Based on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, this rollicking and romantic musical is set on a New England college campus in the mid-1950s. With Benedick as a football coach and Beatrice as an English Lit professor, sparks are bound to fly. Cast Size: 10

Based on several short sensationalist thrillers by Louisa May Alcott - passion, deceit, drugs, sex, envy and greed... all in one cheery bundle. Winner of the Richard Rodgers Development Award. Cast Size: 8

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An unthinkable crime... an infamous suspect... a mystery still unsolved after 100 years. Cast Size: 10

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This work celebrates adolescence with the contemporary beat of the '90s and the knowing poems, stories and writings of the youth of today. With music, lyrics and continuity by some of the original creators of The Me Nobody Knows and based on writings sponsored by Poets in Public Service and other material, Bring in the Morning chronicles a multi-racial universe of kids aged from 13 to their early 20s - youth filled with the joy of life as well as its all-too-early burdens and heartache. With children growing up faster than ever, this contemporary musical celebrates their amazing resilience and enthusiasm with humor, pathos and a score mirroring today's beat, from reggae to rap, from gospel to contemporary pop. Cast Size:11

During World War II, over 70,000 British women met and married American servicemen stationed in Great Britain. After the war, husbands and wives were separated when the husbands were shipped home. The separations, in most cases, lasted more than a year, due to governmental indifference to the plight of the war brides on both sides of the Atlantic. At last, the brides banded together and marched on the Ministry of War Transport in London, and, as a result of the publicity the march received, Congress passed the War Brides Act, providing transport for the brides to America. However, before they were allowed to sail, the brides were herded together in processing centers in England, run by the United States Army, and were forced to undergo arduous verbal and physical examinations to determine their fitness to enter this country. It was clear to all that they were not wanted in America, and many rebelled and returned home. Those who managed to make it through were a hearty and determined lot. War Bridestells the stories of Mo, a London Postal worker, and Ivy, a mill worker from Leeds, as well as other brides who range in age from seventeen to mid-forties. Using the framework of a reunion, they step back in time to relive the key moments that brought them to America. During the course of the evening they are forced to re-evaluate the hopes and dreams they brought with them years before. The play juggles time frames and ends with the joyous arrival of the brides in America. Cast Size: 7

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Quilt focuses on the universality of the AIDS epidemic with compassion, humor and anger and celebrates the courage of living and dying in the age of AIDS. A kaleidoscope of the varied emotions contained in stories for, from and about the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, this series of monologues and songs are threaded together by a volunteer's experience while making a quilt panel in memory of a friend. CAST LIST: 17-25

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Willpower is a "Pygmalion" story set in the modern, media-dominated world. Two theatrical agents of the opposite sex bet a producer that they can put a "nobody" on the cover of People Magazine inside of one year. Love eventually overcomes all obstacles! Cast Size: 8

A musical about a contemporary love triangle and its ensuing complications. The show revolves around Abby, her best friend Sue, and Josh, the man who gravitates from one woman to the other, threatening their lifelong friendship. Almost entirely set to Music, the story unfolds in witty and moving songs and musicalized scenes. With razor sharp wit and unstinting candor, the play explores the nature of friendship, intimacy, and the need for tenacity in a world of disposable relationships. There are the comic urban laments of the single women and "I'm Looking for a Boy to Love Who's Not Looking for a Boy to Love" and "I Have to Have My First Child by 35, So I Need to Be Married by 34") and hilarious male grapplings with ambivalence about commitment ("I Want You to Be the Mother of the Children I'm Not Sure I Want to Have") as well as introspective, passionate, melodic ballads ("Losing Touch," "Revisions," "Hold Back," "Simple Things"). The musical moves back and forth between naturalistic scenes and review-style numbers that Abby is writing, inspired by the events occurring in her life. By the end of the play, Josh's outlook on love evolves and the women's friendship also matures - what it loses in girlish frivolity, it gains in the kind of understanding and insight that is only born of pain. Cast Size: 3

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An Underground Review combines elements of a review and book musical. It takes place on a subway car in New York City. After an opening ensemble number about subway riding, the train gets stuck between stations. The remainder of the show, angry, comic and wistful by turns, alternates between "real-time" interactions among the trapped passengers and their internal monologues and fantasies. As the action unfolds, the walls between the riders begin to break down and a sense of community and celebration spontaneously arises. Cast Size: 9

Based on a story by Thomas Hardy, it is a lushly melodic four character musical concerning the consequences when a married Victorian woman, Edith Harnham, writes love letters for her illiterate maid, Anna, to a handsome barrister named Charles Bradford. Through the correspondence, Edith falls in love with a man she's never met and Charles falls for his illusion of Anna. When Anna becomes pregnant, the two women conspire to win Charles for Anna. It is at this time that Edith's husband realizes that his wife is in a little deeply. Cast Size: 4

Based on the play by George W. George, this musical in two acts, deals with the early years of Pulitzer Prize Winning Cartoonist, Rube Goldberg. the setting of the piece is San Francisco at the turn of the century and includes such historical information as the corrupt reign of Boss Ruef and the devastating San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. The story centers around a conflict of ideals. Rube's father, Max, a colorful character who wears many hats, wants his son Rube to do the "sure thing" and become a mining engineer. Rube, on the other hand, wants to follow his heart and be an artist, specifically, a cartoonist. In his quest to please his father and also follow his dream, Rube embarks on a frequently zany quest that opens his heart to love, art and self-realization. With his cartoon alter-ego, Boob McNutt, and his real-life love interest, Tillie, Rube is finally able to go on his own and create the timeless cartoon inventions that have made the name Rube Goldberg a household word. Cast Size: 11

Based on a short story by Grace Paley, and set against the fascinating historical milieu of the Yiddish theatre of the early 1900's, it's the story of an offbeat 25-year love affair between the star of the Russian Art Theatre of Second Avenue, and the theatre's cashier - who refuses to compromise her vision of love. Resisting the pressures of family, friends, and time itself, she faces the conflicts of contemporary women: independence and integrity vs. marriage and children. Cast Size: 14

The action takes place over four days in a hospice room in Switzerland during March, 1939, and various locales in Western Europe in the years before World War II. The play is George Banks' recollections of his life as he lies dying in the hospice room. His memories consist of his time spent on and off stage with the Bombshells, and with his one long-term lover, Harry-boy. Thematically, Exit Music is about the measure of a creative life cut short - while not an "AIDS" musical, the reverberations of the piece to the time we live in echo effectively. Cast Size: 7

Dreams of Defiance is about two sisters who must decide whether to stay or leave their small hometown of Defiance, Ohio. Sarah, who dreams of becoming a singer-songwriter, runs away the night before her wedding to her childhood sweetheart. Becky, her younger sister, schemes to bring both her father, who left five years ago, and Sarah home in order to re-establish family roots. Each must learn how to resolve their conflicts in order to pursue their dreams. Cast Size: 7+

A high-spirited "backstage" musical comedy set in a true "Actors' Hell": an eternity of bastardized Shakespeare in non-stop rep, where there are no lead roles--everyone chucks a spear! Incorporates vaudeville and commedia. A fight for poetry in a world of mindless burlesque, a satire on the corruption of quality entertainment attempting to compete with commerical claptrap. Cast Size: 8

Weddings. Bar mitzvahs. Sweet sixteens. These are the venues the club date Musician gets to display his talents in. He's like an artist who paints signs for a living, a dancer who teaches aerobics, a doctor who works for an HMO. The work requires a high degree of skill, professional gratification is nil, but it's a living. The show takes place in this rarely examined world. It's the story of Artie Bonay, a popular band leader who desperately wants to get out of club dates. He longs to be a pop singer, but his only effort in that direction is singing with a doo-wop band, the Gigolos, in his spare time. He works for his father, Red Bonano, a crusty old piano player who, like Artie, was a highly sought-after band leader in his youth. Now, with a bad heart, he runs a small club date office and is entirely dependent on his son to attract Bookings. Red dreams of passing the business on to Artie, retiring to Pompano Beach and living off a small share of the profits. That dream is dashed when the Gigolos are offered a record deal and a tour. Artie agrees to do one last date for his father - a wedding reception which, if successful, will land Red a contract that will allow him to salvage at least a part of his dream. But Artie doesn't do so out of loyalty. He has fallen in love with the bride and is determined to stop the marriage. The result is a caterer's nightmare. Artie neglects his duties on the bandstand and the leaderless band goes on a musical rampage. The bride and groom have a fist fight. Red collapses onstage trying to get control of the Musicians. The guests panic. But it's all worth it for Artie. He gets the girl, comes to an understanding with his father and goes off to pursue his dream. Cast Size: 14

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In a futuristic society, people live in tiny computerized modules and are supervised by a Benevolent Authority. Some people escape and make contact with "outsiders," only to find themselves in a deadly conflict with the Authority. Cast Size: 9

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Jeff, a 1910 con artist, hires Andrea as his assistant. To Jeff's dismay, Andy, suddenly liberated by "a life of crime," proposes a partnership. Never more than a step ahead of the sheriff, they scam through Kansas, Mexico, San Francisco and Pittsburgh, before discovering that love is the sweetest con game of all. Cast Size: 8

In 1904 a seven-year old aristrocratic French girl was orphaned in a shipwreck. She was taken to live and work in an Oregon lumbercamp, where she is placed with a cold, world-weary woman. The child's imagination and sense of wonder finally softens the woman and transforms the lumbercamp. In the midst of a devastating fire, the girl finds hope. Cast Size: 10

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When Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley) joined the group of writers and rebels vacationing near Byron's villa in the summer of 1816, she was regarded as little more than Shelley's odd-headed mistress. By summer's end she had, at 18, authored the Gothic classic "Frankenstein." Through a highly dramatic story and score, Mary Shelley explores the birth of Mary's famous Creature, and the writer's struggle to rise above the horrors of a life filled with despair and confusion to find love and a kind of peace. Cast Size: 5

This tuneful, humorous, yet emotional serio-comic opera concerns four generations of a contemporary family on Thanksgiving Day, from the cheerful arrival of the guests to near-chaos at the evening's end, and the characters' reaction to one another, to Thanksgiving, and to their own lives. Cast Size 15

The bittersweet tale of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll ) and Alice Pleasance Liddell, the child-friend for whom he created Alice in Wonderland. When an elderly Dodgson visits Alice after a thirty-year absence, past, present and fantasy merge; we are taken back to a time when a little Victorian girl and a shy Oxford lecturer in mathematics shared a musical world of fancy, even as the outside world threatened to take it away from them. Cast Size: 8