64 SQUARES by John Patrick Bray, Gene Kato,
Bryan Maynard, Frank Oteri, Ben Plopper, Carol M. Rice, and Michael Weems
From opening move to checkmate, this collection of short plays based on elements of chess – King, Queen, Bishop, Rook, Knight, Pawn, Black, and White is sure to have something for every theatre lover. The added bonus is that they are all brand-new fairy tales. Intended for a flexible cast, the play can be performed with a cast size from seven to twenty-eight characters. The plays are designed to be performed together, or they can be licensed independently!!
- Cast Size: Flexible
- Running Time: 90+ minutes, 10-minutes each for individual plays
- Royalty Rate: $75 for the complete work, $15 for individual plays
Order Digital Download (Will NOT download to phones, cannot be printed)
About the Playwrights
John P. Bray‘s plays include Friendly’s Fire (Winner: Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights), Tracks (Semifinalist, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference), HOUND (Planet Connections Theatre Festivity), Christmas in the Airwaves (Lyric Arts Main Street Theatre), Erik: A Play About a Puppet (FRIGID NY), and Trickster at the Gate (commissioned under an N.E.A. Big Read grant). His audio dramas include The Demon Lady (Gather by the Ghost Light), Seal Island (Ensemble Theatre of Chattanooga’s LIGHTS UP! Podcast), and Auld Lang Syne (Theatrical Shenanigans). His short play Green Sound was translated into Italian and performed in Milan. He has been a Semifinalist for the Princess Grace Foundation Playwriting Award and Finalist for the Kernodle Playwriting Award. His plays are published by Next Stage Press, Original Works Publishing, Off the Wall Plays, and in anthologies, magazines, and literary journals. Bray is also an independent screenwriter, scholar, and freelance anthology editor. He has an MFA from The New School and PhD in Theatre from LSU. He teaches at the University of Georgia.
Gene Kato is a playwright, screenwriter, and founder of Next Stage Press. His work has garnished awards and found success in various publications and productions. Dedicated to championing the work of lesser-known playwrights, Mr. Kato founded Next Stage Press in 2009, and his company has started to carve out a small niche in the extremely competitive world of play licensing. His plays, typically, have been described as running the gambit between ultra-real and absurdist. While his writing style has his signature voice, it’s been said that none of his plays have the same feel to them. He lives in Commerce City, CO with his wife Jessica, daughters Kira and Harper, and two dogs Remy and Dodger. He is currently writing the first book in the fantasy novel series: The Crystals of Nevin.
Bryan Maynard is based in Houston, TX where he has spent the majority of his life. From the works of the greats through the centuries to the deep space travels of Star Trek to the hey-day of horror from Universal Films to the slapstick comedy of the Three Stooges, Bryan has found inspiration in every facet of society for his own writing. Some of Bryan’s produced work includes: The Show Might Go On, The Admiral’s Inheritance, Give/Take {co-written with Michael Weems}, Waiting for Othello, Re: Kill the Messenger, Next!, She Said/She Said,Real Eyes, Face It, The Element of Sunrise, The Tortoise and the Stare, Love at First Write, It Takes a Toll, Help Yourself, Past Due, O Hell No! (or The Moor I See, the Moor I Know), St. Patricia’s Day, A Well Kept Man, If You Have to Axe (You’ll Never Know), Darcy Denied and the Super Fantastic Uber Musical!. Lunatic Friends, and You Say Goodbye (I Say Hello). A few of his works commissioned exclusively for NEXT STAGE PRESS include: White: The Lady Who Would Not Cry {part of the 64 SQUARES play collection}, Knight: The Man Who Would Not Die {part of the 64 SQUARES play collection}, Board to Death {part of the GAME NIGHT play collection} as well as more to come! Bryan is an active board member of Cone Man Running Productions, a Houston-based theatre company dedicated to bringing original works to the stage and giving playwrights a venue to debut their work.
Once upon a time, Ben was “the zombie guy.” He tried to watch every zombie movie ever made — the good, the bad, the ugly, and the ones involving zombie strippers. One day, he asked himself the question, “What if I took a fairly typical parlor room farce, replaced one of the characters with a zombie, and made sure everyone else was too vapid and narcissistic to even notice. And what if the zombie wasn’t particularly good at zombieing (zombies are very literal and have problems with figures of speech)? I bet that would be pretty funny.” So Ben wrote it and found himself spiraling into the world of the playwright. He has had quite a few short plays produced, “The Importance of Eating Earnest” has been staged twice (so far), and he recently saw “A Magical Evening of Magical Theater Magic: Selected Works of Ben Plopper” produced by Company OnStage in Houston, TX. He currently lives in Fort Worth, TX, with a wife, a teenager, two dogs, and two cats.
Carol M. Rice is a playwright, director, actor, and producer. She has an MA in Drama (Playwriting Emphasis) from Texas Woman’s University. Her full-length plays Sharing the Stage is Murder, Murder at the Orient Burlesque (both of which received a Column Award Nomination), The Three Musketeers, Around the World in 80 Days, and The Belle of West Texas have been seen locally in D/FW. She has been produced all over the U.S., and she is published through Brooklyn Publishing, Smith & Krauss, and Next Stage Press. Carol can also be found on NPX.
Michael Weems is an award winning Houston based playwright. His plays have been seen across the United States and several other countries. Recent publications include: Five Fears of Fatherhood(Original Works Publishing), Dream Lover(Smith & Krauss Best New American Plays – 2014), A Few Miles Away(Plays, The Drama Magazine for Young Audiences), Count to Three, Pawn, (Next Stage Press). Recent productions include: OkayBetterBest (54 Below, NYC dir. Marcia Milgrom Dodge) and Fullerton College, Prize Fight (T. Schreiber Studios NYC and Arts for Tri-State, WV), Hold Me Tonight (Changing Scene Theatre, WA). Michael is a Board Member of Cone Man Running Productions (winner of the Houston Press 2017 Mastermind Awards), and a recent graduate of the MFA Playwriting program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (named Outstanding Writing Graduate – Master’s Level). He is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild of America.
Review 64 Squares.