Description
GENEALOGY – COMEDY ABOUT DNA AND FAMILY HERITAGE YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT!
In the play Genealogy, secrets in their family trees surprise two couples appearing on a ‘reality’ ancestry podcast. Audaciously, they manage in this ‘problem comedy’ to conjure additional shocks for each other and their host while also confronting some culpabilities in our country’s heritage. Genealogy explores a very serious subject: the legacy of race relations paired with the prospect of reparations. Yet following George Bernard Shaw’s advice that “if you want to tell people the truth, you’d better make them laugh or they’ll kill you”, co-playwrights Elliott & Queenan have turned the situation into another of their problem comedies. A Comedy about DNA and Family Heritage you didn’t know you had!
Genealogy runs eighty minutes without intermission.
PRODUCTION HISTORY
Broom Street Theater, November 2021 as part of Knowledge Workings Theatre
OTHER PLAYS BY T.J. ELLIOT AND JOE QUEENAN
Alms – Dark Comedy about Catholicism
Grudges – American Political Satire
Authors: T.J. Elliott & Joe Queenan
Type: Full Length one act play
Genre: Comedy about DNA
Length: Eighty minutes without intermission
Cast: A five-character play (2F 3M; two black characters, two white characters, one unspecified)
Ages of the actors: One in his twenties, rest middle aged
Set: Lights come up on the set of a podcast, Chasing the Dead. Five chairs face the audience; the center chair has the name “Glenn Weber” on it. Behind the chairs are the CTD logo and a large, smiling headshot poster of Glenn. Far stage right, a bar area features a My Blue Genes: Your DNA Explorers logo. Far stage right, a door serves as the only exit from the control room, and higher up on that wall is a one-way mirror that is its window. Stage left is the corridor through which participants enter and exit. The participants all receive Lavaliere microphones while the host speaks into his headset
Level of Difficulty: 7/10 – some minor technology that needs to be adjusted. Getting the comedy into a tense situation.
Read a Sample of the Script
Contact Off The Wall Plays with any queries about Genealogy
Copyright © 2023 T.J. Elliot and Joe Queenan
Like this play? Other plays about podcasts, game show reveals and DNA
Lateral Sinking – comedy about a TV quiz show!
Midnight Infomercials – satire about late night TV
Sindication – American Political Satire that breaks the Fo
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