The Skittish Company is a collection of 18 short comedies and the resources for their presentation. They were written expressly for community and little theatres everywhere.

Each play is for 2 actors, 2 chairs, a table, and a door. Usually six Skittish comedies make up a show.

Because they are funny and endearing, because they contain no bad language or violence, they appeal to a broad audience, which makes them profitable. And because they need virtually zero dollars to produce, those profits can be banked on and retained.

The National Lampoon’s Bruce Moody wrote all the Skittish comedies and they fall into a variety of categories. Some are quiet. Some will have folks falling off their chairs with laughter.

When you use the Skittish comedies, The Skittish Company will provide you—for free—all the materials to promote them: fliers, postcards, posters, and letters to editors and media.

The Skittish comedies are also a lot of fun for actors to work on. They include roles for actors of all ages. And each actor plays a leading role in two of them—which makes the actors as happy as the audiences.

To find out more, go to The Plays on this website, email info@skittishcompany.com, or call 510-787-2706.


Older Actors/Older Audiences

We often hear the young need help, encouragement, and attention, but it is interesting to wonder if the old need the same. Perhaps not!

Aw the old!—poor things—they need help crossing the street, they want a graham cracker, they want to be noticed! Some may—but maybe most don’t.

Maybe a lot of the old have a voice already, maybe they have well esteemed solid skills, maybe you can take your sympathy and park it.

The playwright Bruce Moody is having his first show Skittish! performed at 75 and he doesn’t feel like he needs any special attention at all. In fact, if you gave him or his play attention because he was old or because it was new, he wouldn’t know what you were talking about. He doesn’t feel old. He feels eager. He wants you to like his show because you think it’s good, because you find it fun!

He is 75, and his partner in the project, the great Argentinean director Alfredo Fidani, is just the same age and is just as eager. They are working at the full capacity of 75-year-olds, which is pretty skittish itself.

In writing Skittish! Moody has written very good parts for younger actors —for actors of all ages in fact—but especially for older actors! As a Bay Area actor, Moody has played a wide variety of principal roles—but many of them were much younger than he. Julius Caesar was a lot younger when he was assassinated than when Moody twice played him, and while he didn’t look it, Moody, as Lord Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, was a bit long in the tooth to have a 15-year-old daughter.

He knew there are not many big roles for 75-year-old actors and actresses. So in writing Skittish! he has been quite specific about making a number of his male and female roles 75 years old too—or at least over 65.

Each of the comedies in Skittish! has two principal parts because each play is written for two actors. They were not all written for older actors and actresses, but those that are are being played by actors who do what senior actors do just naturally—play comedy brilliantly—and even better at their age than they ever could when young!

So instead of a lot of tired old fools, fogies, fuddy-duddies, and foofs in minor roles, we’ve got a lively gang of cranks, codgers, curmudgeons, and coots holding forth in major roles!

If you’ve got some older actors in your company hungry for nice big fat parts to sink their teeth into—Skittish! is the show for you!

Older audiences love the Skittish! plays just as much as the older actors do who play in them!