The Baloney, the Pickle, the Zombies, and Other Things I Hide From My Mother

As you start sourcing scripts for the school year, why not dive into some of Theatrefolk's longest and most delightfully titled plays? These epically named scripts promise not only rich characters and fantastic stories but also a whole lot of fun just pronouncing their titles! These plays offer endless opportunities for creative exploration, and unforgettable performances. Add them to your collection and watch your students bring these wonderfully lengthy titles to life on stage or in the classroom!

Time for a Tfolk Top Ten Plays For….Gender Flexible Roles. Sometimes you have more girls than guys. Once in a while you have more guys than girls. And sometimes you have students who want to choose their own path. You want to give all your students an opportunity to take the stage but how do you account for your ever changing mix? Click the link and you’ll be taken to the webpage for each play. There you’ll get the details and read sample pages. Every play gives you gender-fluid options. All the best with your search! Smarty Pants (8E) All the characters in this play can be played by the gender of your choice. Name options included. Dallas is a real smarty pants but there’s more Play-doh than Plato and more colouring than Van Gogh in this advanced placement class. Will Dallas figure out Kindergarten High or flunk? Apostrophe’s (13E) Playwright Bradley Hayward knows how important it is to offer casting options. (He also wrote the above Smarty Pants) All the characters can be played by the gender of your choice. Are you sometime’s amazed at how many apostrophe’s s’ome people manage to fi’t into s’entence’s? Then you’re not the only one. That’s just the problem that needs to be solved in this outrageous comedy. The Absolutely Insidious and Utterly Terrifying Truth About Cat Hair (8E + ensemble) You can fit as many students as you need into this play. Cat Hair is infinite after all. No matter how much hair you brush off of a cat, there will always be more. Always. It is the secret driving force behind business and politics, and is plotting the downfall of humanity even as we speak. This play has a number of object personified roles as well which can be a great challenge for character development. They Eat Sunshine, Not Zebras (11E) Nothing stands in the way of the field’s orderly life. Until they wake up one morning to see a yellow dandelion in their midst. A dandelion will turn their orderly way of life upside-down. A dandelion must be destroyed. Isn’t that what you do when something is different? All characters can be played by either gender. Shuddersome: Tales of Poe (4M/5W/25E; Doubling possible, gender flexible) Specters, ghosts and ghouls come alive in this vivid theatrical adaptation of some of Edgar Allen Poe’s best-known works. The main characters in “The Tell Tale Heart” are specifically identified as “Young” and “Old” to make them as flexible as possible. And that’s just one story, feel free to change the genders in all the stories. Clowns With Guns (A Vaudeville) (16E) A theatrical and absurd look at the repeated and seemingly endless cycle of school violence. It happens, everyone is terribly upset, things continue on as normal, it happens again. All characters can be played by either gender. Inanimate (2W/16E) This play plays with personification and thus gives you a lot of gender flexibility. Life is a little different for Ani. She talks to her coffee pot and alarm clock. She even talks to her toaster. Is she living in a happy, carefree kids’ show or is it something more serious? What if you talk to inanimate objects and they talk back? What if they write hate texts to your friends? Try to control you? Make you stay inside with the blinds drawn and the lights turned down low? What if Ani’s life is not happy at all? Anonymous (1M/3W/15E) Anonymous is a story of every teenager: the new kid trying to fit in, the best friends, the love interests, the kid in the corner with their secret, the group of individuals each trying to belong. The teenagers of Anonymous have no names because they are “Me” and “You.” They are everyone. The Perils of Modern Education (3M/19E) The Perils of Modern Education are many! From standardized theatre tests that call for an exact number of steps in a scene, to trying to eat green in the cafeteria, to dealing with caffeine withdrawal, to giving Shakespeare advice on his college application essay. A comedic romp through the stresses and struggles of making it through the school day. Gender flexible casting, doubling possibilities, and easy to stage. The Baloney, the Pickle, the Zombies, and Other Things I Hide From My Mother (1M/7W; Doubling possible) Together with his living baloney-minon, Meyer, Trevor is about to embark on a night in which he will face an angry neighbor, be questioned by police, bring a pickle to life, and discover that his food may actually be smarter than he is… all while trying to keep everything secret from his mother and little sister. Planning on performing one of these or another Theatrefolk play? Let us know all about it with pictures and highlights – we might even feature you on our site! Click here to submit your story.

Welcome to our Featured Play Spotlight. Today we look at The Baloney, the Pickle, the Zombies, and Other Things I Hide From My Mother, a comedy for high schools and middle schools where Trevor is in the basement experimenting. He wants to build an army of zombies… by bringing baloney to life. Will his plan work before the expiry date? “What are you doing with the baloney?” That’s the question Emma asks her big brother Trevor when she finds him in the kitchen at 2 A.M. But Trevor is up to much more than a late night snack — he’s bringing food to life with experiments he hopes will lead to the creation of zombies he can sell as cheap laborers. Together with his living baloney-minon, Meyer, Trevor is about to embark on a night in which he will face an angry neighbor, be questioned by police, bring a pickle to life, and discover that his food may actually be smarter than he is… all while trying to keep everything secret from his mother and little sister. Why did we publish this play? This play uses my favourite theatrical device – personification. Why not have characters such as life-sized baloney? It also has a wonderfully descriptive title that includes baloney, zombies, pickles and moms. Titles are the doorway into a theatrical world and with this play Bradley has the door wide open, and is standing with a plate of sandwiches welcoming you in. This is a play that welcomes you to laugh and enjoy yourself, and that’s why it’s in our catalogue. Let’s hear from the author! *1. Why did you write this play? * One night I was in the kitchen getting some baloney out of the fridge. My daughter walked into the room and asked, “What are you doing with the baloney, daddy?” Which prompted me to wonder what I might possibly be doing with the baloney besides eating it. The gears in my head started turning. *2. Describe the theme in one or two sentences. * Don’t play with your food–especially if it’s smarter than you are. *3. What is the most important visual for you in this play? * The baloney costume–it sets the audience up for all of the weirdness that follows. *4. If you could give one piece of advice for those producing the play, what would it be? * I’m normally a fan of minimal and suggestive costuming, but It think this show really benefits from having strong baloney and pickle costumes, so I would advise trying to make those look as good as possible. *5. Why is this play great for student performers? * At some point in their lives, just about all young people have kept something hidden from their parents or siblings. This play takes that universally familiar situation and goes absolutely bonkers with it.

Time for a Tfolk Top Ten Plays for…Comedies. Read one, read them all! Click the link and you’ll be taken to the webpage for each play. There you’ll get the details and read sample pages. All the best with your search! The Baloney, The Pickle, The Zombie, and Other Things I Hide From My Mother Trevor is bringing food to life with experiments he hopes will lead to the creation of zombies he can sell as cheap laborers. He may discover that his food may actually be smarter than he is… Apostrophe’s Are you sometime’s amazed at how many apostrophe’s s’ome people manage to fi’t into s’entence’s? Then you’re not the only one. That’s just the problem that needs to be solved in this outrageous comedy. Lord of the Pies A pie shop erupts into panic after Franny announces the arrival of the apocalypse. She starts to reconstruct society and takes out anyone who stands in her way with baby food and scotch tape. Is the apocalypse real? Will the bathroom serve as an adequate prison? Why is there a muffin tin in a pie shop? Hamlet, Zombie Killer of Denmark Denmark is plagued with zombies led by Hamlet’s uncle/step-father, the current king. When Hamlet learns from his zombified father that his uncle plans to turn Denmark into a land of the undead – Hamlet knows he must stop him! Or not. If he could only be sure… A gruesomely comic adaptation! Original text with new zombified dialogue. A Lighter Shade of Noir Trent Trowel is your typical gumshoe. Searching the mean streets for crimes to solve and dames to fall for. He joins some of the world’s most famous detectives at the International PD gala. But is this all a plot for the world’s most dastardly villains to foil them with a fiendish master plan? A fabulously funny and high styling take on film noir – it’s a lighter shade of noir after all! Close Encounters of the Undead Kind Wendy walks into a typical teen support group. Claire thinks Halloween is going to be humdrum as usual. Rachel wants her parents to be nice to her new boyfriend. Three ordinary scenarios… or are they? Is that a werewolf at the support group? A vampire at the door? A zombie boyfriend? With some close encounters of the undead kind, these plays are far from typical and humdrum! Epic Adventures in a Rinky Dink Art Museum High school students reluctantly visit a small town art museum to complete a creative writing project. But there’s more to the eye than a couple of paintings: Vanishing Valerie! Love-struck Kaitlin! Duncan… trying to eat a clay apple! A wonderfully sweet character driven comedy. Drop Dead, Juliet Juliet has had enough! Enough with the poison, enough with the stabbing, and especially enough with the dying. She wants a new story and she wants it now. _ Romeo and Juliet_ will never be the same – or will it? She Wrote, Died, Then Wrote Some More This comedic, melodramatic one-act mystery is an hilarious romp that features betrayals, broken hearts, a rather odd but beautiful love story, and many twists. Like the main character ending up dead. Or not dead… Lose Not Thy Head Joan pleads for life, Death waits for death, a severed Head says beheading isn’t so bad, a doctor tries to convince everyone that you can’t sew a head back on a body, and then things get weird. Shakespeare, Monty Python, a little love, a little death, a lot of laughs and a talking head. Planning on performing one of these or another Theatrefolk play? Let us know all about it with pictures and highlights – we might even feature you on our site! Click here to submit your story.

Episode 20: Bradley Walton InterviewCraig spoke with playwright Bradley Walton at the Virginia Theatre Association Conference. Bradley talks about how he started out as cartoonist and transformed into a writer.