4 or more Women, Open Set, Set and Props are indicated. Music accompaniment can be simply the piano or an ensemble.
Mama the Musical is an evening of Love! It is a series of vignettes and musical numbers about the joys and sorrows of mothers and daughters. It takes the audience on a journey from a woman’s pregnancy to the growing up and leaving home of a daughter and death of a mother. It is a celebration of the mother/daughter relationship. Some of the vignettes are very realistic and some are quite fantastic.
Mama the Musical is easy and inexpensive to produce! The play can be done with as few as four women, or more if you have them! It calls for women of varying ages. The stage set can be minimal, and costumes, settings, and props can be suggestions. Scene changes can be done quickly during musical and spoken interludes.
3 Women, 5 Men, Set and props can be as realistic or non-realistic as wanted. Set in an old movie theater and a bedroom.
Curse of the Flamingos
Mary Moore is a young woman who feels trapped in her home where she lives and works with her father at the Star Theater in a small town. Because of her past, she feels she cannot leave. To ease her tension, she smashes glass windows around the town.
Her family and friends want to help her to be happy. Her father, Barry Moore, loves the art of the movies and wants her to join him. Her friend Buena Vista wants her to invest in her business of home furnishings because beautiful surroundings are the answer. The Sheriff, Bob Roberts, just wants her to grow up and “do right.” The local preacher, Imright Anyurnaught, wants to save her soul.
In the meantime, she struggles with the other parts of her personality. Larry Moore is the brave one and wants to leave and start a new life. The Flamingo wants to keep her safe in the environment she knows.
In the end, Mary Moore learns to listen to and “dance with” the different aspects of her self. She is able to control her fear and listen to her own voice to define her own future.
The play is a quirky look at confronting and dealing with the past and trying to move on into the future.
5 Women, 1 Man, One Set – Nursing Home Room.
Cleilda Heller’s Last Hurrah is portrait of a strong, Texas-panhandle family as they come to terms with the impending death of their matriarch.
The show takes place in the present day, with six characters over the course of two days in a single room at a nursing home in rural Texas. Cleilda Heller’s Last Hurrah is a play with music. Song is an innate and everyday part of their lives, and thus should remain largely unaffected.
The atmosphere of the play world should come naturally as you read. I hope that you will find you already know these people; they are your aunts, and cousins, coworkers, and neighbors. If you find you need further exploration, (or just a good excuse for a road trip) then I’ve given you a route for research. Excluding Cleilda Heller, every name that’s mentioned in this play is a town some where in Northwest Texas. So, get yourself a road map and follow them around. Be sure to stop often for both food and conversation; Texans have big hearts and even bigger portions.
Cleilda Heller’s Last Hurrah was work-shopped under the supervision of Elana Greenfield, and had one reading in the basement of Eugene Lang College: The New School for Liberal Arts on September 15, 2006. In August of 2008, Cleilda Heller’s Last Hurrah was named a Finalist in Stage West’s Second Annual Texas Playwrights Festival.
Yellow Rose Plays 