It may be a week until Christmas, but I already got what I wanted. Pioneer Drama Service just informed me that they'll be publishing my 35th play, Mouse in the House. And unlike the creature in that C. C. Moore poem, this one is definitely stirring!
The play is a wild farce in the spirit of my full-length comedies Bringing Down the House or It's a Madhouse! It has a cast off of 33, slightly smaller than those two plays. And it requires only a single living-room set.
Here's the synopsis:
To solve their financial woes, Jeff and Quinn are forced to sell the charming Victorian home that Quinn inherited from her parents. Unfortunately, just as their open house is about to start, Quinn spies a mouse in the upstairs hallway.
Their realtor Moira is mortified. She wants to hire an exterminator to get rid of the mouse before any potential buyers see it. Kindhearted Quinn, however, insists that no traps, cats, or poisons be used. And so, unknown to the others, each of the three calls an exterminator specializing in "humane" methods.
One uses kazoos, one uses Viking weapons (Quinn didn't say anything about war hammers), and one dresses in a mouse costume in an attempt to get rid of the rodent. The result? Pure havoc as the exterminators prove better at chasing off the potential buyers than the mouse!
How did I come up with the idea? Well, that's an interesting story in itself.
When I brainstorm ideas for new plays. I usually start with the location. I ask myself: what setting is fresh and new (for me, at least) and offers a lot of potential for humor?
That's how I came up with Freaky Tiki (Hawaiian resort), It Happened on Route 66 (1950's diner), and Whole Latte Love (coffee shop). But after completing my last play, Mall Madness (1980's food court), I was stuck. I couldn't think of a single setting that met my requirements.
Then one day, I was watching the Netflix series No Good Deed and as soon as I saw that it was set during an open house, it hit me. I don't always need a unique location. A unique situation can work just as well. And an open house is one situation that's rife with possibilities.
I tossed around the idea of having a murder occur at an open house, but that seemed a little too dark for me. So then I imagined what else could go wrong during that open house. I thought about the couple having their pet hamster get loose, or their pet snake. But everything began to click when I realized the only really good idea is to have a mouse running amuck in the house.
And not just any mouse. This mouse would be their neighbor's super-talented movie star mouse (think Stuart Little if that film had featured a real live rodent instead of a CGI figure).
It was a natural. All I had to do was throw in a few crazy exterminators, a money-hung realtor, a pair of obnoxious HOA officers, a confused pizza delivery person, and I had my plot.
Oh, one more thing. Mouse in the House wasn't its original title. I actually submitted it to Pioneer as Eek!
Personally, I loved the title. To me, it instantly created a picture in the mind of what is was about--and a funny one at that.
But it immediately ran into problems. When my editor Brian received my email featuring the one-word subject line of Eek!, he freaked out, thinking I'd found a mistake in the script they'd just released (my one-act comedy, A Fine-Feathered Murder). Needless to say, he was relieved to learn that subject line was merely the title of my latest play.
Then when I received the acceptance email today, Brian addressed the title again. He said that when the staff there started reviewing the script, some of the readers thought it might be a ghost story or a mystery.
It made a lot of sense. To me, "eek" always meant someone had seen a mouse, but a quick Google search showed that, yeah, some people use it for ghosts as well. And Merriam-Webster simply defines it as an interjection "used to express surprise or dismay". Which I guess includes everything you might be scared by, from spiders to zombies to public speaking.
So I agreed to dump that title. Fortunately, Brian already had another one ready to go: Mouse in the House.
I liked it. A lot. It tells you what the play's about. And it makes it clear that the play is a comedy.
I still have a couple months to see if I can come up with something even better. But for now, Mouse in the House it is. Look for this furry farce to receive a spring release.
No, not that kind of spring.
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