The Next Narrative™ Monologue Competition, Vol. 1 features newly created works from twenty of America’s leading contemporary Black playwrights that engage students in artful exploration of 21st century themes, while instilling confidence in all to find their voices. The program objectives are to introduce students to today’s leading contemporary Black writers, expose students to acting techniques that enhance their knowledge of the art and skill of performance, utilize the arts to support students in making co-curricular connections, investigate how history and culture influence personal perspective through artful exploration, and embolden students to use their voices to inspire social action.
Genre: Comedy
Paint Night
Imagine STEEL MAGNOLIAS with modern day issues, as six women gather for a much-needed girls’ night out. The plan is to eat, drink and create works of art at a local Paint and Sip night studio while celebrating a bride to be. But as the alcohol flows, so do their thoughts on motherhood and womanhood, and their carefully curated lives get hilariously and heartbreakingly real. PAINT NIGHT is about the powerful way women support each other in an unpredictable world and what happens when we put down our cellphones, truly connect, and paint outside the lines of our comfort zone.
Mr. Dickens’ Hat
On the darkest night of the year—December 21, 1865—a humble Victorian shop becomes the unlikely setting for a thrilling adventure. At its center is the real-life hat of Charles Dickens, once used to carry water to train wreck victims. When two thieves plot to steal the hat, young Kit embarks on an unforgettable journey to stop their scheme and rescue her father from debtors’ prison.
Set in the heart of 19th-century London, MR. DICKENS’ HAT is a witty and heartfelt play-with-songs that blends Dickensian storytelling with playful theatricality. Featuring nine original “Victorian carols” and a diverse cast of colorful characters, it offers a suspenseful, sentimental, and joy-filled tale perfect for winter programming. Not a Christmas show per se—but rich with the warmth, wonder, and generosity audiences seek each December.
Journey to the Poles of Inaccessibility
Indiana Jones meets Around the World in 80 Days in this fantastical romcom! Dylan likes his safe life, working at an insurance company and living with his wheelchair-bound aunt. Then he meets Chris, a young woman of boundless energy, who’s convinced magic is real and the last of it may be found at the world’s most remote places, the Poles of Inaccessibility. Fate intervenes and Dylan must circle the globe with Chris on an epic journey of discovery, comedy, danger, and love.
Our Shrinking Shrinking World
Dr. Lyman Hidalgo-Nyquist is the only therapist in a faded New England mill town. His one remaining patient is Teddy, a down-on-his-luck cop, who lost his gun and can only get his job back by seeing a therapist. Another therapist shows up in town, the mysterious Dr. Michael Carver. The two therapists battle each other for the chance to save Teddy and his girlfriend through couples’ counseling with the fate of humanity in the balance.
The Last Wide Open
This 2-hander play with music explores the multiplicity of the immigrant experience through the lens of an earnest meditation on love and the metaverse. Lina and Roberto’s lives intersect and parallel as three alternate realities unfold. The play renders the near hits and misses of two worn out restaurant workers and the mystical ways the universe conspires to bring us all together. Think: Groundhog’s Day meets Frankie and Johnny.
Funnyman
New York City, 1959. Fading vaudeville comic Chick Sherman, along with his long-suffering agent, tries to revive his career with a role in an avant-garde off-Broadway play. While his grown daughter searches for answers from her absentee showbiz father, a lifetime of private and professional struggles rise to the surface, cracking the polished public persona of the world’s favorite former “funny man.”
What Doesn’t Kill You
A witty contemporary comedy that follows one person’s journey through a heart attack, a gay marriage, an obsession with Cher, and a trip to a concentration camp. So, yes, it’s a comedy!
Public Speaking 101
When a neurotic, amateur actress leads her community college class of terrified adults to compete in their county’s First Annual Public Speaking Competition, their cross-currents, tongue-tied quirks and foibles escalate as the pressure builds.
The Heart Sellers
Jane and Luna run into each other in the grocery store on Thanksgiving in 1973 and discover they have much in common: they’re both 23, recent Asian immigrants, homesick and lonely with hardworking absentee husbands, and adjusting to a new country surprisingly filled with as much political uncertainty as the places they’ve left. Over a bottle of wine (or two) and a questionable frozen turkey, they dream of Disneyland, learning to drive, and an unknowable future as they share their hopes and fears in making a new home in a new reality.
Wet
Four survivors of a storm-sunken pirate ship—the legendary Isabella, Neptune’s bastard daughter; pirates Jenny (a runaway whore) and Sally (an electrified girl); and the Viscountess Marlene (a drag queen)—seize a half-wrecked ship crewed only by Captain Joppa and two sailors, young Jack and ex-slave Horatio. Joppa is determined to get back to the war. Isabella has other plans. Amidst time lurches, shifting loyalties, hearts lost and secrets revealed, the seven souls find themselves without wind or current on a slowly sinking ship, until an unexpected event offers either hope or doom.
The Broken Machine
In this climate-chaos comic-tragedy, a burnt-out coder has become a hermit in the wilderness, nursing a broken arm and making lists from memory—of endangered species, moments of Lost Time, Incorrect States of Mind—in company with her only friend, a gray fox with a bad attitude. When wildfires approach, they flee through the wilderness to the sea, pursued by feckless would-be rescuers and threatened by a punk psychopomp.