Mall Madness comes to life

In the 1980's, the mall was the one place where
all the cool (and not-so-cool) kids hung out.

Long-time followers of this blog know that I like to post the first production photos I find for each new play of mine. I do this for a couple of reasons. 

One is to promote the play. My hope is that these photos will help you theater directors and drama teachers out there to get a sense of the play: what it's about, the tone, how difficult it might be to produce.

The other is to provide a little inspiration. If you do decide to produce the play, the sets and costumes in these photos might give you some ideas for your own production. At the very least, they'll get you thinking.

 

"Oh, for heaven's sakes! Popcorn again!
Why can't it ever be something easy
like a doughnut or a quesadilla?"

Today I'm sharing photos from my 1980's high school comedy, Mall Madness. This is not actually my newest play. That honor belongs to A Fine-Feathered Murder, which was released in November. But since Mall Madness came out in August, most schools were unable to squeeze into their fall semester so the first productions are only just happening now.

The good news is that I found two schools which posted photos of their shows on Facebook. These schools took very different directions in their designs, but they did a such great job of capturing the playful, fun-loving mood of that decade that I decided to share photos from both.

 

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I'm not authorized
to give you a second sample."

The first four photos come from Oak View Middle School in Andover, MN. I love the whole look of their set, from the jazzy, colorful Food Court sign to the chunky, cafeteria-style tables specially built for the show.

All in all, they kept it pretty simple. But still, looking at the set, you can tell exactly which decade the play is set in.

"Now, Blanche. You know we can't be stopping
every five minutes just so you can grab a snack."

The costumes were also a lot of fun. The custodian, Mr. Henry, appears appropriately authoritative in his orange safety vest, while Darla, with her bright red apron and rooster-inspired baseball cap, looks like she just stepped out of a cheesy 1980's fast food restaurant. And in the play, she did, a place called Rooster Ray's, which offered free samples of a brand new food item called "chicken chunks".

I especially loved the neon-colored tracksuits of Blanche and Evelyn, the middle-aged mall walkers. No danger here! You'd be able to them coming from a mile away.

The students, on the other hands, wore more timeless styles. From the nerds to the jocks to the mean-girl Glams, the clothes were largely indistinguishable, perhaps emphasizing the point that, underneath it all, these kids really aren't that different from each other.

"Are you crazy? What makes you
think she'd go with you?"

The last four photos come from Holy Cross School in South Bend, IN. Their set is much bigger, dominated a mostly gray backdrop that extends the entire width of the stage.

Here, the signs like Glendale Mall and Rooster Ray's are just paper cut-outs attached to that backdrop, but the set folks added a lot of additional details, like those geometric accents and an elaborately painted pillar that you can catch one small glimpse of along the right side of the bottom photo.

They also managed to snag some rickety, formica-topped tables for the students to eat at (perhaps borrowed from the school's own cafeteria?). And those molded plastic chairs look uncomfortable enough to belong in any 1980's food court.

"Elwood was right! You really are a jerk!"

As for the costumes, well, they went all out. Elwood and Fletcher, the two Dungeons-and-Dragons-loving nerds at the heart of the story, are outfitted in embarrassingly dorky clothes, while their friend (and potential love interest?) Stevie wore an only slightly less embarrassing sweater and skirt combination with knee socks.

The jocks, three football players exhibiting various degrees of obnoxiousness, wore real high school letter jackets. The Glams, meanwhile, were a plentitude of pink. In fact, these uber-popular girls loved the color so much that they insisted on bringing their own satiny pink tablecloth to the food court!

"Sorry, Amber, but you're forgetting Rule
Number One Hundred Twenty-Eight.
Don't share food with another Glam."

But my favorite touch had to be how they turned Elwood's uncle Wayne into a John Cusack-lookalike for the final scene of the play, in which this lovelorn shoe salesman tries to win back his ex by holding a boombox above his head.

No, it never made sense to me either.

"Oh, I know I've been a fool. I know I've
focused too much on the latest trends in
casual footwear and not enough on you."

If nothing else, these photos prove once again that there are an infinite number of ways to design any scene. All you need is a little creativity and a willingness to think outside the box.

Do you have photos from this or another show of mine that you'd like to share? If so, please email me at todd.wallinger@gmail.com. Thank you!

Mouse in the House to be published

It may be a week before Christmas, but I already got what I asked Santa for. 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 mouse 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 then 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.

Mall Madness is now available!

Just in time for the new school year, Pioneer Drama Service has released my 29th play with them (and 33rd overall). Set in the 1980's, Mall Madness is a lighthearted romp through all those great fads of that wonderful decade: Rubik's cubes, Dungeons and Dragons, Sony Walkmans (Walkmen?), Swatch watches, boomboxes, and, of course, Air Jordans.

To read a script sample or review ordering info, visit the play's web page here.

It's a Mall World After All

Most of my early plays were set in fairly generic settings: an Old West town, a French restaurant, a mythical kingdom. But I've been having fun lately placing my plays in oddly specific locales.

It Happened on Route 66 is set at an actual 1950's diner in Winona, Arizona, which I made a point of visiting last year and discovered it to be very different that the diner I'd imagined when I was writing the play.

Thirty Minutes Till Boarding, a play I'm currently developing with Belmont Day School in Massachusetts, takes place at gate E7 of Boston's Logan Airport. 

And while the abandoned theater of Bringing Down the House is completely made-up, I placed it on a very specific street in Lower Manhattan for one very good reason.

Mall Madness is no different. I could have set it in any 1980's mall. But I decided to plop it down right in the middle of the Glendale Galleria in the San Fernando Valley of California. Why? Well, I wanted the laid-back, Southern California vibe that the characters in movies like Say Anything and Fast Times at Ridgemont High had. I also found that there are a ton of videos and photos of the place online, which inspired my own writing.

The Glendale Galleria also has a fascinating history in itself. It was the home of the very first Disney Store. The home of the very first Panda Express. It appeared in a number of 1980's movies, including Miracle Mile and Valley Girl. And Billie Eilish recorded her music video for her 2021 single "Therefore I Am" in the empty, after-hour corridors of the mall.

Of course, I don't expect directors to make their set a carbon copy of the Glendale Galleria. That would be insane. But I think that having something to look at will inspire them in their own work. They may end up going in a completely different direction. But at least they'll have a starting point.

Those Golden Treasures

One more thing about the play. Mall Madness is one of my few plays that features a full, minute-long monologue.

I know, I know. I should write more monologues as a way to introduce directors and actors to my plays through the audition circuit. And I've tried. I've really tried.

The thing is that my characters absolutely refuse to talk that long. They like to get to the point, their dialog taking a rat-a-tat rhythm that keeps things moving.

Well, that all changed when Darla, a teenage employee of Rooster Ray's, America's Poultry Palace, took the stage in Mall Madness. Her job was to hand out samples of the latest high tech food product: chicken nuggets. And she took that job way too seriously:

I understand, ma'am, but I'm not allowed to give you any more. My manager was very clear about that during my training. Why, I remember it as if it were yesterday. Come to think of it, it was yesterday. "Darla," he said. "Do you see this chunk of chicken in my hand? Well, this is no ordinary chunk of chicken. Oh, no! This chunk of chicken is going to change the world! For too long, mothers have suffered the backbreaking burden of roasting entire chickens in their ovens. For too long, their husbands and children have grappled with scrawny drumsticks and unwieldy wings at the dinner table. But today we are on the verge of a new dawn. Today the chicken chunk has eliminated those hassles forever by offering a source of protein that is not only easy to cook but delicious to eat as well. Which i why we must treat them as the golden treasures they are. No not hand them out willy-nilly. They are much too precious for that. No, our corporate rule--and it is an ironclad one--is that you are to distribute only one sample per customer. Not three. Not two. Not one and a half. Just one. One chicken chunk, now and forevermore.

Summing it up 

Mall Madness is a big, fun comedy jam-packed with crazy characters like Darla. But it's not all yuks. There's also a heartwarming message about teenage relationships and figuring out who your real friends are. And, of course, there's a ton of cultural references that will make any child of the 80's smile.

I think you're really going to love it.

You can check it out here.

UPDATE: Mall Madness booked its first production on August 27, just 6 days after it was released. That's a new record for me. Thank you, Mascoutah Middle School of Mascoutah, IL!

I'm thinking it's going to be very popular.

Mall Madness to be published

Good news! For the first time since December, I've got a new play accepted for publication. It's titled Mall Madness and it's being published by Pioneer Drama Service, my 29th play with them. This light-hearted comedy has a cast of 16 (6M, 8F, 2E), uses a single set, and runs about 75 minutes.

Write what you know

After the unexpected success of It Happened on Route 66, I'd decided I wanted to write another play capturing the spirit of a particular decade. But which decade?

Well, since I'd already done the 50's, there was only one obvious choice: those totally awesome 80's. I've always loved the 80's, and not just nostalgically. It was a huge decade for me in real life as well.

It was the decade that I graduated from high school. The decade that I met my future wife. And the decade that Tammy and I got married.

Nobody loved the 80's as much as we did. Cruising around in my black, rusted-out Chevy Nova. Bopping out to new wave bands like A Flock of Seagulls and the B-52's. Catching flicks like The Breakfast Club and Say Anything.

It was a wonderful decade to be young and in love.

So I had to laugh when, thirty years later, our teenage daughters became fans of the exact same bands and movies (rusted-out cars not so much). If they loved the 80's, then I figured there must be a lot of kids who would love to relive those golden days of yore onstage.

Choosing a setting

It Happened on Route 66 took place in perhaps the most iconic of 50's settings: a highway diner. So what was its equivalent in the 80's? Where did 80's teens gather to hang out and, well, just be teens? 

Nothing quite clicked. An arcade? Too hard to recreate on a stage. A video store? Kids didn't really hang out there for long. A school dance? Those had been done to death. 

Finally, at dinner one night, I mentioned my conundrum to Tammy. And, as so often happens, she immediately had the answer.

The mall food court.

I loved the idea. A food court is a rich, fertile ground for humor, with all the tacky restaurants and the potential for awkward social situations. It would be simple to stage, only requiring a few tables and chairs. And as far as I could tell, nobody had ever set a play in a food court before.

Next up: the plot

But what would the play be about? I knew Pioneer already had a couple of plays set in the 1980's, the musical Totally Awesome 80's and its slimmed-down version The Awesome 80's. And they're a lot of fun, basically big mash-ups of the famous movie plots and characters from that decade. 

I wanted to do something different. Think, think, think. Well, let's see. Another fun part of the 80's were the products that had seemed so modern and cool at the time but had since either faded from sight or become just a normal part of our everyday culture. You know, like Rubik's Cubes. And chicken nuggets. And Air Jordans. And boomboxes.

But I still had a problem. How do you build a story out of those?

I wrestled with this question for months. Then my wife and I watched a cheesy Hallmark movie titled Trading Up Christmas. It's about a successful young businesswoman from the big city (of course) who returns to her small town to help her financially-challenged sister get a home. How does she do it? By trading up from a simple Christmas stocking.

I had my plot! (Who says Hallmark movies are a waste of time?) From that point, the writing just flowed out of me and I completed the script in a couple of months. 

The madness begins

I'm very happy with how it turned out. Here's the synopsis:

It's the 1980's, and there's only one place you'll find all the cool kids (and not so cool kids) on a Saturday afternoon: the mall.

That's where Elwood is mooning over the queen bee of the school, Chanel. Elwood longs to take Chanel to see her favorite girl band, the Lipsticks, but he knows he has two strikes against him. One, he's a Dungeons & Dragons-loving nerd. And two, the concert is completely sold out.

Elwood's luck seems to turn when he helps out a mysterious young woman who rewards him with a pair of tickets to the very same concert. But before he can ask Chanel to go with him, brutish high school quarterback Brock swipes the Trapper Keeper where Elwood has hidden the tickets.

There's only one way to get the binder back from Brock without tipping him off to the treasure inside: Offer him a brand new pair of Air Jordans in exchange, Unfortunately, Elwood can't afford such pricey shoes. But if he trades a boombox for the shoes, and a Walkman for the boombox, and so on and so forth, Elwood might finally get the tickets by giving up the one thing he values most: a cheap D&D miniature!

And yes, the boombox from the movie Say Anything does play a key role. As does a very important tray of chicken nuggets.

Mall Madness should be released before the new school year opens this fall.