years old, a college student

STEVE 19 years old, a college student

HANK 21 years old, a college student

LINDA 20 years old, a college student, Doug’s girlfriend

GUNG-HO (JOHN) 20 years old, a college student

PLACE: The small off-campus apartment that Doug and Jeff share at a college in the Midwest

TIME: Monday night, December 1, 1969

TCR Talks with Mart Kivastik

January 4, 2019 Fiction Film & TV Interview Plays TCR Daily The Coachella Review

BY: Kaia GALLAGHER For a small country of 1.3 million people, Estonia has a rich and long-standing literary tradition based on centuries of folklore and lyric poems. The country is located on the Baltic Sea to the south of Finland and shares its eastern border with Russia. At the end of World War II, Estonia was occupied by the Soviet…

Splinter (Excerpt)

December 28, 2018 Plays TCR Daily The Coachella Review

BY: KAYLA HAMBEK

CHARACTERS:

REBECCA HELLER (30 years old. Middle daughter, has anxiety.)

CATHERINE HELLER (50s/60s. Mother.)

JACK HELLER (32 years old. Oldest son, deadbeat “entrepreneur” living in Catherine’s basement.)

AUDREY HELLER (27 years old. Youngest daughter, incredibly reliant on her boyfriend.)

KEITH BECKER (Late 20s-30s. Audrey’s boyfriend.)

SETTING: Sioux Falls, South Dakota

TCR Talks with Min Kahng

December 21, 2018 Interview Plays TCR Daily The Coachella Review

By Grace Jasmine

Min Kahng is an inspiring and inclusive force in the San Francisco Bay area theater scene. The world premiere of his most recent play, The Four Immigrants (based on the historical, groundbreaking manga panel-drawn comic strip by Henry Kiyama), premiered at the innovative TheatreWorks, Silicon Valley, and won the Theatre Bay Area Award for Outstanding Original Musical, the Edgerton New Play Award, and an NAMT Production Grant. The Four Immigrants chronicles the lives of four Japanese students as they immigrate to the California bay area. Kahng has also been the recipient of the Titan Award for Playwrights.