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Louis Lippa Play Synopses

Here you will find brief descriptions of Louis' plays. This list doesn't correspond to the volumes, but meant as an overview of all the works.

THE LOYALIST

Set in a South Philadelphia row house in 1937, The Loyalist follows a  family whose quiet domestic struggles collide with the moral urgency of the Spanish Civil War. As political ideals compete with family responsibility, each member of the household is forced to confront what loyalty truly means.

SIGN OF THE LIZARD

A poetic historical drama that recounts the final month in the life of Spanish poet Federico Garc a Lorca as Spain descends into civil war. Blending history, memory, and surreal theatrical imagery, the play explores the relationship between artistic imagination and political terror.

SACCO AND VANZETTI: A VAUDEVILLE

A darkly comic historical drama in which Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti reenact the events leading to their conviction through the conventions of American vaudeville. Blending slapstick comedy, music, courtroom testimony, and political satire, the play examines prejudice, justice, and the immigrant experience while never losing sight of the human tragedy at its center. 

A MEMORY OF RESISTANCE

Set in 1971, this intimate family drama explores the legacy of political conviction across three generations. As an aging veteran of the Spanish Civil War struggles to preserve his memories, his embittered son returns home carrying emotional scars of his own, while a young woman searching for hope becomes the bridge between past and future. Blending humor, heartbreak, and history, the play examines memory, family, sacrifice, and the enduring power of belief.

THE SOUTHGATE PORTER

On the morning after King Duncan's murder, the drunken porter who briefly appears in Shakespeare's Macbeth awakens to discover he may be the perfect scapegoat.

THE FORTUNATE LOVELIFE OF ROMEO MONTAGUE

A reinvention of Romeo and Juliet in which the Montagues and Capulets secretly scheme to marry their children for money and political power. Romeo and Juliet fall genuinely in love, but escaping their families may require them to stage the tragic ending we all know.

TONIGHT WE IMPROVISE KING LEAR

A wildly theatrical comedy about a director attempting an experimental production of King Lear while his increasingly rebellious cast blurs the boundaries between Shakespeare, improvisation, and real life. Beneath the theatrical chaos, a troubled father-daughter relationship begins to echo Lear and Cordelia with unsettling force.

THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE (children's play)​

An impatient apprentice. A forbidden book of magic. An army of unstoppable brooms and mops. What could possibly go wrong?

THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF PINNOCHIO

This is Pinocchio with the Fox and Cat, Fire-Eater, the Talking-Cricket, Funland, donkeys, danger—and all the wonderfully strange adventures that made Collodi's original tale a classic.

THE DREAMING OF ALOYSIUS

A boy who cannot sing goes looking for God—and discovers an extraordinary world somewhere between waking, dreaming, and home.

ALOYSIUS AND THE GHOST OF UNCLE HAROLD

A grieving young man who refuses to grow old makes a bargain with Mister Time and is shown the love, loss and mystery awaiting him in the years ahead.

SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR (Pirandello adaptation)

Six abandoned characters invade a theatre rehearsal and demand that the company finish the play—and the lives—their author left incomplete.

HAVE IT YOUR WAY (Pirandello adaptation)

A whole town demands the truth about three strangers. The trouble is, every answer makes perfect sense—and none of them can possibly be true at the same time.

PIRANDELLO'S HENRY IV

Twenty years after a head injury convinced a man that he was a medieval emperor, his friends arrive hoping to cure him — only to discover that he recovered years ago and has chosen madness over the world that abandoned him.

COMING SOON

THE NEANDERTHAL ROOM

INTERNATIONAL CONSOLIDATED

THE ADVENTURES OF ANTIONE

A GHOST STORY

SISTER CARRIE

AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

DAISY MILLER

THE IRON HEEL

THE PROPRIETOR

DELUSIONS OF A GOVERNMENT WITNESS

THE SECOND GUEST

THE GUESTS HAVE ARRIVED

THE BREAKING WALL

THE UNINVOLVED

THE SEVEN WHO WERE HANGED

A HOUSE REMEMBERED

AND A BUNCH OF ONE-ACTS

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