Four One-Act Comedies

By Joyce Armor

Written by a former TV sitcom writer, these four humorous plays cover a range of topics. “A Moving Experience” pits an enthusiastic young college student moving into his first apartment against his overprotective mother. In “Sofa,” two college roommates spar over Josh’s obsession with cleanliness and keeping his sofa pristine. Chaos ensues when Josh makes out with Brandyann, the girl his roommate Beck met at the beach. A feisty elderly lady, Lily, chains herself to a tree in “The Last Stand,” and it’s lumberjack Woody Bleck’s job to make her go away. It’s a mano-a-mano conflict both are enjoying until a novice TV reporter shows up to complicate matters. In “Bank Job,” 30-something Peggy and two of her friends from high school are robbing a sperm bank. She loves her husband, Nick, but he doesn’t want any more children. Their pediatrician, Ben Slayton, looks a lot like Nick and has sperm at a nearby sperm bank. And Peggy and the Sperm Patrol want those little critters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joyce Armor
• Release date: Jun 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463424933

Joyce Armor

I knew from the age of 8 I wanted to be a writer. I was 15 when I wrote a scintillating short story targeted to the confession magazines, my first attempt at getting published. Alas, “Drunkenness Cost Me My Womanhood” was rejected. In the next decade, I fed my need to write by penning long letters (a dying art), Christmas card notes, English essays and term papers.Armed with a degree in English, I was tending bar in a Las Vegas casino (long story) when I had an epiphany: I would do everything in my power to become a TV writer. Two weeks later I was living in L.A., and a few months after that, I landed a job as a production assistant at MTM, where I learned from the inside how to write and rewrite scripts. In partnership with another P.A., Judie Neer, I started writing spec scripts. Finally one was accepted by “The Tony Randall Show.” Over the next several years we were freelance TV writers, with credits including “The Love Boat,” “WKRP in Cincinnati” and “Remington Steele.” Then we both got married and started birthing babies. My little family left the L.A. smog for a small town in northern California.Over the next two decades, I wrote a parenting column that won a national award, several books (Letters from a Pregnant Coward, The Dictionary According to Mommy, What You Don’t Know About Having Babies), children’s poetry (in Kids Pick the Funniest Poems and other anthologies) and plays produced in community theaters.I also got divorced and moved my two sons across the country to Myrtle Beach, SC. There I wrote hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles and columns and co-owned a regional business/lifestyle magazine.Several years ago I moved back to Ohio from whence I began, where I enjoying hanging out with family and old friends, including the same group I ate lunch with in the cafeteria in 7th grade. Since returning to my roots, I’ve read more than 1,000 romance novels and novellas. Many I loved, some I felt “enh” after reading and others I wanted to reach into the book and hit at least one of the protagonists with a brick.That’s when I decided to write my own romance novels and novellas, the kind I wanted to read, with smart, funny protagonists; and interesting (to me, anyway), not overly complicated plots with conflicts not so contrived they make me want to gnash my teeth. You might disagree, and all I have to say about that is different strokes for different folks. My youngest son once told me he absolutely hated English classes because with math, 2+2 is always going to be 4, but judging writing is so subjective. In my younger years I might have turned myself into a pretzel trying to fit my writing into some publisher’s niche. Not happening anymore. Now I’m writing for me, in my own unique voice.I’ve always been a much better writer than a salesperson, hence the e-publishing route. And I’m basking in the control. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Book preview

Four

One-Act Comedies

Four One-Act Comedies

Copyright 2018 Joyce Armor

Smashwords Edition

Cover: Vila Design

Trusty Reader: Chris Gale

Expert Formatting: Jesse Gordon

Four One-Act Comedies by Joyce Armor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are purely fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A Moving Experience

Sofa

The Last Stand

Bank Job

About the Author

A MOVING EXPERIENCE

(At rise. In the bedroom of a modest apartment with boxes stacked in several places, a middle-aged woman, DONNA KIRBY, puts T-shirts into a bureau drawer as her husband, GORDON KIRBY, sits on the bed and begins bouncing.)

DONNA

What are you doing, Gordon? Cut it out.

GORDON

What?

DONNA

Don't bring any attention to the bed.

GORDON

Oh, Donna.

DONNA

Just get up.

GORDON

As long as he keeps wearing enough cologne to choke a horse, I don't think we need to worry about the bed.

(Footsteps approach.)

DONNA

Get up! Get up!

(He does as WADE KIRBY, age 19, enters carrying a box of his belongings. He sets it down on the bed, and Gordon looks inside.)

GORDON

You have 92 DVD's and 2 books.

WADE

(smiles)

Yeah.

DONNA

(to Wade)

Sex is much better when you love your partner. Remember, one night of immediate gratification can lash you to that person for 20 or 30 years or even longer.

WADE

Okay, Mom.

(He takes some keys out of his pocket and sets them on the dresser.)

DONNA

Oh, are these the keys to the apartment?

(She starts to reach for them, but Wade snatches them up before she can.)

WADE

These are Michael's.

GORDON

Is your roomie here yet?

WADE

(amused)

My roomie?

GORDON

Your bud, your pard, your amigo.

WADE

You're not gonna talk like that when Michael gets here, are you?

DONNA

We don't really know very much about your roommate, do we?

WADE

I told you, Michael was in my finance class last semester.

DONNA

Don't ever drink and drive. Call us any time, day or night, if you need a ride. No questions asked and no lectures.

WADE

I know, Mom. I'm 19. I'd know that even if you hadn't told me eleven times in the last week.

DONNA

You're right, you're right. I'm sorry.

(beat)

Don't get involved with moody girls. Life is hard enough without having to ride that rollercoaster.

WADE

(contorting his face)

And I won't do this because my face could stick this way.

DONNA

I just don't see why you need to move out.

WADE

I don't need to. I want to.

DONNA

Why don't you just plunge a dagger into my heart?

WADE

I'm tired of all the driving. I'm so much closer to the college out here. I won't have to borrow gas money anymore. We've talked about this.

DONNA

I know.

WADE

I'm gonna get the drums.

(He exits.)

DONNA

(to Gordon)

Did you talk to him about sex?

GORDON

Yeah, when he was 11.

DONNA

You didn't go over anything?

GORDON

Donna, that isn't the kind of information a teenage boy forgets.

DONNA

Oh my God!

(She rushes over to a corner of the room and bends down.)

GORDON

What? What?

DONNA

(holding up her find)

A dustball. What kind of toxic waste will he be inhaling in this deathtrap?

GORDON

If we're lucky, maybe Michael will turn out to be an anal retentive.

DONNA

How can you be so calm? Wade is still a baby.

GORDON

You'll be saying that when he's 40. If you had your way, he'd be a total wimp.

(Donna picks up a framed photo of Wade as a child and studies it.)

DONNA

I can still see him getting on the bus on his first day of kindergarten with that Bandaid on his chin where he cut himself trying to shave. And then the bus driver forgot to drop him off on the way home and he rode around town crying for