Playing On Air: Short Audio Plays

Playing On Air: Short Audio Plays

Hear short, contemporary stage plays with first-rate casts. Playing on Air brings together award winners and emerging young talent, and each play is followed by a conversation with the playwrights and cast. Tune in for great American plays with great American actors, hosted and produced by Claudia Catania.

Episodes

December 29, 2024 33 mins

When Dee–a forty-something from Rockford, Illinois–visits Harvard’s namesake statue, ...

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It’s not easy living with a zealot. Or being at the ...

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December 29, 2024 32 mins

What’s with these birthdays that end in a zero? How ...

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December 29, 2024 44 mins

It’s 1942. WWIl is raging. Mr. Walt Disney is in N...

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December 22, 2024 24 mins

A woman (

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December 22, 2024 51 mins

1976

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August 27, 2023 19 mins

In BONNET, the incredibly talented John Patrick Shanley’s marital (and sometimes martial) comedy of manners, Dan (John Turturro) has a few questions for his wife Ava (Debra Messing) when she appears at the breakfast table with a meaningful new accessory.

BONNET, written and directed by the Tony Award, Academy Award, and Pulitzer Prize-winning Shanley himself, was recorded live at Playing on Air’s 10th anniversary benefit celebrati...

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August 20, 2023 47 mins

In SECOND SIGHT, a world premiere written and directed by renowned playwright David Ives, a retired historian’s (Danny Burstein) minor surgery brings up major questions that his affable surgeon (Steven Boyer), bemused wife (Susie Essman) and brother (Lee Wilkof) can’t seem to answer. Or is he, with the help of an otherworldly stranger (Brittany K. Allen), just seeing things clearly for the first time?

SECOND SIGHT is directed by I...

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August 13, 2023 32 mins

It’s 1915 and another typhoid fever outbreak, this one in a bustling hospital run by an officious Supervisor (Cindy Cheung), has once again led dogged sanitation engineer George Soper (Matt Park) to the hospital’s newest cook, “Typhoid Mary" Mallon (Catherine Curtin). It’s been years since Soper reluctantly released her from a forced quarantine on an inhospitable island. Can Mary finally wash her hands of him for good?

...

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It’s 1907 and a typhoid fever outbreak among New York City’s elite families has led zealous sanitation engineer George Soper (Matt Park) to the home of the haughty Mr. Winthrop (Michael Chernus) and a face-off with Winthrop’s proud, though not very hygienic cook, “Typhoid Mary" Mallon (Catherine Curtin). 

Playwright Rehana Lew Mirza’s history-inspired comedy, a 2021 Wordsmith Duo Commission supported by the ...

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August 6, 2023 23 mins

An old school drill sergeant under fire from his very modern and diverse new recruits desperately longs for simpler times.

Directed by John Giampietro, James McLindon’s short satire I DON’T KNOW features stage and screen favorite Jay O. Sanders as the Drill Sergeant and an ensemble cast of Broadway, off-Broadway, and TV regulars as his new recruits: Bobby Moreno, Sue Jean Kim, Jeff Biehl, and Brittany K. Allen.

After the play, Prod...

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In Lloyd Suh’s HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. ABERNATHY, a shared story, formerly repressed, begins to bridge the racial and generational distance between a white American centenarian of the Greatest Generation (Len Cariou) and his Asian American great-grandson (Ken Leung).

Stay tuned after the play for a poignant conversation between the playwright and Founder and Consulting Director Claudia Catania

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July 23, 2023 30 mins

It's the summer of 1955, and a new U.S. Army private stationed far away from his New Jersey hometown may have met his match, a very modern Southern belle, at a USO-style dance. 

Emily Bergl directs a pitch perfect cast—Eli Gelb, Erin Wilhelmi, and Vance Barton—in Cary Gitter’s THE ARMY DANCE, which also boasts a nifty-fifties-style score by composer Tom Kochan. After the play, host Claudia Catania and execut...

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July 16, 2023 25 mins

Hear that?

In ECHO AND NARCISSUS, playwright Amanda Quaid's newfangled take on an infamous myth from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a young woman falls in love with a narcissist after a vengeful wife condemns her to a unique fate.

The sprightly production is directed by Adrienne Campbell-Holt, stars Sarah Manton, Christian Conn, and Mia Katigbak, and features a kinetic score by composer Tom ...

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July 9, 2023 41 mins

A jet-lagged Gen Z couple (Toney Goins and Kerry Warren) decides to take an old school taxicab home to Brooklyn instead of an Uber, and their kooky cabbie (Louis Mustillo) introduces them to a very different (under)side of New York City. 

Playwright Aurin Squire’s otherworldly urban comedy is a James Stevenson Commission for Short Comedic Plays, generously supported by Josie Merck, and boasts an animated sco...

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From brilliant New Yorker cartoonist, illustrator, and children's book author James Stevenson comes this darkly hilarious reimagining of iconic animated characters - now "over the hill" and waiting out their golden years at a seedy retirement community in Los Angeles.  

Directed by Tony nominee Dana Ivey (The Last Night of Ballyhoo, "Boardwalk Empire"), EVENING AT ANAHEIM features Richard Kind (The Producers, "Spin City", "American...

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In Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner John Patrick Shanley's TENNESSEE, a wannabe musician seeking an escape plan and a glimpse at his future approaches a dissatisfied woman who's blessed, and possibly cursed, with the power of foresight. 

The audio play stars Oscar nominee Timothée Chalamet (our audio production of MISADVENTUREDuneBeautiful Boy, Call Me By Your NameLady Bird, and Shanley's Prodigal Son on Broadway) and Ca...

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Anything can happen when you leave your window open on a warm night. Tony, Oscar and Pulitzer Prize winner John Patrick Shanley (Doubt, Moonstruck, Outside Mullingar) wrote and directed this week's summer re-release about a curious banshee, a fantastical Irish spirit, who pays an ailing teacher a visit and makes him an otherworldly proposal.

The mystical comedy features Geraldine Hughes (THE MANDELA EFFECTTWO CROWS APARTJerusal...

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In this week's summer re-release, we're doing a bit of time travel. It’s a balmy night in the post-WWII Ozarks, and a young woman is leaving behind her life as a "lady of the evening" for an offer of marriage. Then a client shows up with some jaw-dropping news.

Oscar-winner Chris Cooper (A Doll’s House, Part 2, Adaptation, American Beauty), Emmy-winner Margo Martindale (“The Good Wife”, "The Americans," "Justified") and Broadway’s...

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