Ten-Minute Plays
Short plays with 1, 2, and 3 actors
In the Heideman Award-winning Hum of the Arctic, we glimpse a lost moment between a deaf woman blasting Queen from her radio and the artist who barges in on her, in her bathroom, in the bathtub, with a blue paintbrush. Plus five other short plays. A lethal dress. The aftermath of a bakery explosion. A sketch of a train ride for two actors and a diorama. And an open letter titled "Who Put the Dead Bird in my Mailbox."
Read Sample
from
Hum of the Arctic
RIGEL
Can you hear any of this? I can’t stop talking. Look at me. Can’t stop. Stop! Can’t do it. See, and you can’t hear a word so what’s the point of all this useless. . .
I’m afraid of small spaces.
When I was eight I hurt my cat.
Sometimes I want to push people into the subway tracks.
I’ve always hated my sister. She hates me, too, and so she puts banana peels in my toilet, and I can’t ever flush the toilet, and I have to go in the unisex restroom in the lobby that the bums use. We don’t say these things to each other, she and I.
CLAIRE
(To audience.) He told her everything that he had never thought to say out loud before.
RIGEL
I never eat Chinese because the fortune cookies will tell me I’m in for a fall or life is a bad dream until you wake up, and then it’s worse.
I love you.
Marry me. Will you marry me. I can’t love you. I don’t love you. I don’t love. There. There it is.
He covers his eyes, lets out a nervous bark.
Whoo! You are better than a priest!
SHELLY
(The beginning of a word:) Oov -
He looks at her, exhales.
RIGEL
But you didn’t hear a word of that, so I am safe.
Honors
Heideman Award, Actors Theatre of Louisville.
Publisher
Who Put the Dead Bird In My Mailbox from Collaboraction's Sketchbook Festival.
Press
"The standouts stand out. "Who Put the Dead Bird in My Mailbox?" by Sarah Hammond is like something ripped from Found magazine." -Chicago Tribune.
Production and Development History
Various works produced: Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Winter Showcase (2006); Venus Envy (2005); City Theatre’s Summer Shorts (2006, 2007); Live Girls Quickies (2007); Collaboraction Sketchbook 9 (2009).