PLAGIARISTS SCRIPTS ONLINE

Welcome to our script archive. Here we have some of our scripts available for you to read and, if you like, produce! We have both full-length pieces and shorter work, and will be adding stuff steadily. If you’re interested in producing one of these, just e-mail us at info@theplagiarists.org and we’re happy to chat about it. Production rights for all plays are free for educational organizations, and range from free to extremely reasonable for other organizations. If you want to do one of our pieces, we want you to be able to do it!

FULL LENGTH SCRIPTS

(Click the Play Title to View the Script)


Caesura: A Butchery

 (5M, 3W)

Caesura: A Butchery is a true mash-up of three millennia of drama and poetry, combining Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Voltaire's Le Mort du Caesar, and Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral together with pieces from King Lear, Macbeth, other Eliot poems, The Orestia, Yeats, and others. The result is a visceral and apocalyptic feast of language, imagery, and blood, exploring gender, class, ambition, demagoguery, revolution, the horror of violence, and the inevitability of history.

-

“A tight, digestible 90-minute exploration of desire gone awry and ambition turned brutal… The result is more cohesive than it ought to be and, despite its subtitle, more compassionate than it lets on. ..this poetry-montage plays out like a contemporary piece, active and relevant.”- Dan Jakes, Time Out Chicago

The Epic Of Gilgamesh, As Told By Mr. George Smith, Associate Curator For The British Museum (deceased)

 By Gregory Peters

 (Extremely flexible, originally performed with 9M, 3W)

 The parallel journeys of Gilgamesh, King of Uruk and hero of our earliest epic, and George Smith, the working-class Victorian who discovered and first translated the tablets bearing the epic, are woven into a story of ancient hubris, archaeological gamesmanship, mythical monsters, museum politics, disgruntled gods, language barriers, apocalypse, the meaning of life, the inevitability of death, the desire for greatness, the importance of story, and the universality of human experience that spans thousands of years.

 -

“Part bildungsroman, part tableau vivant, it would be hard to find a more entertaining history lesson than “The Epic of Gilgamesh”—and yet, like any story that makes you laugh and cry, the most unexpected place it transports you is back where you already sit.” – Irene Hsiao, Newcity Stage

 -

"The Plagiarists Gilgamesh is part Indiana Jones, part Tom Stoppard" -- Chicago Reader

King Ubu

 Adapted by The Plagiarists from Alfred Jarry's UBU ROI

 (Pretty flexible, originally done with 7M, 3F, though we’d have preferred more cross-dressing)

 Freely adapted from Alfred Jarry’s original ground-zero absurdist masterpiece, King Ubu is a halitosis blast of rude nihilism with jokes, freshly adapted for our world of onrushing apocalypse. Watch helplessly as the horrible Ubu, his equally horrible wife, and a bunch of narcissists, idiots, and psychopaths all try to out-murder each other and take over fake Poland in a meaningless effort to just get it all over with. Or don’t.

 -

“King Ubu is about the screaming two-year-old that emerges in humanity where our selfish needs meet basic logic. Ubu wants money as king, but then he has to spend money to make the people like him to give him money, but he wants to keep his money, and, and—“It's all bullshit!” Yes. Yes it is. We’ve all been there. I’d take care not to read too much into this play, but it's a cathartic experience to spend an evening shitting on art, decency, and hope.” - Kevin Thomas, Time Out Chicago

 -

I’d take care not to read too much into this play, but it's a cathartic experience to spend an evening shitting on art, decency, and hope.” - Kevin Thomas, Time Out Chicago

Ubu II: Electric Boog-Ubu, Or Free Ubu

Adapted by The Plagiarists from Alfred Jarry's UBU ENCHAÎNÉ

 (Once again, pretty flexible, originally done with 5M, 5W.)

 This even nastier and dumber sequel to our nasty and dumb adaptation of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi sees the horrible Ubus visit a place even more depraved and corrupt than the 19th-century Poland they were chased out of in the first play: America. There, trapped in a sequel they never asked for (and are actively trying to destroy), they’ll discover freedom is slavery, knowledge is dumb, and doom looms large on the horizon. Featuring a farting corpse, unnecessary blasphemy, relentless stupidity, and bad jokes, Ubu II (based on Jarry’s Ubu Enchaîné, the third play in the series, just to make things more confusing) is the perfect play to warm your hands by as the world burns. PLEASE NOTE: IT IS NOT ONLY UNNECESSARY FOR YOU TO HAVE SEEN THE FIRST ONE, IT IS PREFERABLE.

 -

"...loud, brash fun..." Chicago Reader

 -

"...an inexplicably depraved romp..." Chicago Theater Beat

Matryoshka

 By Gregory Peters

(9W, 1M)

 Matryoshka is 1,001 Nights as covered by 20th-century American pop culture, a manic gumbo of television, b-movies, and comic books, populated by gangsters, cops, super-scientists, zombies, comedians, soldiers, hit men, detectives, femme fatales, fallen angels, knights, and wizards – all brought to life by an ensemble of actresses… and one very terrifying man.

 -

“The first few minutes of the Plagiarists' production of Gregory Peters's new drama, a modern retelling of 1,001 Nights, rank among the most terrifying I've seen onstage. Sherry (a stunning Jessica Saxvik) wakes up bound in the basement of a serial killer… she launches into a story about a wiseguy and a watermelon seed. Suddenly we're inside a clever, kaleidoscopic tunnel of tall tales, acted out by Sherry, the serial killer, and his eight previous victims. The stories, which borrow from urban legends and genre fiction, are smart, funny, and captivating—but never so polished that their thread of desperation disappears entirely. Jack Dugan Carpenter directs a mesmerizing cast.” —Keith Griffith, The Chicago Reader (Recommended review)

 -

“Gregory Peters’ story-within-a-story structure consistently charms; each sequence is explored just enough to satisfy before the thread reveals another narrative... It’s an evening dedicated to an ancient tradition with a postmodern twist.” – Lisa Buscani, NewCity Stage (RECOMMENDED REVIEW)

Some Like It Red

By Gregory Peters

(5M, 5W)

Take Some Like It Hot and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, crush them under the boot-heel of the totalitarian state; add 80’s songs, corny jokes, and explosions (of both the romantic and the literal kind) and you'll start to get the flavor of this comedic confection. Another shipwreck off the coast of Illyria brings ashore a fresh batch of castaways in need of disguises. Except its 1985, and the land once known as Illyria is now the Albanian Peoples Republic, so when a 3-woman cruise ship ensemble washes up and witnesses the secret police in action, they must disguise themselves to survive. And that’s just the beginning of all the disguises, doubling, and deception…

"HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - Fast-moving, broadly played and unapologetically goofy, Red is a hoot." - Newcity Stage

The Wreck of The Medusa

 By Gregory Peters

 (Flexible, produced with 2W, 9M)

It was the worst naval disaster of the 19th century. In 1816, the French frigate Medusa ran aground off the coast of Africa. In the ensuing chaos, 150 people were forced onto a makeshift raft and abandoned while the captain safely sailed to shore. 15 survived. When survivors returned to France to tell their story, they were blacklisted and slandered by a government desperate to cover up the truth. A collage of perspectives, The Wreck of The Medusa uses the survivors' firsthand accounts, as well as the bizarre variety of artworks inspired by the event--including a British musical melodrama and Gericault's notorious painting--to tell this gripping story of politics, cannibalism, and art.

"Ambitious and inventive" - Chicago Reader

"There are plays that you admire; since their productions are also admirable, you recommend them. There are plays that you carry with you long after you leave the theater; these you recommend highly. Then, there are plays that you wish would spread like wildfire around the world and this play is one of them." - Paige Listerud, Chicago Theatre Blog

 ONE-ACT PLAYS

(Click the Play Title to View the Script)

American Stage Sessions – Individual Episodes

American Stage Sessions (A.S.S.) is The Plagiarists’ absurd satire of 20th century drama & literature, created for the Abbie Hoffman Festival. A sort of Masterpiece Theatre of awfulness, in each episode The Professor explores the life and work of a particular playwright, whose controversial and often bafflingly terrible plays have heretofore been unexamined because they are completely made up.

AMERICAN STAGE SESSIONS - HISTORY OF WORLD DRAMA PART 156: The Corsage, the Lamp, and The Quilt: A Closer Look At The Works Of Herzlichen Gluckwunsch Zum Geburtstag

 A hysterical and bizarre exploration of the work of a fictional German absurdist (or just terrible) playwright whose entire oeuvre was written in a single afternoon, shortly before his mysterious death.

AMERICAN STAGE SESSIONS - HISTORY OF WORLD DRAMA PART 237: Summer, Summer, Hot, Hot; The Oranges of Anger; and Blue Roses & Sapphire Wine: A Closer Look At The Work of Alabama O’Dell

 The Professor returns with stories of city farms, muddogs, vaudeville acts, closeted protagonists, and one epically bizarre family from the work of Alabama O’Dell, the most prolific, mendacious, litigious, chemically dependent, and fictional American playwright in history.

AMERICAN STAGE SESSIONS - HISTORY OF WORLD DRAMA PART 994: The Industrial Revelation, Seven Day Work Week: Muesday, Tednesday, Wursday, Thriday, Faturday, Sunday, and Sonday; and The Milk of Human Trashes: A Closer Look At The Works Of Elmer Templeton Shirley III

 The third and final chapter of the American Stage Sessions trilogy (until the next chapter), this entry examines the work of Elmer Templeton Shirley the Third. This expatriate playwright’s complete ignorance of working people, basic economics, political theory, and even human behavior didn’t stop him from writing epic political plays or from emigrating to Russia. The man known as “Stalin’s Favorite Playwright” was rumored to have been shot by Uncle Joe himself.

AMERICAN STAGE SESSIONS - HISTORY OF WORLD DRAMA PART 978: Oh! Thou Flickering, Too, Too Brief Humanity! Out Too Soon!; Hypertrophyism; and Lordy, Lordy Look Who’s Forty: A Closer Look At The Work of Leslie Blomp

 The fourth entry in the famed but now misnamed American Stage Sessions Trilogy follows the work of cutting-edge playwright Leslie Blomp, winner of the under-12 Pulitzer Prize as a child, whose metatheatrical work reflects both her personal unhappiness as well as her hatred of theatre, success, and all of humanity.

AMERICAN STAGE SESSIONS - HISTORY OF WORLD DRAMA PART 1,001: Secret Agent Space Reptile Genocide!; Inmongst The High Cathanctum Of The Monstabulary Of The Coremost Of The Underground Hive-Warrens Of The Dutifaithful Of The Churchligion Of The Omnigulent Zarog; and Pathetic! No More: A Closer Look At The Work of O. Glennard Shiffley

 The fifth extant American Stage Session takes a stroll through the life and career of O. Glennard Shiffley, hack sci-fi playwright, rich recluse, convicted criminal, self-styled messiah, and founder of Astrospectraphrenology. Featuring his early sci-fi work as well as his later Astrospectraphrenologist works, introducing concepts like Waste Gatherment, Elective Amputation, and the Pepper Hood. VIVA ZAROG!

AMERICAN STAGE SESSIONS - HISTORY OF WORLD DRAMA PART 2,666: When Johnny Came Skipping Home; A Dramatization Of A Boy’s Passage To Manhood: A Play; and Never Send To Know For Whom The Red Wave Of Terror Approaches, It Approaches For Thee: A Closer Look At The Work Of Bryceland Davies Davids

 In the completion of the second full trilogy of American Stage Sessions, the audience is taken deep into the mind of an inconoclastic enigma, a man’s man writer-warrior who gave no quarter in the battle of the sexes. From World War II to Vietnam, there wasn’t a war (or an aspect of toxic masculinity) that he didn’t embrace and champion. Many have called him a misogynist and a right-wing kook, and they’re right, but let’s not forget he also wrote some of the most awful sex descriptions ever published.