Andrew Heinze

Andrew HeinzeAndrew HeinzeAndrew Heinze

Andrew Heinze

Andrew HeinzeAndrew HeinzeAndrew Heinze
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    • Home
    • About Me
    • My Plays
    • My Books
    • Consultations
    • Writer's Blog
    • Contact
  • Home
  • About Me
  • My Plays
  • My Books
  • Consultations
  • Writer's Blog
  • Contact

My Plays - One Act Plays (produced)

the play The FQ

THE FQ -- Winner "Audience Favorite" Best Play, 16th Annual New York City 15-Minute Play Festival; "Best of the Best" Selection, New American Theatre (Los Angeles)

Published in The Best Ten-Minute Plays, 2011 (Smith & Kraus) 

Published in The Bar Mitzvah of Jesus Goldfarb & Other Short Plays


Comedy, 10-15 mins. (cast: 1 F & 1 M)
An aspiring writer finds her pilot script vulgarized by the requirements of cable TV.


The play The Bar Mitzvah of Jesus Goldfarb

THE BAR MITZVAH OF JESUS GOLDFARB -- Winner "Judges Choice" & "Audience Choice" Best Play, 17th Annual New York City 15-Minute Play Festival; Finalist, 2018 National Award for Short Playwriting; Judges' Choice, Finalist, Samuel French 2019 Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival

Published in The Bar Mitzvah of Jesus Goldfarb & Other Short Plays


Comedy, 10-15 mins. (cast: 1 M/F & 1 F) 

Jason Goldfarb wants a new name for his Bar Mitzvah. This is a big problem for Rabbi Deborah Silverman.


the play Masha: Conditions in the Holy Land

MASHA: CONDITIONS IN THE HOLY LAND -- Winner "Jury Prize, Best Play" Fusion Theatre 2012 One-Act Festival & Finalist, Samuel French 2013 Off Off Broadway Play Festival

"A powerful work” -- Barry Gaines, The Albuquerque Journal 

Published in The Bar Mitzvah of Jesus Goldfarb & Other Short Plays


Drama, 15 mins. (cast: 1 F &  1 M)
A lonely American Jew, a smart Russian prostitute, a shoddy room in the Holy Land. He wanted her to talk, or so he thought... 


see the trailer from the World Premiere production here


the play The Nude Scene

THE NUDE SCENE -- Semi-Finalist: 18th Annual New York City Fifteen-Minute Play Festival

Published in The Bar Mitzvah of Jesus Goldfarb & Other Short Plays


Comedy, 10-15 mins. (cast: 1 F & 1 M)
Long-time friends VICTOR (27) and ANNA (27) have their first 

big break, he as a film director and she as his leading lady, 

IF .... VICTOR can get ANNA to do something she really, really doesn't want to do… 

IT'S TERRIBLE WHAT WE DO FOR LOVE

Produced at the 45th Street Theater, NYC (2012)


Published in The Bar Mitzvah of Jesus Goldfarb & Other Short Plays


Comedy, 10-15 mins. (cast: 1 F & 1 M)
Truman Bluman needs a liver for his wife. Hospital administrator Darla Colloway needs Truman. She's ready to negotiate. Is he? 
A black comedy.


the play The Thing With Also Inside

THE THING WITH ALGO INSIDE -- Chosen: The New American Theatre (L.A.), 2017 Festival of New American One-Act Plays

Published in The Bar Mitzvah of Jesus Goldfarb & Other Short Plays​

Comedy/Drama, 10 mins. (cast: 2 F; 2 M)  
In the year 2650 four young people encounter one strange, frightening, long-extinct object.


the play Driving to Florida

DRIVING TO FLORIDA -- Chosen: 2016 Warner International Playwrights Festival Finalist: 2014 Drury University One-Act Playwriting Competition Semi-Finalist: 2013 LaBute New Theater Festival

Comedy, 30 mins. (cast: 1 M; 1 F)
Max wants to honor the new tombstone of the war-hero father whom he reveres too much; Mel wants to salvage her marriage to Max -- can his self-esteem and her passion survive a 1200-mile drive to Florida -- in the middle of July? 

the play about LBJ What It Takes to Get Things Done in Washington

WHAT IT TAKES TO GET THINGS DONE IN WASHINGTON -- Chosen: City Theatre of Independence (MO) 2014 Summer Playwrights Festival

Drama, 10-15 mins. (cast 3 M)
It's 1957 and LBJ's only chance at the Presidency depends on doing the impossible: getting a Northern liberal and a Southern conservative to agree on a high-stakes bill that violates each one's core principles. How will he do it?

THE INVENTION OF THE LIVING ROOM

Barry Leibmann’s Review of “East Side Stories” at the Metropolitan Playhouse for the NYC TV show “Hi! Drama” May 3, 2013: “My favorite of the bunch, Andrew R. Heinze's , "THE INVENTION OF THE LIVING ROOM" ... has a lot of charm and humor.”



Comedy, 15 mins. (cast: 3 M + 1 F)
Before there were suburbs, a young Jewish builder in a Lower East Side tenement imagines a bigger, better kind of home, including -- dream of dreams -- a room just for living! The only thing standing in his way is his mother, and her parlor.

THE DNA BREAKDOWN -- Chosen: Hoboken Public Library One-Act Play Festival 2018

Published in The Bar Mitzvah of Jesus Goldfarb & Other Short Plays


Comedy, 10 mins. (cast: 1 F + 1 M)

Hannah's Jewish, Fred's black, or so they thought ... when a DNA test becomes a marital stress test. Who are we really? Are we free to choose? If we are, who will we be? And how? And if not now, when? 

WOULD YOU LIKE A TISSUE? -- Chosen: New Jersey Rep, 2018 "Theatre Brut" Short Play Festival; Chosen, "Final Seven" by the Studio Players, Lexington KY, 2019 Ten-Minute Play Festival

Published in When the Circus Comes to Town: A Collection of 31 Short Plays 

Published in The Bar Mitzvah of Jesus Goldfarb & Other Short Plays


Comedy, 10 mins. (cast 1 F; 1 M) 

Lawrence thinks he’s about to see a circus; Vanessa thinks she’s about to see a play about a circus. But before the show ever starts, his inadvertent sniffling, and her annoyed offer of a tissue, launch this pair of strangers into a main event of another kind.    

I CAN'T HELP IT! -- Chosen: Nylon Fusion Theatre Co. 2019 One-Act Play Festival, NYC

I CAN'T HELP IT! -- Chosen: Nylon Fusion Theatre Co. 2019 One-Act Play Festival, NYC

I CAN'T HELP IT! -- Chosen: Nylon Fusion Theatre Co. 2019 One-Act Play Festival, NYC

Published in The Bar Mitzvah of Jesus Goldfarb & Other Short Plays



Comedy, 10 mins. (cast 1 F; 1 M)

  JONATHAN is enamored of his professor, MELISSA. 

He's sure it's Fate. She's sure it isn't. 

One of them must be wrong.

I CAN'T HELP IT! -- Chosen: Nylon Fusion Theatre Co. 2019 One-Act Play Festival, NYC

I CAN'T HELP IT! -- Chosen: Nylon Fusion Theatre Co. 2019 One-Act Play Festival, NYC

EXIT STRATEGIES -- Chosen: American Renaissance Theater Zoom-Play Festival, 2020, NYC

Dark Comedy, 10 mins (cast 2; gender neutral, F or M)


Published in The Bar Mitzvah of Jesus Goldfarb & Other Short Plays


CHRIS, a writer, makes a last desperate phone call to a company that caters to the suicidal. 

The call is taken by JORDAN, a sales rep who delivers much more

than the product CHRIS had intended to buy.

AT LEAST SLIGHTLY - Grand Rapids 2019 & Los Angeles 2022

"Top Ten Finalist" Actors Theatre, Grand Rapids "Living on the Edge" Festival, 2019


"A Light in Dark Places" Theatre Festival, the Stella Adler Academy of Acting & Theatre, (Upcoming Production) Los Angeles 2022


                 Drama, 10 mins (cast 2; 1 F, 1 M)  


Depleted by chronic depression, JENNY prepares to end her life, until husband JAY comes home from work unexpectedly. When she fails to persuade him to leave, he discovers her plan. She urges him to let her go, but he has a will of his own to get her to stay. 




ADAM NAMES THINGS IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN -- Chosen: Spare Change Theater “In A New York Minute” play festival (NYC, 2010)

Comedy, 1 min. (cast: 1 M)
Adam is pretty pleased that he’s come up with a name for everything on earth, until he steps on something and realizes his work isn’t done yet.

PLEASE PASS THE SALT

Published: Contemporary One-Minute Plays, v. 2 (Fresh Words: An International Literary Magazine)

                         Comedy, 1 min. (cast: 2, any gender)


Two people, ONE and ZERO, sit at a table. ONE has an abundance of foods and tableware. ZERO has only a bowl of mush and a spoon. Things take a turn after ONE refuses ZERO's plaintive request to pass the salt. 

My Plays - Full Length Plays

THE INVENTION OF THE LIVING ROOM

Winner: Texas NonProfit Theatres’ 2014 POPS! New Play Project Competition

Finalist (Runner-Up): 2012 Blue Ink Playwriting Award (American Blues Theater, Chicago)

Chosen: Harriet Lake Festival of New Plays, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre

Chosen: "New American Voices" public reading series, Queens Theatre (NYC)

Chosen: A monologue from this play was published in The Best Women's Stage Monologues, 2015 (Smith & Kraus)



Drama, with comedy - 90 minutes w/o intermission (cast: 3 F & 3 M)

(*This play is an expansion of the one-act play of the same name.)

It's 1946. An apartment on the Lower East Side of New York City. Bessie Levin, an emotionally fragile yet dynamic woman, is haunted by the past but about to be hurled into the future. Bessie wants to keep her home unchanged and her racially-mixed, religiously-divided family together. Her son, Billy, is preparing to launch Levinstown, the first big postwar suburb, which he calls "the future of America." But will the Levins survive Levinstown? And will Bessie survive the future?


Buy the paperback edition of THE INVENTION OF THE LIVING ROOM here.



MOSES, THE AUTHOR

             What the critics said:

“Smart, funny and provocative... 'Best Play of Opening Weekend' of the New York International Fringe Festival"-- Theatre Reviews Limited

"Moses,The Author is the best, most evolved and funniest production I've seen in 18 summers of the Fringe Festival.”-- WBAI Radio (Janet Coleman, Cat Radio Café)

“Hilarious ... empathic as well as clever." 

New Jersey Jewish Standard

"A great work" -- Theater Pizzazz

"Andrew R. Heinze brings the Old Testament to life... I can't wait to see his future work!" -- Hi Drama (NYC TV)


World Premiere, New York International Fringe Festival, August 10-23, 2014

Chosen: the New York International Fringe Festival Encore Series 

Chosen: Harriet Lake Festival of New Plays, Orlando Shakespeare Theater

Chosen: Harrisburg New Works Festival

Finalist: The Hive Collaborative (Provo UT) Inaugural New Play Festival 2018


Comedy, 85 minutes w/o intermission (cast: 3 M & 2 F)


He freed his people. Can he free himself? . . . Moses has family problems (gay son, rocky marriage), God problems (existential), and career problems (writer’s block, a hellish deadline). He’s not happy with his Bible but to make a better Bible he must become a better man. A love story, with scrolls. 


See the show website here. 


Buy the paperback edition of MOSES, THE AUTHOR here.

PLEASE LOCK ME AWAY

Finalist: Kitchen Dog Theater (Dallas) 2014 New Works Competition


Comedy (dark comedy), 90 minutes w/o intermission (cast: 1 F & 2 M)


Wendy, a sixty-six year-old woman, has abducted Jason and Toby, two teenage boys who had subjected her to a horrible public humiliation. But now that Wendy's got her youthful oppressors captive in a remote cabin, she doesn't know what to do with them. Wendy and the boys quickly find themselves not only at each other's mercy but at the mercy of their own bodies and desires, which obey only Mother Nature. A dark comedy about age, sex, power -- and the strangeness of being human.



​

DELETING DAD

Winner: Texas NonProfit Theatres’ 2016 POPS! New Play Project Competition


Drama  75 minutes w/o intermission (cast: 3 M)


A middle-aged man wants to delete from his iPhone the contact information of his father, who died four years ago. But he finds that he cannot. His inability to do this launches him on a journey of self-disclosure about his relationship with his father and brings to the surface a disturbing fact that he has hidden since the day Dad died. 


TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN

The Soho Theatre (London) described TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN as "very theatrical: fast moving with lots of humour. . . sharp and highly enjoyable repartee."


Comedy (farce), 90 minutes w/o intermission (cast: 4 M & 3 F or other combinations...)


An outrageous comedy for outrageous times... The year is 2028. Out of President Dick Wonder’s romantic past comes Volvita Volva, the Biracial, Intersex Ex-Sex Queen Who Wants To Be . . . Vice-President. In one high-velocity 24-hour period, Volvita rises not merely to the Vice-Presidency but to the Presidency itself, fighting to free Dick Wonder from the hypnotic control of Marvin, the sociopathic bully who had been Dick's childhood chum and who now covertly rules the country in his name. Along the way Volvita also liberates the First Lady from a life of erotic frustration and introduces the President to the son he never knew he had, the very same young man whom the sixteen-year-old First Daughter plans to marry. All this, and a surprise ending – did someone say Queen? – never before seen in the annals of America. 

 

THE OTHER HAMILTON (a Founding Family tragedy)

Under its previous title, HAMILTON, an earlier version of this play won:


Semi-Finalist: 2012 National Playwrights Conference of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center

Finalist: 2012 New Works Project, the T. Schreiber Studio (NYC)


Drama (tragedy), 100-110 mins plus intermission  (cast: 3 M & 3 F)


Is honor more important than life itself? That is the question that haunts Alexander Hamilton's first-born child, Philip. A gifted nineteen year-old, Philip is on his death-bed, having been shot in a duel to defend his father's name. Neither Philip nor the audience realizes that this is his situation when he appears out of the darkness, looking for his father, and finding himself in a strange (fever-induced) scenario. That scenario includes not only his father, mother, aunt, and oldest sister, but also us (an audience of strangers) and Aaron Burr, who seems like Fate and directs a stage show about the Hamilton family's recent past – in particular: the events that damaged the marriage of Philip's parents and threw him into a tormented relationship to his father, which led him to an early grave.

GREAT ROLES FOR OLD ACTRESSES

Drama-Comedy, 80-85 mins w/o intermission /90-95 mins with intermission  (cast: 5 F)


Chosen: a monologue from this play was published in Best Women's Monologues of 2019  (Smith & Kraus)


Chosen: another monologue from this play was published in The Best Women's Monologues from New Plays: 2019 (Applause Theatre & Cinema Books)



​What happens when you find your life writing itself into a script? Five stage actresses, all over sixty, get the last chance of their careers. But when they show up for a private reading of the play with the author, something strange happens: the author is absent and the script starts to change – things the actresses say to each other end up as lines their characters say in the play. Spooked but intrigued, the five follow this mystery, but the more they do the more they must reveal about themselves, putting not only their careers but their lives on the line. 


Buy the paperback edition of GREAT ROLES FOR OLD ACTRESSES here.


HALLIE THE FIRST

A contemporary adaptation of William Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I.


Drama with Comedy, 2 hours (cast: 11 with doubling;  17 w/o doubling)



Hallie Boeling, the computer-prodigy daughter of cybersecurity magnate Henry Boeling, has become a prodigal daughter, leading a wayward life as a hacker/gamer on the Lower East Side of New York City, where she shares an apartment with her close friend Fergus, an obese, intellectual gay slacker. Fate comes calling for Hallie when her estranged father summons her, needing her help to overcome a takeover plot against his company, Cybercore. The plot is led by James Speer, the son and nephew of Henry’s adversaries Norris and Warren Speer. James also had been Hallie’s first love ten years earlier in high school. Hallie and James square off against each other in corporate and digital battle, with dire consequences for the loser; Hallie’s ultimate victory leaves not only James as a sad casualty but also Fergus, who finds himself lost and alone, discarded by his only friend in the world. 

SHYLOCK THE FIRST

Drama with Comedy, 2 hours (cast: 8 with doubling; 11 w/o doubling -- 6 m; 5 f)


"Top 6" Finalist, Dayton Playhouse (OH) 2021 FutureFest Playwriting Competition (fully produced)

Finalist, 2021 Todd McNerney Playwriting Award


Chosen: a monologue from this play was published in The Best Men's Stage Monologues, 2020 (Smith & Kraus) 


Chosen: Two monologues from this play have been chosen for publication in THE BEST WOMEN'S STAGE MONOLOGUES 2022 and THE BEST MEN'S STAGE MONOLOGUES 2022 (Smith & Kraus; forthcoming)

Will the real Shylock please stand up? Who played him? Why did Shakespeare invent him? Were there secret Jews in the background? History doesn't say. So . . . 


London, 1598, late June. Twenty-one-year-old Will Hatcher, Shakespeare's beloved protege, has been cast to play a Jew called Shylock. With two days till the play opens, Will struggles over this character who seems more monster than man. He pleads with Shakespeare to revise Shylock, for two reasons: as an actor, he cannot find a way to play him; as a man, he fears that playing such a role will jeopardize something he only now reveals to his mentor. He is in love with Sosannah Lopez, a converso whose family remains proud of its Jewish ancestry. Complications abound (a back-stabbing best friend; a love triangle involving Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady”; a “Meet the Parents” fiasco) as comedy and drama propel us through this story of forbidden love. 




LEONARDO'S VIRGIN

Drama, 110 mins (cast: 3 m; 1 f)


Final Round Nominee, American Association of Community Theatre 2023 New Play Competition


Chosen: A monologue from this play will be published in The Best Men's Stage Monologues, 2023 (Smith & Kraus)


Thirty-two years old and distraught that he still has no masterwork to his name, Leonardo da Vinci is in crisis – as an artist and a man. In his art, will he remain a Jack-of-All-Trades and Master of None? In his life, will he remain a charmer capable of sex but never of love?  


April 1484. We meet Leonardo in Milan, Italy, where he finds himself with a chance for an artistic breakthrough, a commission to paint an altarpiece of the Blessed Virgin and Child. But he is stymied -- something about this painting has activated a deep torment inside him. To be honest in his art, he knows he must confront what haunts him, but confronting it will take Leonardo on a perilous emotional journey -- with his lover Alessandro, his model Isabella, and his critic Domenico -- into a dark abyss of love.




THE RIMSKY-FOGELMAN

Comedy, 2 hours (cast 6: 3 m; 3 f) 


Finalist, 2023 Todd McNerney Playwriting Award

Semi-Finalist, 2023 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference


What happens when a white Jewish family finds out that it's not? White or Jewish. And if everyone involved, including a Black spouse and a Black best friend, ends up different from who they were? And it all happens in three days? On Passover, with a Seder that spins out of control. 


Two days before Passover, 2022. Ariel Cohen (32) discovers that his long-deceased maternal grandmother was not a Middle Eastern Jew, as he and his siblings had been told, but a Black American Christian. This revelation throws Ariel and everyone around him into an Identity Crisis of comic proportions. 

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