Two One-Act Plays

by Adam Szymkowicz

100 Things I Never Said to You - Adam Szymkowicz's powerful play - a poetic exploration of death, loss and grief through the lens of teenagers whose classmate has died - can be presented by a cast ranging from four to one hundred and six actors. At a school assembly after the death of their classmate Julie, students share memories and say the things they never told Julie as their community attempts to heal.
100 Love Letters I Never Sent - Told by an ensemble of any size - ranging from four performers to one hundred and six, 100 Love Letters I Never Sent is a collection of spoken aloud love letters describing the kaleidoscope of ways people can love one another. The letters vary in tone, from sweet to bitter to hilarious to outright confusing. The play is as expansive as love itself. This work serves as a companion piece to 100 Things I Never Told You.

Genres: Plays

60 pages, Paperback

Published March 30, 2023

Reviews

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basic Premise: 2 short plays, made up of monologues with a few brief 2-person interactions to break up the monologues. Each can be done with 4-106 (!) people in the cast. With no specifics given about characters, there are really no race/gender/etc considerations to worry about in casting.

100 Things I Never Said to You- Excellent, and I want to use this in my acting class. The premise is that it is a school assembly/memorial to remember a student (Julia) who died in a car crash. The individual monologues reflect a lot of different people and their relationship to the deceased. The cool thing here is that you could fling this at a group of actors of pretty much any number, tell them to each create a character, then pick out the speeches that fit that character, and then let them loose to see what happens. There's a lot of possibility for multiple interpretations of the different speeches. Actor candy. Some is serious, some is even humorous, but almost all of it just depends on the actor.

100 Love Letters I Never Sent- Also excellent, and I would love to use it in my acting class, but I don't know that they have the age/experience to do all of it. This one isn't specifically situational or given an age group, so while it could be done by a bunch of high-schoolers, it doesn't have to be. It might be more nuanced to have people of all ages. There is 1 monologue that specifically mentions sex, though doesn't go into detail. There is also 1 monologue that mentions asexuality, but again doesn't go into detail. It just depends on how conservative a community is and how comfortable the actors are with the content. I would have loved to have seen more humor in here, and there is some, but not a ton. There is a decent exploration of different types of love and the situations humans find themselves in when feelings get caught.

[J Frances · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not entirely sure how the interstitials in 100 Things I Never Said to You help tie the story together, but the little monologues definitely make great self-tape material. The messages also effectively capture the range of reactions from people with different relationships to the deceased, which made the piece feel really relatable.

[Alfie Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Painful to read at times, touches upon grief and love, two of the most universal human emotions, and ones which can be each other at times.
Using for an audition monologue as I connected to strongly to a lot of the words.