The Stage Library

Original Plays, Musical Theatre and Ballet

Every production begins with the discovery of a story.

The Stage Library presents original works written for drama, musical theatre and dance. Electronic reading editions allow directors, producers, theatre companies and performers to explore each work before deciding whether to apply for performance rights.

An American
in Paradise

A play that explores ambition, sexual slavery, and how the Vietnam War fed into the American psyche — and the circumstances that dictate our choices.

Tom Harston steps off the plane at Ho Chi Minh airport and is greeted by an eighteen-year-old escort named Rose. A retired inventor of computer games, this is his first trip to Vietnam since serving as a G.I. At first Rose conforms to all his demands about the type of girl he had decided to meet.

But Rose is puzzled. The physical submission most men take for granted is not required of her — instead, all Tom wants to do is talk. In due course she learns the secret life he has never revealed, and realises the reason for his trip: one that will change her life forever.

Where Love
Has Gone

A life of hope and imagination, ultimately unfulfilled — and a spirit kept alive through the re-telling. In the end, a life full of surprises and surprisingly enduring.

Gerald is a middle-aged accountant who lives with his mother, Annie, who has dementia. His attempts to live a normal life are hampered by her insistence that his sister — who died as a teenager — is still alive. To placate her, he invents a life for his sister, the anecdotes growing ever more bizarre, until he must invent the ultimate lie to explain her death.

Where Love Has Gone is a one-act play for six players that re-enact past episodes in the life of a disabled child — a life of hope, heroism and essentially human.

The King
and Me

Eddie Doyle is an Elvis Tribute Artiste. Declared the winner of the ‘Colossus Tribute’ competition in Las Vegas, he steps on stage overwhelmed by applause, wipes his brow, and then stuns everyone… by having a heart attack.

The next thing he knows he’s stepped into another world. On his way to an unknown destination. Lost in space he is challenged with a heavenly mission. To discover who he really is, and rescue the future of his son. His comeback is going to demand his greatest performance.

THE KING AND ME is packed with memorable hits from the Golden age of popular music. Full of surreal humour and dark comedy, it examines our own relationship between celebrity and eternity.

Maria Novotna
The Ballet

The themes are dark, but the music haunting. A student’s journey turns into a nightmare against the invasion of Ukraine — a parody of ambition, greed, enslavement and the long fight for independence, set to Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Prokofiev and the rhythms of South America.