John Hadden’s plays have appeared at PS 122, LaMaMa, EST Octoberfest, Northampton’s naked theater, Great Barrington’s Mixed Company and Berkshire Ten-Minute Play Festival, Brunswick’s The Theater Project; and published in The Good Ear Review. They have earned grants and awards from the Massachusetts Foundation for Humanities, Mass Cultural Council, Feminist Review Trust (UK), Northampton Arts Council.

The materials below are for marketing and promotional purposes only.  Redistribution without prior written consent of John Hadden is forbidden. All documents are PDF files in English, unless otherwise noted.

FULL LENGTH

King Fool, a two-hander adaptation of King Lear. Lear has wandered off to a remote place the moment before he dies. He dips into a series of flashes before the moment ends. Cordelia, who has followed him to this place, is his caretaker, his fool and a host of other voices; at last he recognizes her fully and she conducts him to his final rest.

Travels with a Masked Man: A solo piece based loosely on interviews conducted after 9/11. An ex-CIA officer ruminates darkly on the American Empire, the human animal and himself; his grown son confronts him and a lifelong void of unknowns. A play about deception, the game (espionage) and rough filial love.

The Long Run: A commissioned play for the Edith Wharton Salon at The Mount, Lenox, MA, adapted from the Wharton story of the same title. (in-progress; slated for production November, 2014))

stray dogs: A game of power, ambition, sex and death. A penniless young man, looking half dead, knocks on a door in the middle of a Vermont winter in 1972. The house belongs to a wealthy woman farmer. She takes him in and keeps him on as a farm hand, against the wishes of her husband, a famous, failing novelist.

Hard Rain (Massachusetts Cultural Council award) is about love and torn loyalties during a military take-over. Victor Jara, a Chilean folksinger, befriends a young American (son of a CIA officer) who has been herded, along with thousands of other people, into a soccer stadium. Events at the stadium and scenes of Victor with his family converge on the morning of his death.

The End: Sex, drugs, and the end of the world, in 1969, at John DeLorean’s Malibu beach house. A magician, a corporate couple, a ravishing starlet, and Don Ankle, carpenter to the stars, await their host’s arrival. When he does finally arrive, violence over a poker game erupts, a cop comes to collect some (planted) cocaine, and the world softly explodes. (in revisions)

ONE-ACTS

The Quincy and Antoinette Kraczlic Variety Show
Hand-Off
Night Out
Terrapin’s Last Stand
Orhan, a Limerick Writer Down on his Luck, Offers Classes in Turkish Improvisational Dance in San Antonio, Texas

SCREENPLAY

A Thing for Talia A screwball whodunit-love story. Ex-celebrity Talia teaches jazz at a New England high school. Surrounded by would-be lovers, one of whom is murdered, she struggles to clear her name, find love, and save her son—in the face of a checkered past and the aroused citizens of Greater Worthington.