Upstate NY school goes mad for Madhouse!

One of the best parts of being a playwright is meeting with students who've performed one of my plays (it's certainly more fun than the actual writing!). Which is why I'm on a natural high right now. I just got off Zoom with the talented theater students at Chazy Central Rural School in upstate New York and, man, did I have fun!

This was actually the second time I've spoken with students from this school. Last June, the school's drama teacher Kathryn Brown reached out to me because her students were in rehearsal with my one-act comedy The Worst Fairy Tale Ever and she thought it would be a great experience for them to chat with me (as it turns out, that production was the first one of the final published script).

The kids had a ton of great questions, and their crazy energy and excitement really made my day.

So I was thrilled when I heard from Ms. Brown last month that they were performing my full-length farce Madhouse! and wondered if I'd be willing to speak with the students again.

My answer? I resounding yes!

This time we had the call after their production instead of before, and it was interesting to see how that simple shift changed the questions entirely. Instead of asking how they should perform their characters (I'm always leery of giving directing advice, but Ms. Brown said it was okay), this time the students were more interested in learning how I came up with the different characters and why did they make the choices they did in the story.

Of course, their energy and excitement were just as crazy as before.

Which is why I'd like to remind all of the drama teachers and directors out there that I remain available for half-hour Zoom calls. If I get bombarded with requests, I may have to start charging for them, but for now they're completely free for any school, homeschool group, or community theater that's performing one of my plays. Simply email me at todd.wallinger@gmail.com to start the conversation.

Tulsa's Spotlight joins the club

A big shout out to Tulsa's Spotlight Children's Theatre, which became the fifth member of my Five Timer's Club by booking a production of my millionaire cat comedy The Purrfect Crime for next March.

Inspired by NBC's Saturday Night Live, the Five Timer's Club is, of course, the esteemed group of schools and community theaters which have produced my plays five times.

The first four productions that Spotlight so graciously (and tastefully) selected? They were:

• The Enchanted Bookshop, December 2022
• How I Met Your Mummy, October 2023
• An Enchanted Bookshop Christmas, December 2023
• Madhouse!, March 2024

As I've mentioned previously in this blog, I visited Tulsa several times when my older daughter Ashley lived there from 2014 and 2016. I loved the city, being impressed with how clean and modern it was, with a wealth of wonderful ethnic restaurants and surprisingly underused freeways.

Sadly, although I remember seeing My Big Fat Gay Wedding at the American Theatre Company there, I never got around to seeing The Drunkard, the longest running production in American theater history (71 years and counting), performed by the main company at Spotlight itself.

As for the children's theater, it looks like they're not quite done with me. Their 2025 season schedule shows that they've reserved a spot for The Stinky Feet Gang in August.

Hmmm. Maybe it's time for a Six Timer's Club?

For info on all these plays an more, please visit my playwright page on the Pioneer Drama website.

Bringing Down the House is now available!

When Belmont Day School first approached me about writing a large-cast play--no, make that a huge-cast play (we're talking 40 roles!)--I expected it to be tough.

I mean, how do you come up with that many characters? How do you manage them on the stage? And how do you make sure every role is meaningful?

As is turned out, it was tough. But there were two steps I took to simplify things.

Making each role count

The first was to group characters together. I had the six members in the family. I had three ghost hunters. I had five tourists. I had five cheerleaders. And so on and so on. This made it easier to manage the characters because it allowed me to move them around in groups.

The second was to assign different personalities to each character within a group. For the cheerleaders, for example, I had a tough one, a sweet one, a bossy one, a confused one, and a perky one. In each situation they faced, I knew exactly how each of the characters would respond and I knew that each of those responses would be unique to that character.

It worked. The play was, for me, an artistic success, telling the amusing, action-packed, and yet emotionally powerful story of a dysfunctional family becoming, in the end, functional.

But it was a financial success too, as the play (along with its one-act adaptation) garnered 74  productions in its first full year of publication, placing it second on my list of popular plays.

Apparently, a lot of schools are interested in huge-cast plays. And it makes sense. After all, it allows them to involve a lot more actors in their program, including kids that may not have performed before but are eager to trod the boards with a small but laugh-worthy role.

An odd request

Well, now my second huge-cast play is out, and I have even higher hopes for it. This one is titled Bringing Down the House and it has an only slightly smaller cast of 38 (7M, 5F, plus 26 roles that can be any and extras). The play is about a struggling theater company that's forced to throw together a show in just two hours when they learn that the theater they rented is about to get demolished.

Sound crazy? It is. But there's an added twist that makes this one irresistible. Belmont Day School requested that it be a musical without songs.

What's that you say? How is that even possible? Well, the idea they came up with is that during the rehearsal, the various performers would prepare to burst into song, but each time they do, they get interrupted before they can even sing one note.

I loved it. And that's what led me to the concept of the theater being demolished in the first place. I mean, how can you even rehearse a musical when you have to deal with an endless array of intruders, from an annoying child actor to a publicity-hungry politician, and from a group of confused protestors to the bumbling demo crew itself?

The play is wild. It's fun. It's hilarious. And--big surprise!--it's easy to produce.

Keeping things simple

Since the play is a backstage comedy, you can use your own bare stage as the set, adding only a few minor items like a table, chair, and two building columns.

The props are fairly minimal as well, although there are two swordfights--one with stage swords and one with sledgehammers and protest signs (trust me, it makes sense)--so you'll have to prepare for that.

As for the costumes, those are almost entirely street clothes, with a few hard hats and professional outfits thrown in for good measure.

Okay, enough jabbering. You want to read the full synopsis, don't you? Well, you can find that on the play's web page, along with a free script sample and ordering info.

Hopefully, you'll have a lot more than two hours to rehearse this show.

My 13th year sales

When I set out to write this post, I was going to use the word "gangbusters" to describe how this theater season went for me. But then I went back to look at what I wrote last year and realized I'd used that same word then.

So what word is stronger than gangbusters? Stellar? Dynamite? Fantabulous? Nifty?

Okay, so maybe my favorite thesaurus app throws in a few clunkers. The point is you can pick any one of those words and they wouldn't do justice to how successful this year was for me. Here are just three of the highlights.

I had a total of 420 productions, 16% more than my previous record of 362, set all the way back in that pre-COVID year of 2019. 

My royalties were an impressive 44% higher than my previous record, which was set just last year and which I'm definitely not going to share here (sorry!).

I also added three new amazing countries to my life list, making a grand total of 24 (still no South America though!).

The top five

The Enchanted Bookshop was my best-selling play for the seventh year in a row, with a whopping 109 productions. That's the most it's had since 2020 (actually, the 2019-2020 season, with the tail end of that season being clipped due to COVID-related theater closures). While most of my plays drop 50% or more within three years, this play has shown incredible staying power. In fact, its production count has dropped only 30% in five years and had held pretty steady the last two years. Besides that, the play got me my 22nd and 23rd countries this year with productions in Abuja, Nigeria and Jakarta, Indonesia. And did I mentioned it already has 43 productions booked for next year? Wowzuh!

It Happened on Route 66 was my second best-selling play with 57 productions, this being its first full year of relief. And that's a whole story in itself. For years after writing The Enchanted Bookshop, I've been trying to replicate its success, but my subsequent eight plays received only a small fraction of that play's productions. Then along came this love letter to the Mother Road, proving that a completely different story--if it's the right story--can get halfway there.

If the success of It Happened on Route 66 was a pleasant surprise, the numbers for It's a Madhouse! were an even bigger surprise. This crazy treasure hunt farce got an impressive 41 productions this year (again its first full year), making it my third-place play. But if you combine that number with the 33 productions received by Madhouse!--its one-act version and my fourth-place play--you get a total of 74 productions--almost Enchanted Bookshop levels. And the royalties for this one-two punch were 82% of the those that my top-earning play received.

Two new hit plays in one year? I'll take it.

With 24 productions, fifth place goes to my coffee shop comedy, Whole Latte Love. This was the play's first full-year as well, but it was down a bit from the 28 productions it got the year before, mostly because that year was practically a full year. It's too early to know for sure, but I expect that this love-filled play will continue to pull healthy numbers over the next few years.

But wait, there's more

Further down the list, I have to give a shout-out to my restaurant farce Million Dollar Meatballs, which has been going strong for nine years now. And by strong, I mean it has gotten 20 or more productions every year except for the two COVID-affected years. As Adam Sandler would say, not too shabby.

I was kind of blown away by this one, but An Enchanted Bookshop Christmas is defying the play-aging odds. This was its fourth year of publication and it somehow managed to earn more royalties this year than it did in any of its previous three years. Like 50% more. This has never happened to me before. A little elfin magic? I have to wonder...

Finally, I have to mention my collection of driver's ed skits, You're Driving Me Crazy!, which, like Million Dollar Meatballs, continues to receive 20 or more productions a year in this, its ninth year. Even more amazing, this year the play got me my 24th country, with a production in Rzeszow, Poland. 

The big question

I've been racking my head lately, trying to figure out why my last four plays have done so well. In last year's wrap-up, I suggested that it may be because I've been concentrating more on single-set, contemporary plays. I'm sure that's helped, but it doesn't explain why my cat inheritance comedy, The Purrfect Crime, has never done super well.

Then I realized that all four plays came after my two-year hiatus from writing plays to try to break into novels and screenplays. How did that go? Not well.

But maybe I learned something in those two years. I spent so much of that time studying the Hero's Journey and learning to apply those lessons to my novels and screenplays that my plays may have benefited as well. I feel like they're stronger now. Tighter. More character-driven.

I know they have a lot more heart.

Anyway, I want to thank all of the schools and theater companies who performed my plays this year. I love you all!

And if you enjoyed my current plays, just wait. There's more great stuff right around the corner. Stay tuned!

Production news roundup

Summer's usually the dry season for me--both weatherwise here in the Blast Furnace of America and playwise around the country. With schools taking a two- to three-month break, the number of productions drops off dramatically.

But it can also be an exciting time. For summer is the season when community theaters often do their annual all-youth show, or give special outdoor performances in parks and other interesting places.

That's especially the case this year, as I'm getting a healthy number of productions in this sunniest of seasons and at least three of them got big write-ups in the local media.

Kiwi kraziness

The first is for a production of Madhouse! by Stratford High School in Stratford, New Zealand, where it's not summer but winter and schools are fully in session. 

Instead of a preview article, the Stratford Press gave the show a full-blown review and it was an all-thumbs-up rave. Writer Ilona Hanne sends a nice compliment my way by describing the script as "a great read on its own," but saves her greatest praise (as she should) for the cast.

"With characters mainly aged over 18," she writes, "and a cast mainly under that, it's particularly impressive just how well the actors portray their characters, but in some cases actually draw their characters out to be much more than the lines alone allow for."

Which warms this old playwright's heart greatly, for I've always felt that theater is the most collaborative of the arts, and I count on the director, actors, and designers to put their own twist on the show and really make it their own. (The article also taught me a new Maori word.)

Iowa improv

Players Workshop Theater of Burlington, IA got an equally positive review from The Hawk Eye ("Iowa's Oldest Newspaper") for their production of The Enchanted Bookshop, which has become something of a staple for summer theaters.

Margie is of course the lead in that show, and the literary characters who come to life also play key roles in the story, but in this production it was none other than Margie's sassy cat Bombalurina who stole the show, "uttering only sighs, meows and so on", as writer Bob Saar puts it. In fact, Saar goes on to write that the best line in the play was Bombalurina's "perfect catlike response" to a request from Margie: "Nowww?"--a line that I didn't even write!

Saar offers one more note, a spoiler alert as he puts it. "You who are faint of heart may want to cover your eyes during the scene where the burglars tear pages out of real books. Ouch!"

I've read many, many reviews of The Enchanted Bookshop over the years, and it seems that nearly all theaters opt for a tamer take on the scene. Either the actors merely throw the books on the ground or they pull pre-torn sheets of paper out of the books.

I get it. As a book lover, it hurts me to see books damaged in this way (almost as much as it hurt to write this scene!). But for maximum emotional impact--and for hammering home just how precious books are--I urge producing groups to actually destroy the books. You can always buy already damaged books from thrift shops or library clearance sales.

Buckeye boldness

Finally, there's Thompson Square Community Theater of Thompson, OH, whose production of The Enchanted Bookshop got a nice preview article in the News-Herald.

Reporter Steve Couch took a different and very fun tack here, asking many of the cast members what they thought of their roles. My favorite quote came from Seri Buckner. “I enjoy playing Dorothy because she is pretty bossy and sassy in this show!” says the young actor. “My favorite scene is one where I get to yell at Robin Hood. I get to tell off a lot of people in the show.”

But it sounds like all of the kids in this show had a great time. As Breanna Toth, who plays Heidi, says, "I really hope the audience can see how hard we worked on this play but also see how much fun we had at the same time. This was such a fun play to work on and I really hope it shows to the audience."

It's not the sunny weather or the break from school or even the summer productions themselves that make this season so special. It's the attitude of kids like these, who give up their coveted time off to take to the stage and make magic happen.

A great big kudos to all you summertime (and in the southern hemisphere, wintertime) actors!

Madhouse! is now available!

Pioneer Drama Service has just released my 20th play with them, a crazy treasure hunt caper titled Madhouse! As I explained in a recent post, this play is a shorter, smaller-cast version of my 19th play, It's a Madhouse!  

Where It's a Madhouse! calls for a cast of 40, the much more succinctly titled Madhouse! requires "only" 28 actors. And while the original play is 80 minutes long, this new one is 60 minutes. But don't worry. Madhouse! keeps the craziest bits and all the best gags of the original play.

Want to learn more? Then just hop on over to the new play's web page, where you can read a free sample including the cast breakdown, production notes, and the first 11 pages of the script.

And if you really like whopping huge casts, you can find all the same information for It's a Madhouse! here.