Peter Papadopoulos
Plays, teaching, acting, design & other projects
Plays
NOTE: Some of these plays can be read in their published format, or are posted here.
If you would like to read other plays, write papadooloo (at) yahoo.com
LOVE LOVE - with Darkness Descending
VIRAL PANDEMIC PLAY
FULL-LENGTH
4M 2W, Company, may be doubled
Comic Tragedy
Read the synopsis and full play
(written pre Covid-19)
If history is written by the winners, then things don't look good for the humans when Wayne the Cockroach takes over the narration of LOVE LOVE halfway through the first act.
A deadly virus has swept across the planet, a modern plague that overwhelms the scientists and health workers who try to fight it off. As bodies pile up on street corners, people across the world lock themselves indoors, flee out to sea, and a scientifically chosen group blasts off into space in search of a new planet.
LOVE LOVE follows a handful of these isolated survivors as they make their last stand against disease and mutual aggression.
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An ode to our endangered human race, LOVE LOVE pays homage to our rich history and culture, and to the human heart that created it all.
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Selection: NEWvember Festival 2015.
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PART III - "Love Gone Wrong at the End of the World" Trilogy
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LOST LOVE - The Final 100 Years
CLIMATE CHANGE PLAY
FULL-LENGTH
2M 2W 1E
Tragic Comedy
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Climate change has never been so much fun!
Mitzy, a waterlogged, wedding-day bride, and Tito, her streetwise, Zenwise parking valet, argue on the mountaintop where they are stranded together after a devastating flood. Hundreds of miles away, Barb comes home from work to find that her firebrand girlfriend, Jan, has exacted revenge on her for her cheating by selling off the entire contents of their house and then re-filling it with yard plants.
The waters are rising fast in this global warming world. Can these lost souls find their way back to love in time to save themselves and the planet?
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Monologues from this play are published in:
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"A little jewel of an existentialist comedy" ~Robert Avila, San Francisco Bay Guardian
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PART II - "Love Gone Wrong at the End of the World" Trilogy
LAST LOVE - All that Rises Must Burn
WORLD-AT-WAR PLAY
Full length
2M 2W 1E
Tragic Comedy
Drunken poetry. Competitive sex. Furniture hurling.
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Two couples do battle in a mountainside house while an international terror crisis looms outside. A darkly funny and expressionistic look at cycles of human violence--from couples arguing over the toilet seat position to troops fighting in the Iraq War.
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​Read 90% of the play for free published at Playscripts.
This play is also published in Algonquin Plays, Volume 1
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Monologues from this play are published in:
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Audition Arsenal for Women in Their 30s: 101 Monologues by Type
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Audition Arsenal for Men in their 30s: 101 Monologues by Type
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Co-Winner, Algonquin Productions Project Footlight
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"Laugh-out-loud funny..." ~Centralian Advocate (Australia)
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PART I - "Love Gone Wrong at the End of the World" Trilogy
THE BARTENDER MIXES MAGIC LIGHT
20-MINUTE PLAY
3 CHARACTERS
Dark Comedy
MAN and WOMAN rendezvous in the classic bar pickup scene.
Or is it?
Can these would be barfly lovers find transcendent grace under the tutelage of their
benevolent libation-slinging guru?
They speed through their fledgling relationship- the lust phase, the sharing phase, the
blaming phase, and finally the family phase--all before closing time.
And who the heck is on the rooftop with his reindeer?
In the cool cool cool
TEN-MINUTE PLAY
2W 2M
Tragic Comedy
An adult Dr. Seuss bedtime divorce story set in a small bedroom by the shore. Told simultaneously by the wife, husband, his girlfriend, and their young son.
Will anyone make it out of this sordid surgery alive?
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Finalist, Actors Theatre of Louisville Ten-Minute Play Competition.
A LAND WITHOUT TREES
ONE-ACT PLAY
8-10 CHARACTERS
Dark Comedy
The king is in rare form today and the executioner is bloody busy as punishments are proclaimed and heads are rolling off the chopping block.
That is until the mute Brush Man is dragged into the court to testify, unleashing a long pent up force of nature that tears apart the sham proceedings and provides a glimpse into the underlying animal nature of human beings who have stripped their natural world bare.