The Plays of Max Sparber: NSFW

FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL

A lunatic series of short plays designed to be produced on microbudgets; all of these plays are currently being offered without licensing fee -- go ahead and just do them!

MINSTREL SHOW, OR THE LYNCHING OF WILLIAM BROWN

Two itinerant African-American blackface performers retell the harrowing tale of the murder of an African-American man in Omaha, Nebraska in 1919.

"Mr. Sparber has taken a shameful, little-noted event in American history and fashioned a raw, gripping work."-- The New York Times

MAD ABOUT THE BOY!

A lip-synced musical created from a series of gay themed novelty records from the Sixties, telling a story of love before Stonewall.

"A hilarious and biting sendup of the time before the gay rights movement." -- Omaha World-Herald

CHELSEA (FROM A TO B AND BACK AGAIN)

Two years in the life of an artist inspired by Andy Warhol, telling of his art, his self-invention, and the making of a disastrous movie.

THE BLOG

Bunny Sparber's musings on theater, playwrighting, and misbehavior.

SYNOPSIS: A disastrous rehearsal of a punk rock band that writes songs exclusively about the Internet.

HISTORY: I wrote this series of songs in 2009 as a way of exploring the cheap technology that would allow me to write and record songs at my desk at home and place them online moments after writing them; additionally, I wanted to explore technology in general as a theme for music, with the Internet as the specific focus of the songs. It wasn't until a year later that it occurred to me that these songs could be embedded in a simple theatrical structure by simply having the audience sit in on the rehearsal of a band that's falling apart as they watch. This script has yet to be produced, although I am beginning preproduction on my own stage (or, more properly, garage) version.

COMMENTS: This script is part of Coco Mault's and my Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control collection of scripts: Royalty free scripts written quickly in a sort of mania, and intended to be produced anywhere for almost no budget at all. At the moment, we require no royalty or licensing fee for producers who wish to produce this script, and no permission is required; we merely ask that we be informed of the production, and given some sort of physical documentation of the event.

This production makes a specific demand on actors -- that they be able to play guitar, bass, and drums well enough to convincingly, and entertainingly, pass themselves off as a newly formed punk rock band.

DOWNLOAD a copy of NSFW here.

To read the script, you will need a copy of Adobe's free Acrobat Reader program. Download it here.

ADDITIONAL MEDIA: NSFW has 13 songs in it, which I recorded rather quickly and arranged simply; these demos are available to listen to and download below. I will not be providing sheet music for these songs; instead, performers are expected to learn the songs by ear and provide their own arrangement.

LISTEN TO THE SONGS FROM NSFW:

NSFW by maxsparber

DOWNLOAD ALL SONGS IN MP3 FORMAT AS A ZIP FILE (23.45 MB)

DOWNLOAD THE SONGS INDIVIDUALLY: