A comedy about the Iran-Contra affair. "Heroic ... Sharp ... Wonderfully nuts ... The antic lunacy of a Busby Berkeley routine ... Strand's Ollie North is not just the butt of the play but its suffering hero. He's like a lawbreaker out of Ibsen, maybe a little crazy but with a genuine, shining integrity." -The Washington Post "John Strand's THREE NIGHTS IN TEHRAN is a furiously comic take on the Iran-Contra affair ... Inherently theatrical ... A farce exploring the outer limits of American diplomatic folly ... Strand's stage version of North consciously echoes elements of Othello's...

In 1904 the city of Saint Louis hosted a World's Fair. One event was titled the "University of Man," meant to celebrate the emerging science of anthropology and popular notions of biological evolution. 'Race specimens' from around the world were gathered and brought to Saint Louis to be displayed for the crowds: Indians, Eskimos, Africans and other 'rare' races, including, to much acclaim, the pygmies. A young Southerner and self-styled African explorer, Samuel Phillips Verner, traveled to the Belgian Congo as a Special Agent for the Saint Louis Fair. He brought back with him several pygmies....

A dark comedy set in present-day Washington, D.C. Francis was a brilliant political staffer who suffered a mental breakdown, convinced he was Abraham Lincoln. He now works as a janitor in various D.C. buildings, and attends therapy, but still sometimes wanders off and makes rousing public speeches. He is kept from being forcibly confined to an institution only by the efforts of his brother, a harried political speechwriter struggling to help his congressperson get re-elected. During his long night shifts, Francis befriends a lonely speechwriter who unbeknownst to him works for his brother's...

Alfred de Musset's 1832 play depicts Lorenzo de Medici, the 16th-century Florentine nobleman who killed his tyrannical cousin but did not establish a republican government afterwards and was forever disgraced by a debaucherous past. "Impressive. A sleek, stirring adaptation ... LORENZACCIO is a civic tragedy, charting the cruel decline of a formerly free city-state ... Recounted by ... playwright John Strand with clarity and directness, Musset's story of a society cowed by and despairing over its political leadership seems an apt one to tell just now. Its bitter conclusion is designed as a...

HERNANI, Victor Hugo's third play, written when he was 28, was not so much a piece of theater as a bombshell dropped directly into the laps of les classiques, the conservative defenders of French drama and its perfect garden of rules, regulations, and Aristotelian commandments of How Things Must Always and Forever Be. Deviation was considered heretical; innovation unnecessary, and to some minds, criminal.

A loving homage to Eugene Labiche and the High Vaudeville style he was instrumental in establishing a century and a half ago. "Breathless fun A highly accomplished effort, a smart comic machine that hurdles its characters from one amusingly improbable scenario to another ... HAT simultaneously detonates a dozen tiny plot points like some stage supercollider." -Los Angeles Times "A witty, footloose crowd-pleaser Dennis McCarthy's appealing new music is redolent of the hurdy-gurdy and D'Oyly Carte. Strand's lyrics exude period feel and extend the comical biz. His ITALIAN STRAW HAT boasts what...