Connect With me!
rickpark1964@
gmail.com About Me
I'm Rick Park. I'm a playwright and actor in Cambridge, MA. I like writing about drag queens, pop culture, serial killers, Southie, and people living on the edge. If you visit my page, have a question or want to see a script, send me a message!
https://newplayexchange.org/users/2456/rick-park
Full Length Plays
Knock Down, Drag Out
Dramatic comedy
4 M, 1 F, 1 GN
Developers want to tear down Antoine's, Boston's only drag bar, in order to build some high-rise condos. Zonna, who has been performing at the club for 2/3 of her life, has other ideas. After being visited by the ghost of her drag mother Crystal Crawford, Zonna bands her drag queen sisters Ivanka (the club's 70 year old bartender and former chanteuse), Mx (a gender fluid college kid) and Sharia Law ( a hardscrabble queen who has fought for everything she's got) and stages a "drag in", where they will live in the club to protest its demolition, while fending off their neighbor, Mrs. Chao, an 80 year old Chinese woman who is on a permanent neighborhood watch, as well as the gentrification of the neighborhood they all love.
2018 O'Neill Festival Semi-Finalist
Scene 8
Dark Comedy
2M, 1F
Mace wants nothing more to be a actor. Or, more specifically, an actor on Broadway. While auditioning for what she is sure will be her big break (for a play she is sure will transfer from Boston to Broadway), her monologue is interrupted by her twin brother Dixon, who comes looking for change for the vending machine. Stopped by the unseen director and asked to read for a role himself, Dixon stays as Mace is dismissed. Back at home, Mace complains to her best friend and room mate Seb, an aspiring costume designer she met in school. When Dixon arrives, Mace is ready to go after him, until he tells her that they have both been cast. Everything is great--until the first read thru, when Mace and Dixon get to scene 8 and discover that the married couple they are portraying have a full-blown, fully-nude love scene. When neither sibling will back down and give up their role, it's war, with Seb positioned squarely in the middle. After a night fueled by tequila and mind games, family secrets are spilled until things reach a climax from which no one will recover.
Gay Guy/Fat Girl
Romantic comedy
3-4M, 3-4W
Stewart and Josie were friends in high school, where he was the gay guy and she was the fat girl. They made a pledge that if neither were married by the time they were 40, they would marry each other. Fast forward to today, when a chance meeting brings the two friends back together. Sharing tales of their crappy love lives, Stewart and Josie grow closer and closer until--could it be?--they fall in love, much to the dismay of Stweart's best friend Maxie, a "drag illusionist" best known for his caustic wit and love of making up dirty lyrics to show tunes, and to Lux, Josie's friend and roommate, a stage manager by trade who works part time at Josie's "maternity concierge" business, A Womb With a View. Can the former fat girl and current gay guy buck the odds and live happily ever after? Maybe the ghost of Marie Osmond can help!
The Warmth of the Sun
Drama/horror
2M, 1F
Baby is a vibrant 20-something who loves nothing more than driving around Southern California in her vintage station wagon, listening to the Beach Boys, picking up cute guys at rest areas, having sex and then killing them. Austin is a cute-but-nerdy 20-something whose always been afraid of everything--baseball, swimming, women--until he realizes the power he can have by drugging the women he desires and watching them die before his eyes. What happens when one serial killer picks up another serial killer and they start to fall for each other? Will love trump killer instinct? And what about the dead guy Baby has hidden on the back floor of her car--who just happens to not be dead?
The Warmth of the Sun uses projections, music, color and sound to create a world described by one critic as "Tarantino-esque"
Sunset for Days
Drama
2M, 3F
Something is happening to the Earth. It's rotation is slowing down, so now nights last for 30 hours, sometimes more. The animals felt it first, the cats, the raccoons, then the humans. None of them know when to sleep. Satelites aren't working right, cell phone reception is spotty and the tides have gone awry and flooded all the coastal areas. Travis is almost 16. His dad left a few months back and his sister, KC, had to come home from her first year in college to take care of him after their mother stopped sleeping altogether and now stays up all night baking elaborate cakes and garbage bags full of cookies. Travis splits his free time between his girlfriend Marissa, and his older buddy, Merv, who manages the Chuck E. Cheese knock off in their town and who is always on the look out for "pervs". As Travis tries to manage in this ever changing world, KC is left to clean up her mom's messes. When her mom goes missing, KC checks with the neighbors and meets Mrs. Carlisle, a no-nonsense octogenarian widow, known as the the town's "crazy cat lady", who now sits in her wheelchair brandishing a shotgun. Just as an uneasy friendship is forming between the two women, something happens that sets in motion a chain reaction of events that will change everyone's lives forever.
The Superheroine Monologues: A Parody of Epic Proportions
Comedy, co-written with John Kuntz
3M, 8F
What do you get when you put Wonder Woman, Super Girl, Storm, Lois Lane and the world's most beloved spandex clad females on the same stage? An ass-whooping evening of theatre! Touching, funny and always campy SUPERHEROINE MONOLOGUES is an action packed parody that starts in 1940 and travels through the decades. You already know that they can stop speeding bullets, control the weather, and scratch your eyes out, but these dynamic divas promise to answer all the questions you never dreamed to ask.
Ten Minute Plays
Please Report Any Suspicious Activity
Comedy, 3M or 2M, 1F
The subway announcement says to please report any suspicious activity. So what do you do when two gay dolphins get on at the next stop?
Life's Half A Glass
Comedy, 3F
Part of The Southie Series
The night before Thanksgiving can be stressful at the best of times. So what happens when Margee tells her lifelong friends Connie and Heather that her son is getting married to another man?
The Doppler of My Heart
Comedy, 1M, 1F
Part of The Southie Series
Sometimes it takes an almost tragedy to show you what is really important. Even if you have to miss a middle school production of "Wicked".
From Your Mouth to God's Ears
Comedy, 3F
Part of The Southie Series
When lifelong friends Connie, Margee and Heather spend the afternoon at the beach, it is anything but just an afternoon at the beach.
Space Saver
Comedy, 2M
Part of The Southie Series
After you shovel out your parking spot in Southie, you put a chair or a crate or a Justin Beiber cut-out to save your space. Jerry and Kevin enjoy their space savers and have some quality time out in the great outdoors and away from the wives.
Dressed Up Like A Douche
Comedy, 2M, 1F
Part of The Southie Series
"Blinded by the light...", as the song goes--but what's the next line? A debate for the ages, or at least for Murph and Donnie.
Stolen Breath
Drama, 2F
Last trolley of the night and Ginevra wakes up far from home. A talk with Jelly, the trolley driver, reveals more than either imagined.
Men on First and Third
Comedy, 3M
Part of The Southie Series
Three men contemplate the intricacies of baseball and whether it's better to get to first base with Angelina Jolie or third base with Helen Hunt.
Birdbaths, "Twilight" and Other Sundry Topics
Comedy, 2M
Part of The Southie Series
Dec and Mick are riding the train, just talking. But Mick has more on his mind than just listening to his buddy whine about women.
Santer-Baby
Comedy, 3F
Part of The Southie Series
Highschool besties Linda and Lisa run into each other at the mall around Christmas. After catching up and talking about old times, Linda asks the single Lisa who the father of her baby is and gets an answer she wasn't expecting.
There's Always Tomorrow
Black comedy, 1M
Herbie wanted to be a dentist. Now he is--a prison dentist. Find out what really happened to him when Santa found out he didn't want to make toys.
Moo Maid
Drama, 1M
A working dad talks about his daughter's love of Disney princesses and the lessons to be learned from them.
NOLA
Drama, 2M, 1F or 1M, 2F
Three people intimately affected by Hurricane Katrina talk to world and share their heartache, anger and hope.
Mob Mentality
Comedy, 1 M, 2 F
What would happen if you planned a huge flashmob for rush hour only to find out you're the only one who showed up?
Don't Give Up
Drama/Spoken Word
LGBT teenagers share the grief, heartache and hope of being different and coming out.
Slice of Life
Drama, 1M, 1F
Someone is riding the Red Line trains and slashing the throats of innocent bystanders. When Mich and Hank find themselves alone in the train car, they discover that neither of them is innocent.
MONOLOGUES
Borderlines (Feels Like I'm Going to Lose My Mind)
Drama, 1M
A Van Gogh self-portrait ruminates about life, love and a trip to the beach that exposed him to the fine lines that we tightrope walk every day.
Drama, 1F
A woman recounts what she remembers about events that lead to her current residence at a hospital on a posh tropical isle. What she thinks is true and what bubbles to the surface lead to a startling, world-shattering self-realization.
One Act Plays
No Cross, No Crown
Gothic drama, 1M, 1F, 1TF
What I'm Working On
Plays in the works--
either on my computer or in my head
Untitled
A take on Shakespeare's Macbeth set in the dressing room of a drag club.
Evergreen
A Christmas soap opera. 30+ characters for 4 actors. Murder, passion, deception and revenge: these are the ornaments that decorate the lives of the citizens of EVERGREEN.
Gallery
Pictures of Productions
