Welcome to Dramatic Publishing!
March 2020. As California entered a “stay at home” order due to the coronavirus pandemic, UC Santa Barbara’s LAUNCH PAD commissioned 24 distinguished playwrights to pen monologues and short plays inspired by the prompt “Alone, Together” and written to be performed live on Zoom. The immediate goal was to create vibrant opportunities for theatre students during the challenging moment when in-person productions at all schools and theatres across the country were canceled and everyone quickly pivoted to remote teaching. The plays accomplished that—and so much more. These 39 extraordinary pieces reflect the moment of lockdown and capture our longing for connection. From Cheryl L. West’s Corona Chicken (Part One) and (Part Two), following a desperate woman’s theft of a chicken and its dark aftermath, to Cheri Steinkellner’s hilarious play The Great Greats Zoom celebration of a 100th birthday, to James Still’s poignant reflection on a life well-lived in Abundance, Alone, Together captures life during the pandemic and beyond. The plays in this collection can be produced in any combination from a single piece to all 39. This volume lists the plays in alphabetical order by author and also includes the “chapters” created for the LAUNCH PAD Zoom Festival. These chapters were curated to provide a rich array of material ranging from comedy to pathos, small to large cast size, and shifting tones. Each chapter runs approximately 90 minutes. While these plays came out of what might be called the Zoom era, they can all be performed on stage as well. This is a collection born of a moment, but one that will live on for the ages.
To review some frequently asked questions about streaming, please click here.
To apply for livestream or record & stream rights, please complete this form.
In stock
When called on to make a special Italian dessert, a chef in a senior living residence discovers an emotional connection to a difficult resident.
License Available:
Through Collection
Don King is dying, he convenes a family Zoom meeting to divvy out his fortune.
License Available:
Through Collection
Maybe the Turing Test prize for Most Human Human is something Maria could get famous for ... flaws and all.
License Available:
Through Collection
A young married couple struggles to adjust to their new pandemic living situation while their therapist wrestles with her own problems.
License Available:
Through Collection
A young woman does her first Zoom audition while she wrestles with her inner darkness.
License Available:
Through Collection
When a business motivational speaker loses control of her sales seminar to her only participant—a clueless, sexist misanthrope—she begins to question her own career.
License Available:
Through Collection
When one couple’s relationship goes online due to COVID, the romantic bloom is off the Rosebud, so to speak—all because of a strange obsession with Orson Welles’ film Citizen Kane.
License Available:
Through Collection
As the COVID pandemic starts to unravel in the United States, an intercultural couple has a Zoom conversation in which the future of their marriage is challenged by an unexpected glitch in their fertility plans.
License Available:
Through Collection
“I” has been feeling queasy lately.
License Available:
Through Collection
Two friends catch up with each other.
License Available:
Through Collection
This is supposed to be Salma and Justin’s date night, but Justin is worried that Salma may be coming down with the virus. She hesitates seeing a doctor because she is undocumented. A marriage proposal, and learning to cha-cha are a couple of the things that occupy this call between two people in love who are trying to survive.
License Available:
Through Collection
While experiencing anxiety over her future, an undocumented student actor reaches out to her fellow actor to seek guidance and solace.
License Available:
Through Collection
In the midst of a global pandemic, two siblings have their daily video call. A play about connection.
License Available:
Through Collection
A young adult takes to the livestream and provides tools to help us soldier on.
License Available:
Through Collection
While navigating the cold bureaucracy of a government help line, two people find a way to have a human connection.
License Available:
Through Collection
While her sister is hospitalized, Meredith has to remotely babysit her 5-year-old niece via FaceTime.
License Available:
Through Collection
Two best friends, roommates since freshman year, are separated when their college shuts down after spring break and discover a class divide they didn’t know existed.
License Available:
Through Collection
Rowan’s husband won’t stop buying romance novels. What’s she going to do?
License Available:
Through Collection
Three characters in search of a way—a word—to cut the distance. Playful yet painful vignette.
License Available:
Through Collection
When a global pandemic cancels their high-school reunion, Dan makes the bold move to reach out to his long-lost friend, Abby.
License Available:
Through Collection
A young COVID-19 patient in New York City finds the courage to end a relationship from their hospital bed.
License Available:
Through Collection
A Zoom party/movie night takes a frightening turn for four quarantined students.
License Available:
Through Collection
In this serio/comic scene, two siblings who are polar opposites try to connect during a late-night call.
License Available:
Through Collection
In this serio/comic monologue, a betrayed wife leaves her husband a “Dear John” video before fleeing.
License Available:
Through Collection
In this comic monologue a student spots the person they’re in love with and channels Shakespeare to win them over. Or at least they try to.
License Available:
Through Collection
Elsie’s great-grandchildren get together online to celebrate Grandma’s 100th, quarantine-style.
License Available:
Through Collection
A requiem on Zoom, written for one person, Abundance is about one person’s surprisingly joyful and heartbreaking moments between death and the mystery of what comes next. But at its heart, the play is very much about epiphany and generosity, about discovery and gifts, about connections and saying goodbye.
License Available:
Through Collection
There has been a lot of conversation about being at our best while sheltering in place—and then there are Mom’s kids …
License Available:
Through Collection
Set in a prison and seen on security cameras, two incarcerated women are caught in a disturbing loop of timelessness and middle-of-the-night existential questioning.
License Available:
Through Collection
Part fever dream, part theatre, part digital trial—with anxiety and uncertainty as a writer’s primary companions, Whitman v. the United States takes things a bit further as one writer imagines being on trial for writing stories that have no plot.
License Available:
Through Collection
A queen instructs a young person to stop running and return home.
License Available:
Through Collection
A multigenerational group of close friends and family attempts to record a song for an unnamed loved one, but quarantine stress, technical difficulties and interpersonal challenges intervene.
License Available:
Through Collection
Edwina bares her soul and misquotes poetry as she ponders the merits of puppy chow.
License Available:
Through Collection
In this post-apocalyptic world, Milo and Bock are connected by deteriorating technology … and so much more. Beckett meets zoom.
License Available:
Through Collection
This short drama/comedy flirts with Orwell’s classic 1984 as it contemplates a world where we are constantly surveilled, and illustrates a call between a chipper customer service agent of a private company and a disgruntled customer who believes they have been cursed by their past and doomed by Zoom.
License Available:
Through Collection
A high-strung, middle-class woman ventures out for the first time in weeks only to have a raw chicken encounter that upends her entire life.
License Available:
Through Collection
There’s the immeasurable grief and then there’s the grief unexpressed. How did a stolen chicken bury a family between the abyss of both?
License Available:
Through Collection
An essential worker tries for government assistance but soon realizes how nonessential she really is. This piece is written as a monologue but can be performed with two people. The intake worker, Mag, can be played by a second actress of any race.
License Available:
Through Collection
As owner of the Laugh Out Loud yoga studio, Laughter Yoga instructor Dot Darcy can make anyone laugh. But when the coronavirus requires her to take LOL online, a class of heartsick singles teaches her some experiences can’t be recreated on Zoom.
License Available:
Through Collection
