Before I tell you anything about my playscript Much Ado About Soup, you need to promise me something.  Do not, under any circumstances, let my English professor from twenty-five years ago hear about this, okay? Because this is the man that–upon knowing what I did to one of Shakespeare’s most beloved plays–would promptly stand up from his wheelchair, grab his cane, and come after me.  Because my old professor loved, adored, and revered William Shakespeare. And anyone who didn’t believe that the Bard was an absolute, unquestionable, awe-inspiring genius got kicked out of class with one flutter of his hand.  He had no time to suffer such fools.

But here’s the thing. I adore Shakespeare, too.  I just like to make fun of him, that’s all. He’s like having that friend who excels at everything and gets perfect grades and is always coming up with something especially wise to say, and all you want to do is tease him…mercilessly. Take the plot of Much Ado About Nothing.  It’s a brilliant story of love and friendship getting muddied up by betrayal and misunderstanding.  It’s so brilliant and perfect that I immediately thought, why not just make the main characters vegetables? Let’s have Potato in love with Rosemary. And Garlic can be his sarcastic best friend.  And let’s throw in some villainous vegetables, too: Cabbage, Radish, Turnip, and Mushroom. In other words, I turned into a complete middle schooler.  Silly, sarcastic, slightly obnoxious…while still feeling deep affection and respect for greatness, of course.

I wrote my Shakespearean spoof Much Ado About Soup for a middle school teacher who needed a script that would accomplish the following: have some fun with Shakespeare, be easy to stage and costume, and could be used as a fundraiser to establish a school community garden. I never imagined I’d ever have a playscript with “Onion” as a main character, but life is full of surprises. And it was so much fun to see a collection of middle schoolers and their teachers perform the play together. You haven’t seen anything till you’ve seen a middle school history teacher dressed up as a giant head of garlic on stage and proclaim, “Love stinks!”

So it’s true, Professor.  I channeled my inner middle schooler, and wrote Much Ado About Soup. I stirred in lots of positively ridiculous puns and goofy characters, and I’m sure I have deeply offended William Shakespeare’s number one fan. But you’ll still, like, be my friend, right?

To read a sample and/or purchase the playscript, please click this link: Much Ado About Soup.  And to transform it into an easy fundraiser involving (what else?!) SOUP, check out my Shakespearean Supper section of the fundraiser play ideas on my website.

Hello, my friends.

When life throws you some tricky questions, depend on chocolate to give you the answers. This is my motto, anyway, after my experience working at the local library and mentoring their youth drama club.  I was far too loud and boisterous to be a great librarian, but I was just loud and boisterous enough to be a successful drama director. One summer, I had twenty-four enthusiastic young teenagers under my charge, and I wanted to write a play for them that would be a comedy, a mystery, a western melodrama, and a plug for libraries.  And in my mind, I became very attached to the following title: Cowgirl Cookie and the Case of the Missing Chocolate Chips.  I’ve always had a special affection for long titles, not to mention chocolate chip cookies.  It would be a tricky mystery to write and solve in a satisfactory way, but I trusted chocolate would be the key to everything.

So, sure enough, the characters of Cowgirl Cookie and the Case of the Missing Chocolate Chips began to develop.  Cowgirl Cookie was the heroine who loved reading and sleuthing, and she’d have a trusty sidekick, Snickerdoodle. Her Grandma Sugar would be a sassy, no-nonsense character who was known for her prize-winning chocolate chip cookies. There would be an entire family of Cookie Sisters: Oatmeal Raisin, Gingersnap, Molasses Spice, Macaroon Meringue, Peanut, and Butter.  A group of villains would appear and call themselves the Mustache Gang (Greasy, Mushy, Crummy, Soggy, Yucky, and Burnt) and be completely overlooked by the goofy local lawman, Sheriff Nutter Butter.  And finally, there would be three bossy grannies (Miz Snappy, Mix Sticky, and Miz Chewy) who would sit side stage and argue with the narrator any chance they got.

I was off and running with the plot, too.  All of the chocolate chips in town had gone missing.  Cowgirl Cookie was on the case but running out of leads.  The silly Sheriff had no ideas.  The Mustache Gang just played dumb.  And Grandma Sugar was fit to be tied with the town’s cookie contest right around the corner and no chocolate chips in her cupboard.

So I had a crazy set of characters and a great mystery…but absolutely no idea how everything would resolve. But somehow, I wasn’t worried.  It’s difficult to explain, but even into the middle of the play, I just had this feeling–a blind faith–that the answer to the mystery would somehow end up being about chocolate.  And sure enough, by the time I was writing the final scene, it came to me.  One of my Mustache gang members, Burnt, wouldn’t have a real mustache at all—it would just be chocolate smeared on his upper lip!  And Cowgirl Cookie, with her Nancy Drew-like sleuthing skills, would put it all together: Burnt was a chocoholic.  He’d eaten all the chocolate chips in town, save the one bag under his cowboy hat. And hurrah! Mystery solved.

So, if you believe in chocolate as always the right answer, check out my play page for Cowgirl Cookie and the Case of the Missing Chocolate Chips. And if you’re ready to move onto other fun Cowgirl adventures, you can check out my entire Cowgirl Cookie Trilogy which includes Cowgirl Cookie and the Mysterious Disappearance of Grandma Sugar and Cowgirl Cookie and the Ghost of the Grange.

Hello there, gang.

Let’s talk pie.  More specifically, let’s talk banana cream pie.  Have you made one, tasted one, loved one? Or have you passed over it on the pie menu as too ordinary? I’m curious, because not everyone adores banana cream pie, but those who do seem to have appeared everywhere in my life.  And I believe this special combination of cream and crust has played a powerful role in my destiny.

I know that sounds dramatic, ladies and gentlemen, but consider the evidence.  My mother (an infamous ad libber in the kitchen) sent me off into the world with just one recipe written down: her banana cream pie.  I successfully wooed my future husband with a consistent supply of banana cream pie. I actually won a ribbon in a local pie contest with my banana cream pie.  Whenever I ask any of the men of my family what they want for their birthday, the answer is always, always the same: banana cream pie. Case closed.

As a playwright, banana cream pie has come in handy for a good punchline or a fun plot point. It’s featured most prominently in my third Pie Palooza play: All’s Fair in Love and Pie.  At the time I was writing the script, I felt somebody was missing in my pie character line-up.  I had Strawberry-Rhubarb and Peach and Blueberry and Cherry and Apple, and they were all deliciously funny characters.  But I needed somebody else.  Someone solid, old-fashioned, classic.  And as I was mulling this over, a young fellow in my school approached me with a special request.  Could he please, please, please wear his new banana suit in my upcoming play?

Do you hear that? The angels singing, I mean?  Because I’m sure they were at that moment.  Of course the missing pie character was Banana.  Of course, of course, of course!  Why hadn’t I put this together before?  I’d made enough banana cream pies to supply a horde of hungry middle schoolers in a three day pie-eating contest! It was clearly time for banana cream pie to appear on the stage.

So in All’s Fair in Love and Pie, the character of Banana ends up being a rather aggressive defender of the dessert which often gets overlooked in a pie line-up: Banana Cream Pie.  His best line is when he turns on the other pie characters and grumbles, “You girls are all fancy and glamorous with your fruit fillings and your top crusts.  Me? I gotta prove myself with the basics: eggs, milk, butter. Ya think that’s easy?”

And I’m sorry for this spoiler alert, but Banana ends up walking away with the blue ribbon in the town’s infamous pie contest at the end of the play.  Call it justice. Call it destiny.  It was pure plot satisfaction for me with sliced bananas and whip cream on top.

To read a sample of the play, you can pop over to this link: All’s Fair in Love and Pie. And to check out my entire Pie Palooza Trilogy of playscripts, with or without bananas and cream involved, please head to this link: Pie Palooza Trilogy. And here’s to banana cream pie getting its proper due.

Hello, my dearhearts.

I never expected to spend much time thinking about ukuleles this week. Or listening to them. Or believing they were anything much more exciting than your average kazoo.  But oh, how wrong I was.  Now I’m ready to
order a four-stringed beauty online, download every one of the ukulele instructional videos offered on YouTube, and spend much of my spare time strumming a happy tune. Because now I know the truth.  Ukuleles are the secret to happiness.

What makes me certain of this is my experience a few nights ago at a concert performed by a ukulele orchestra.  It was a group of about twenty-five musicians, all playing ukuleles, and looking like the happiest bunch of people this side of the planet.  They strummed, they rocked, they bounced, they sang, and they looked like they could have forgone sleep and played until lunchtime the following day. I was fascinated. I was infatuated.  I was ready to skip into the middle of their group, ukulele-less, and just soak up the joy.

Then I remembered a line in one of my playscripts and cringed. It appears in my third Cowgirl Cookie western melodrama, Cowgirl Cookie and the Ghost of the Grange. Cowgirl Cookie is in an argument with her best friend and sidekick, Snickerdoodle.  Snickerdoodle has been enjoying the many classes and activities of her local grange hall while Cowgirl Cookie has been actively doing what she loves: reading. The two BFFs begin to debate over the value of “doing” versus “readin’ about it” until Snickerdoodle announces she is late for her ukulele lesson down at the grange hall and stomps off stage.  As she does, Cowgirl Cookie bellows after her (and this is where I beg forgiveness from every ukulele-lover that ever lived), “Well, don’t let me stop you from learning the hokiest instrument ever invented!”

Oh, if I could take that line back, I would.  Or maybe I wouldn’t.  Maybe I would just change the ending completely and redeem the ukulele in Cowgirl Cookie’s eyes just as it’s been redeemed in mine.  Cowgirl Cookie could buy a ukulele herself, learn every one of Johnny Cash’s songs, and join a ukulele orchestra.  Or something like that. Ah well.

Here are the facts.  The ukulele is considered to be the stringed instrument which is the least expensive, the easiest to learn, and the most fun you will ever have on four strings. It’s name in Hawaiian means “jumping flea.” And clearly Cowgirl Cookie had no idea what she was missing out on.

Please check out the entire Cowgirl Cookie Trilogy for more silly, completely unfounded statements by hilarious characters. They are a set of old-fashioned western melodramas that could stand alone or do well with a little musical accompaniment.  A middle school ukulele orchestra, for instance.  Just sayin’.

Say “Piggly Wiggly” out loud.  Now say it three times fast.  Now say it with a deep Southern accent.  Fun, right?

My love of the name “Piggly Wiggly” began when I was writing my second Pie Palooza play, A Question of Pie, and I needed the name of a market.  Early in the script, I have hot-tempered Besta Pie complaining about her sly cousin from Texas, Sweetie Pie.  Besta is convinced Sweetie Pie takes scandalous shortcuts in her pie baking. So, I needed a line for Besta that packed some serious comedic punch.  And I was tickled piggy-pink when I discovered folks in the South have markets named…wait for it…”Piggly Wigglies.” Perfect.

A line was born. In the first scene, I have grumpy Besta squawk, “Why any yea-hoo can pick up a pre-made pie crust from the Piggly Wiggly, dump in pudding from the box, and spray it with whip cream from the can!” I love a good line made possible by farm animals and the grocery stores named after them.

And I bring this up only because it’s always been a long-distance love affair between Piggly Wiggly and me.  I had never stepped foot in a store…until now.  Traveling into Florida this week and looking for a place to pick up a few snacks for the road, I discovered to my absolute astonishment I was only within two short miles of a Piggly Wiggly! I’m very certain I squealed.

And now, after my oh-so-casual trip down aisles 1 through 15, my dream of being able to truthfully say “I’ve just been shoppin’ down at the Piggly Wiggly” has come true. Love it.

My Piggly Wiggly line in A Question of Pie is only one of many funny instances in the script. To read a sample of the play or purchase it so that your middle schoolers can have the pleasure of saying Piggly Wiggly out loud in a deep Southern accent for an audience, check out this link: https://funmiddleschoolplays.com/book/a-question-of-pie/

Long live Piggly Wiggly!

Hello, my friends!

So, there’s a magic that happens when you put two particular things together.  Peanut butter and jelly. Flowers and chocolate. Batman and Robin. Well, allow me to put one more perfect pair on the list.  Pies and plays. I know, I know. It sounds like an odd couple, but trust me on this.  There’s something magical about the two together, and the proof lies in the success of a pie palooza.  Pardon me? Never heard of a pie palooza before? Ah, well, grab a fork and clear a space, because you’ll want to know about this.

A pie palooza is a fundraising event with three parts: a play, a pie contest, and a pie auction. Its magic lies in how it creates a fundraiser that’s honest-to-goodness fun. The success my school has been having for the last eight years with their annual pie palooza is strong testimony to that.

Back in the beginning, it was just this fun, crazy idea.  Let’s have a school fundraiser that’s all about pie, people!  I’ll write a play about pie! We’ll have a pie contest! We’ll auction off donated pies! And boy oh boy, not only was it pie-filled fun for all, but that first year the pie palooza raised $1,000! Little did we know that every year after that the delighted crowd would grow, the delicious pies would multiply, and the daring bids would ratchet up.  And now? Well, the school just raised over $7,000. In one night. In a little town out in the middle of nowhere.

So, in need of some fun? In need of some funds? Just love pie? Well, you’re in luck. I’ve written three playscripts all about pie with lots of goofy characters, silly pie jokes, and fun plots.  All three have been performed in front of pie-loving crowds to great applause. You can check out my entire trilogy of Pie Palooza plays at this link: https://funmiddleschoolplays.com/series/pie-palooza/ And I have some advice and suggestions for how to host your own Pie Palooza here: https://funmiddleschoolplays.com/fundraiser-play-ideas/

Pies and plays. Like Sonny and Cher. True magic!

Hello, my friends–

I did an excellent job of procrastinating when it came to writing this particular post.  And I know why. I didn’t want to describe the anguish I’ve been feeling for the last week over things just not working out as planned. My dream of putting on a play this spring with a group of local kids just…dissolved. Despite my best recruiting efforts and four successful shows in the past, I didn’t get enough sign-ups for a play production this time around. The primary challenge being that too many families had too much on their plate already and couldn’t commit to the rehearsal schedule. It’s understandable.

So, I spent my week breaking the news to parents who had signed up their kids, people who had generously offered scholarships, folks who had planned on turning up the thermostat in the stage hall, etc.. I found myself saying things like, “Yes, I’m very sorry, too” and “No, I don’t need anything, but thank you for your support.” It was a humbling, rather heartbreaking experience, but as life devastations go, I realize it isn’t one.

Sometimes, things just don’t work out.  At least not the way we planned. And I know this is where having a little faith in the greater universe can help. It clearly wasn’t the time for a play.  But maybe it was time for me to have another script written. Right now, I’m sitting on a strong rough draft that I wouldn’t have been motivated to write otherwise. Maybe the perfect cast for it is destined to happen this summer…or next spring…or next summer. Perhaps there’s some other project/plan/fate in the works for me that will reveal itself soon enough. Having a little faith in a bigger, unknown plan is the way to go here, I think.

And a final thought: if we never hoped or dreamed for things at the risk of being disappointed and heartbroken later, how boring would that be?  Life would be an empty stage. Better to have wished on a play than to have wished on nothing at all. Right?

Hello again, my friends!

So, to launch my new play production with kids, I realized very quickly that I needed something.  Kids.  So, I’ve been scouring my local area for young hams who would like to be on stage.  I’m a recruiter now.  I’m Uncle Sam with his finger pointed out. I need stars, and I need them now.

It’s hard to say who will sign up since I don’t require any previous drama experience.  Been the star of your school musical? Bravo! Never acted before in your life? Welcome!   My stage is open.

This is because a few years ago, I was working at the local library, and I was desperate to start a kid’s drama club.  After weeks of advertising the club’s first meeting, I crossed all of my fingers and toes hoping I would get at least ten kids.  With ten kids, we could put on a play.  With ten kids, I could write a script that fit the group perfectly. At our first meeting, twenty-six kids showed up.

I couldn’t believe it.  I started to panic.  Now were there too many kids! Too wide a range of skill! Too many parts for a custom play! So I did the only thing I could think of.  I tried to scare a bunch of them off on the first day.  I told them they’d have to memorize lines and that it was critical they came to every single rehearsal meeting. I told them they’d have to be really brave and perform in front of a live crowd.  I told them acting was challenging and not for everyone.  I gave them an easy out. If they decided after this first meeting that drama club just wasn’t their thing, that was okay. I wished them well.  But if they showed up the second week, I was going to count on their serious commitment…maybe in blood. We played some drama games and had some laughs, but I hoped I had weeded out at least half of the group. The next week, twenty-four kids showed up.

So, by golly, I wrote a script for twenty-four kids.  They were all different ages and different abilities, but every one of them was highly motivated to be a part of a play. So how could I go wrong? This turned out to be my first Cowgirl Cookie play, and not only did the kids have a blast on stage, but the audience loved it. You can check it out here: https://funmiddleschoolplays.com/book/cowgirl-cookie-and-the-case-of-the-missing-chocolate-chips/

Which means that my only requirement these days for young actors and actresses is enthusiasm.  If a kid is motivated to be on stage, then I have a role for them.  Brave, shy, silly, serious–I’ll take them. They’re all needed. They’re all wanted. I’m recruiting some stars, and I have faith that it will work out just as it should.

Hello, my friends!

Welcome to my blog. I’m happy you’re here, and I’d like to begin by saying I have my suspicions about you.  Right at this moment, I bet you have some dreams.  Big dreams. Small dreams. Certainly some medium-sized ones.  And if you’re a drama mentor working with middle schoolers, I bet you have a dream or two about what you’d like to do next with kids. Me, too.

Here’s what I know about my own dreams. Something comes along that plants an idea in my head, and it’s a seed that always feels so tiny and fragile. But then I can’t stop thinking about it, and this little, insubstantial seed, begins to grow bigger…and stronger. And soon enough this idea can’t be contained in the greenhouse of my mind any more. It wants to live out in the sunlight and fresh air.  And then it’s clear I actually need to take those first steps in making it happen. It’s scary and exciting and nerve-wracking all at the same time.  But then I remind myself that all great things must have started out this way…as a little, tiny dream in someone’s mind that just couldn’t help itself but grow.

So, that being said, it’s time for me to bring a dream of mine out into the light. As dreams go, it’s certainly not the size of a show on Broadway, but for my life, it’s big enough.  I’m ready to write and direct another play with a group of local kids. I’ve done this before, but that doesn’t seem to take away the anxiety.  I think about writing the script, recruiting the kids, casting the roles, setting up the stage, directing the rehearsals, marketing the show, and, finally, mentoring the final production. It feels…overwhelming. But then I take a deep breath and tell myself to be brave.  Making a dream happen–big or small–is not for the faint of heart.

So, my fellow drama mentors, if you have a dream of making something wonderful happen with kids on stage, and that dream makes you feel anxious, excited, and determined all at the same time, then know that you are not alone.  Be brave.  Because us dreamers have to stick together.