Theatre Licensing
The agency specializes in representation of live stage rights, more formally identified as dramatic-musical rights, including dramatic, musical, live stage works, opera, operetta, dance, and puppetry. The agency represents playwrights and composers, as well as negotiating these rights on behalf of producers for third parties in domestic and foreign markets. For more information, please email susan at schulman agency dot com or to fill out a production request form, click here.
FIVE THRILLERS by Mario Fratti
LOVERS... (four characters / one set) Two women decide to punish a man. A third woman upends their plan. An unpredictable end.
DEAD MAN'S BLUFF... (six characters / one set) During a funeral the supposed victim reappears. Murderers killed a perfect lookalike. Will they come after him? They almost succeed with an inventive plot to blame an innocent man.
THIRST... (three characters / one set) The bewildering reasons why a young British playwright commits suicide. Inspired by Sarah Kane.
SISTER... (three characters / one set) A young man is very jealous of his sister's lovers. His mother reveals a surprising truth. Love prevails.
CLASS STRUGGLE... (five characters / one set) A young couple plays a table game called "Class Struggle." A severe father intervenes with anger and passion to stop them. Two servants watch. An unpredictable, amusing ending.
Running times range from 45 to 90 minutes
Script available here.
HOLES, Adapted for the stage by Louis Sachar from his National Book Award winning novel.
Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnats. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys’ detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the warden makes the boys “build character” by spending all day, every day, digging holes: five feet wide and five feet deep. It doesn’t take long for Stanley to realize there’s more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the warden is looking for something. Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment--and redemption.
Cast: 7 children, 7-12 adults — The play includes a minimum of 7 parts for children but 18 speaking parts which can be played by individuals or utilize duel casting
Location: Camp Green Lake past and present
Running Time: Two versions are available: Two act version running 2 hours with a 15 minute intermission; One act version running 45 minutes suited to classroom presentation
Full-length script available here.
SIDEWAYS STORIES FROM WAYSIDE SCHOOL, Adapted for the stage by John Olive
Bestselling and Newbery Medal-winning author Louis Sachar knows how to make readers laugh. And there are laughs galore in perennial favorite Sideways Stories from Wayside School adapted from three chapter books (Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Wayside School Is Falling Down, and Wayside School Gets a Little Strange)
Accidentally built sideways and standing thirty stories high (the builder said he was very sorry for the mistake), Wayside School has some of the wackiest classes in town, especially on the thirtieth floor. That’s where you’ll meet Bebe, the fastest draw in art class; John, who only reads upside down; Myron, the best class president ever; and Sammy, the new kid—he’s a real rat. Enter the world of Wayside School in this wacky adaptation by Louis Sachar and laugh your way through a not so typical school day!More than fifteen million readers have laughed at the clever and hilarious stories of Wayside School. So what are you waiting for? Come visit Wayside School.
Cast: 5 adults (which can also be played by student actors) and 7-up to an entire classroom of children
Location: The 30th-floor classroom of Wayside School. Up there everything is sideways!
Running Time: Two versions are available: Full length version for family audiences running 2 hours with 15 minute intermission; 45 minute version suited to assemblies or class time
Full-length script available here.
THERE’S A BOY IN THE GIRLS’ BATHROOM, adapted for the stage by Louis Sachar
Fifth-grader Bradley Chalkers is difficult, to say the least. How is anyone to know that underneath his “I don’t care” exterior, he is intelligent, sensitive and loveable? In adapting his popular middle school novel for the theater, award-winning author Louis Sachar captures Bradley’s peculiar charm, school counselor Carla’s free-thinking quirkiness, and the obtuseness of most grown-ups.
Cast: 8 Female, 7 Male, though dual casting may be utilized to reduce this number to 6 female and 5 male
Setting: Contemporary America
Running Time: 2 hours+ with a 15 minute intermission
Script available here.
BEAST ON THE MOON by Richard Kalinoski
Inspired by harrowing true events, Beast on the Moon follows the lives of an immigrant refugee and his teenage, mail-order bride.
Seta and Aram are two polar opposites who have one tragic experience in common. The play, set in early 1920s Milwaukee, unfolds around the effort of the couple to have a child. Infertility threatens not only their dreams, but also their relationship, until the presence of an orphaned boy forces them to reckon with each other and the past. Peppered with humor, irony, and bittersweet surprise, theirs is a universal story of hope, healing, redemption, and finally, love.
Beast on the Moon has been performed in over 20 countries and has been translated into 19 languages, the latest being in Turkish.
Cast: 4 Characters: 1 Female – 3 Males
1 set: Interior House
Script available here.
KINDERTRANSPORT by Diane Samuels
A modern classic about one woman's struggle to come to terms with her past.
Brutally separated from her German Jewish parents at the age of nine, Eva is brought to England with the promise of a new life...
Between 1939 until the outbreak of World War II, nearly 10,000 Jewish children were taken from their families in Nazi-occupied Germany and sent to live with foster families in Britain. Diane Samuels' seminal play, Kindertransport, imagines the fate of one such child. Now widely considered a modern classic, Kindertransport has been read and studied the world over.
Kindertransport won the 1992 Verity Bargate Award and was subsequently staged by the Soho Theatre Company at the Cockpit Theatre in London in 1993. It also won the Meyer-Whitworth Award in 1993.
Cast: 6 Characters: 5 Females – 1 Male
1 set: Interior of a House
Script available here.
JUST DESSERTS: A Musical Bake-Off by Barbara Campbell and Brad Ross
It’s sweet. It’s savory. It’s five strangers putting their hearts, reputations, and baking skills on the line to become the crème de la crème of bakers at a county fair.
A determined young woman dreaming of opening her own bakery. A twice-divorced nail technician who wants to fit in with her boyfriend’s circle of friends. A shy school nurse who is torn between family obligations and a desire to participate. A mysterious man from Brooklyn whose presence arouses suspicion. And the reigning champion who disguises her ruthless drive to win with smiles and pleasantries.
Two will resort to sabotage in their attempt to win. Others will discover hidden strengths that help them deal with the pressure. They’ll all have to make tough choices about who they are and what they truly want. And they’ll all get their just desserts – including the pompous meteorologist acting as emcee. But it’s the personal journey each contestant takes that will remain with audience members long after the winner is announced. It’s all happening at the Jefferson County Bake-Off where the competition may be fierce, but the results are always satisfying!
Setting: County fair bake-off stage with five mobile work stations and three ovens
Cast: 2 Women, 4 Men
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
THERE OR HERE by Jennifer Maisel
A dark comedy about a couple who outsources their pregnancy to India. Nothing is off-limits on this non-stop ride through the possibilities of outsourcing – customer service, phone sex, and even drive-thru dining.
While the play is currently set in India, author notes that it is flexible for global adaptation, and that names and settings can be easily changed.
Cast: 4 Women, 2 Men
Running time: 2 hours
Script available here.
A TASTE OF HONEY by Shelagh Delaney
A sensational theatrical success in London, A Taste of Honey was written by Shelagh Delaney at the age of 18. The play prompted Graham Greene to say that it had “all the freshness of Mr. Osborne’s Look Back In Anger and a greater maturity.” A Taste of Honey won Miss Delaney two national awards, the sale of film rights productions at Stratford, London, and Paris, and a round of applause from the critics.
The play is the story of a working-class, adolescent girl and her relationships with the Black sailor who makes her pregnant; the homosexual art student who moves into her apartment to help her through her pregnancy; her fun-loving, saloon-frequenting mother; and Peter, her mother’s newly acquired husband. Jo moves, in a very detached way, within this economic and emotional whirlpool. Miss Delaney translates these emotionally charged situations into a non-sentimental and realistic play.
Cast: 2 Male, 3 Female
Setting: Salford, Lancashire
Running time: 2 hours
Script available here.
THE OFFERING and Other Plays by Gus Edwards
Gathered together for the first time are five plays by Gus Edwards, one of African American theatre's most original and provocative voices. Included in this collection are:
THE OFFERING- a play that has been compared to the works of Luis Bunuel, Edward Albee and Harold Pinter. (2 men, 2 women; 90 minutes)
CONFESSIONAL- his searing single character play that has held audiences spellbound everywhere it has been produced. (1 man, 45 minutes)
LOUIE and OPHELIA- a love story with comic overtones that had a three year run in Los Angeles. (1 man, 1 woman, 2 hours)
OLD PHANTOMS- that the New York Times compared to the best of Ibsen and Eugene O'Neill. (5 men, 2 women, 90 minutes)
A FOOL SUCH AS I- a passionate and sexy love story that the Arizona Republic calls 'A compelling tragedy in the strict sense of the word.' (2 men, 2 women, 90 minutes)
Script available here.
CORKTOWN 39 by John Fazakerley
Corktown ’39 is a political thriller about an Irish Republican army plot to assassinate the King of England on American soil, and the tragic romance that develops between the assassin and the woman in whose home he is being sheltered. The play, which deals with the rise of fascism in America in the 1930s, dramatizes these events in a light that is relatable to a modern audience for the purpose of sparking a discussion about the morally repugnant use of terror tactics in the furtherance of what many would consider a just cause.
Cast:Six male and 1 female. All are Caucasian of Irish ancestry
1 set: A Victorian Parlor that is also used as an office
Period: Early May, 1939
THE LAST SEDER by Jennifer Maisel
For the stage. At turns comic and heart-wrenching, The Last Seder shows a family with four grown daughters gathering for the last family seder in the home where they all grew up. Their father, who is increasingly lost to the bewilderment of Alzheimer's, is about to be placed in a home. The mother, with-it and feisty, has plans, plans that she has not yet shared with her daughters, for a new life. The daughters and their assorted partners are complex, funny, acerbic, and - at the end of the day- a loving family.
Jennifer Maisel is an award winning playwright, television and film writer whose plays have been hailed as "inventive and sophisticated" and "human and eternal" with a "formidable flair for the mysterious." She is a member of the playwriting collectives DogEar and Playwrights Ink as well as the Dramatists Guild and the WGA.
Cast: 11 characters: 6 female, 5 males
Set: Price family home
Running time: 2 hours, no intermission
Script available here.
THE WILD GUYS by Andrew Wreggitt and Rebecca Shaw
When four men set off to find an isolated cabin in the forest on a “wildman” weekend, a la Robert Bly, everything that can go wrong does! Andy, a men’s movement advocate, and Robin, a crystal-gazing New Ager, coax Stewart, an unsuspecting grocer, and Randall, a skeptical, city lawyer, into reluctantly participating in male-bonding ceremonies and communal hugs. The result? Hockey cheers and Neil Young singalongs!
This play is a satire on men’s self-help encounters of the type made famous by drum-beating poet Robert Bly and the new-age, touchy-feely movement that supported it. A great comedy: Fast paced, spontaneous, and flawless in its delivery.
Cast: 4 Men
Setting: The bush outside of Lone Pine, Alberta
Running Time: 90 minutes
Script available here.
FOREVER POPPY by José Cruz Gonzalez
A magical realist play that intertwines history, fantasy, and family legacy.
Forever Flor William Isla Baptiste Poppy is a curious, imaginative nine-year-old girl born in New Orleans to loving, eccentric parents—Maricela “Sky Spirit” and William “Coco.” They run an experimental bakery and tattoo parlor, infusing their lives and community with love and whimsy.
The play opens with a Shakespearean prologue: a legendary lost manuscript by William Shakespeare is stolen by John Blackwood, sparking a centuries-long feud with his twin brother, Robert. Shakespeare curses the brothers with immortality until the manuscript is returned. This mythic theft echoes across time, ultimately connecting to Forever Poppy’s modern-day story.
In New Orleans, Forever’s life is full of joy, storytelling, and baked goods until tragedy strikes: her parents perish in a mysterious explosion—possibly linked to the Blackwoods’ ancient curse. Orphaned, Forever is taken away from the loving motorcycle gang community that embraced her, thrust into an uncertain future as dark forces (including Helmut Schmidt, John Blackwood in disguise) close in, still seeking Shakespeare’s manuscript.
Through rich language, playful characters, and heartfelt emotion, the play celebrates legacy, imagination, and resilience. Forever emerges as a new kind of heroine: the spiritual and familial heir of Shakespeare’s creativity and her parents’ generosity. The message is timeless—stories, love, and honor can defy even the most powerful curses.
Cast: Six characters (three females, three males)
Setting: A wooden platform stage like Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. A place that is magical and transformative.
Running Time: 70 minutes.
Target Audience: Elementary, middle and high school students.
AMERICAN MARIACHI by José Cruz Gonzalez
Spending her days caring for her ailing mother, Lucha yearns to break her monotonous routine. Here’s a wild idea: an all-girl mariachi band! But it’s the 1970s, and girls can’t be mariachis...or can they? As Lucha and her spunky cousin hunt for bandmates, dodge disapproving relatives, and bring Mom along for the ride, they wonder: will the band come together? American Mariachi is a heartwarming and hilarious world premiere comedy about family, progress, and the freedom to dream big that will send your heart soaring and put a bounce in your step with a wave of vibrant, infectious live music.
Read this interview with its former directors to learn more.
Cast: Six females, Three males, and Five mariachis (1 Female, 4 Males)
Setting: A mid-70s in a working-class Chicano community somewhere in the United States and other locations.
Running Time: 90 minutes.
UNDER A BASEBALL SKY by José Cruz Gonzalez
Under a Baseball Sky tells the story about baseball’s deep roots in the Mexican American community. When troublemaker Teo is assigned to clean up a vacant lot belonging to the elderly Elí O’Reilly, these two unlikely friends form a bond forged in history and America’s pastime. Under a Baseball Sky celebrates communities and individuals coming together to find hope, healing, and love.
Number of characters: Five (two females, three males)
Character Description:
Elí O’Reilly, her age is unknown and tough, Mexican. Mother to Paloma & Santiago.
Teodoro “Teo” Fernández, a 16-year-old trouble youth. Mexican American.
Salvador “Chava” Torres, mid-30s, a counselor for troubled youth. Mexican American. Grew up in the barrio. A vet. No nonsense. Also plays Catcher.
Paloma O’Reilly, 15 & 25, catcher and union activist. Daughter of Elí. Mexican American. A strong woman. A lost soul. Also plays María Eugenia, Elí’s elderly neighbor and grandmother to Chava, and Young Paloma (age 10).
Santiago “Sandía” O’Reilly, 23. Adopted son of Elí. Mexican born but raised in the U.S. A memory. Also plays Pitcher, Young Santiago, and Announcer.
Setting: A fluid and transformative space where images and locations are like swarms of memory capturing the Mexican and American experience anywhere in the U.S.
Running Time: 75 minutes. No intermission.
