Daniel Reitz
c/o New Dramatists
424 West 44th Street
New York, NY 10036
Daniel Reitz is a playwright and screenwriter living in New York City. He has been both a Yaddo and MacDowell fellow, the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, a Laura Pels Foundation Award and a Dramalogue Award. Other honors include residencies at the Edward Albee Foundation, the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers in Scotland, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. His plays have been published by Smith and Kraus, and have been developed and produced at theatres including the Mark Taper Forum, Manhattan Class Company, Naked Angels, Playwrights Horizons, Public Theatre, and Ensemble Studio Theatre. His screenplays include Urbania, his feature film adaptation of his play Urban Folk Tales, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and won “Best Film” prizes in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Provincetown, and San Francisco film festivals prior to being released by Lions Gate Films. He has also written and directed several short films, which have been screened at film festivals in the United States and Europe.
- PERFECT EVENING
- CHAT
- THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE
- LOWLIFE
- URBAN FOLK TALES
- LOVE
- WHERE I COME FROM
- YOU BELONG TO ME
- A DAY IN THE LIFE
- SEASON'S GREETINGS
- SELF-PORTRAIT IN A BLUE ROOM
- HAPPY HOUR
- DIVULGENCE AT DAMRAK 18
- WHAT YOU CAN'T HEAR
- MATHEMATICS
- A CASE OF YOU
- AND THAT’S HOW PEOPLE BURN TO DEATH IN MOTEL ROOMS
PERFECT EVENING
Full-length Drama
3M, 1W
Flexible Set
A woman recently left by her husband gets a call from a younger male
friend. Thinking she can resuscitate her emotional and erotic life, she
responds, only to learn he is involved, inexplicably, in a sado-masochistic
relationship with another man. In spite of her repulsion, or because of
it, she finds herself drawn to the two men and the violence they can’t
contain within themselves, falls in love with the sadist and decides she
wants him for herself.
Developed at Naked Angels; reading
at the Players Club, NYC.
CHAT
Full-length Drama
3M, 1W
Flexible Set
A fifteen-year-old boy, whose mother recently committed suicide, looks
for both release and trouble in a chat room, and hooks up with a
pedophile child psychiatrist who promises oxycontin in exchange for an
assignation. In another chat room, a 9/11 hero firefighter has an erotic
conversation with a thirteen-year-old girl, who happens to be a grown
woman volunteer for a cyberspace vigilante pedophile-snaring group.
Developed at Naked Angels; reading
at the Rattlestick Theatre, NYC.
THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE
Full-length Drama
3M, 3W
Flexible Set
It’s 1972. Tony, heartthrob ’60s movie star most famous for playing a
mother-obsessed, cross-dressing, psychopathic killer in an iconic film,
now finds himself out in the Nevada desert playing a supporting part
that mirrors his reality – a real-life, all-too-knowing homosexual
playing a self-loathing, all-too-knowing homosexual. On his off-hours,
in his motel room, he is visited,and tempted by assorted male and female
seducers, hangers-on, and exes, while he passively seeks a cure for his
gayness.
Developed at Naked Angels.
LOWLIFE
Full-length Comic-Drama
6M, 3W
Flexible Set
A once-promising junior middleweight contender, now an actor/writer
wannabe and drug dealer, sees his big chance to sell a screenplay of his
“story” – the search for the rapist-killer of his mother, who wasn’t
raped and isn’t dead. An earnest romantic journalist tries to set him on
the honest straight-and-narrow path.
Developed at Naked Angels,
produced at the Belt Theater in NYC in 2003.
URBAN FOLK TALES
Full-length Drama
8M, 1W
Flexible Set
A man searches the New York City West Village streets one Friday night
for another man – the one, particular man, the answer to all his sexual,
emotional, and philosophical problems, who happens to be a gay-bashing
sociopath he’s longed for ever since their previous fateful encounter.
Readings at Manhattan Class
Company and the Public Theatre; produced by the Mark Taper Forum New
Work Festival in 1993, and the Coast Playhouse, Los Angeles, in 1995.
LOVE
One-act Drama, 20 minutes
3M
Unit Set
A middle-aged couple rents a young hustler for a birthday and play out
their mutual loathing in front of him, making him join in.
Produced by Naked Angels (1996).
WHERE I COME FROM
One-Act Comic Drama, 10 minutes
2M, 1W
Unit Set
In 1999, at the JFK International Airport, before a flight to Egypt, an
enterprising woman deals with both her anal retentive boyfriend and the
delicious, smirking, overhearing, possibly dangerous Middle Eastern
stranger listening behind the Arabic-language newspaper.
Produced by the HB Playwrights
Foundation Theater (1999). Heideman Award Finalist, Actors Theatre of
Louisville (2000). Published in HB Playwrights Short Play Festival 1999:
The Airport Plays (Smith & Kraus)
YOU BELONG TO ME
One-Act Drama, 10 minutes
1M, 1W
Unit Set
A woman is reunited with her adored, genius college lover on a subway
train. She’s divorced. He’s homeless and schitzophrenic.
Produced by the HB Playwrights
Foundation Theater (2003). Published in HB Playwrights Short Play
Festival 2003: The Subway Plays (Smith & Kraus)
A DAY IN THE LIFE
One-Act Comic Drama, 15 minutes
2M
Unit Set
Two men, one married with a daughter, have sex in a hotel room.
Post-coital guilt, the recounting of a conversation with a suicidal
obese woman and a recent Yoko Ono sighting precipitate a meditation on
the meaning of life, with a little help from Lennon and McCartney.
Reading at Naked Angels (2005).
SEASON’S GREETINGS
One-Act Comic Drama, 15 minutes
3M
Unit Set
It’s Christmas Eve in upstate New York, and three high school alumna –
one, a bitter, successful ergonomic architect once molested by the
parish priest, the other a bitter, successful gay screenwriter, and the
third, a cheerful, dim snow plower – accidentally reunite and air old
school grievances.
Naked Angels (2002).
SELF-PORTRAIT INA BLUE ROOM
One-Act Comic Drama, 10 minutes
2M
Unit Set
A world-famous artist is in the ante room to the Oval Office, fuming
over why he has allowed himself to accept the cultural arts medal from
George Bush. His forty-years-younger partner attempts to mollify him,
minutes before the encounter takes place.
Produced by the HB Playwrights
Foundation Theater (2005).
HAPPY HOUR
One-Act Comic Drama, 10 minutes
3M
Unit Set
On a St. Thomas beach, at the crack of happy hour, two men – an
ex-couple – run into each other and, in the presence of a new boyfriend,
say all the hateful, hurtful things they never said when they were
together.
Produced by the HB Playwrights
Foundation Theater (2002). Published in HB Playwrights Short Play
Festival 2002: The Beach Plays (Smith & Kraus)
DIVULGENCE AT DAMRAK 18
One-Act Comic Drama, 10 minutes
2W
Unit Set
Two Jewish, Greenwich Village-dwelling left-wing women in their
seventies – one a writer, the other the widow of a famous radical lawyer
– confront each other in the Amsterdam Sex Museum over a thirty-year
infidelity.
Produced by the HB Playwrights
Foundation Theater (1998), and by Apartment A at the Electric Lodge in
Venice, CA (2002). Published in HB Playwrights Short Play Festival 1998:
The Museum Plays (Smith & Kraus)
WHAT YOU CAN’T HEAR
One-Act Comic Monologue, 10 minutes
1M
Unit Set
A gay man at a straight wedding, a smile plastered on his face, delivers
a corrosive inner commentary of the event.
Produced by the HB Playwrights
Foundation Theater (2004).
MATHEMATICS
One-Act Comic Drama, 10 minutes
2M
Unit Set
A priest and the grave-desecrating teenage boy he’s blackmailing for sex
meet for a rendezous in the funeral home where the boy’s father was
recently laid out.
Produced by the HB Playwrights
Foundation Theater (2000). Published in HB Playwrights Short Play
Festival 2000: The Funeral Plays (Smith & Kraus)
A CASE OF YOU
One-Act Drama, 10 minutes
1M, 1F
Unit Set
A teenage boy visits his alcoholic mother in the hospital, hoping she
will see what she is doing to them.
Produced by the HB Playwrights
Foundation Theater (2001). Published in HB Playwrights Short Play
Festival 2001: The Hospital Plays (Smith & Kraus)
AND THAT’S
HOW PEOPLE BURN TO DEATH IN MOTEL ROOMS
One-Act Comedy,
10 minutes 2M
Unit Set
A famous actor takes an extra on his film to bed.
Published in HB Playwrights Short
Play Festival 1997: The Motel Plays (Smith & Kraus)