Skittish offers 18 one-act comedies of great variety. 6 are usually played for an evening's entertainment. 6 actors play them. And often the best 6 actors to audition will determine the plays chosen.

Cruisine*
On a cruise ship in high seas, a TV chef gives a cooking demonstration. Into this blunders an even more famous chef, the woman who started it all on TV. They vie over the recipes, each one of which proves to be more bizarre than the last. As they do, the stalwart audience drifts out, whether because of the high seas or the recipes, who’s to say? (Carole Burnett)

Originally played by an actor and an actress over 75, but could be played by actors of any age or gender.

Snap Beans*
Two older women, Faith and Hope, sit in the farmyard snapping beans for a wake. Their sister Charity has died. It emerges that each may have been responsible for her neglect and death. They argue over a hat. Which one does that hat belong to? What is it like to be old? Pretty great, according to them, full of privileges the young know nothing of. But what is to become of that hat? (Thornton Wilder)

2 female actors [65]

The Father-in-Law
An enormously wealthy man interviews his new son-in-law. The son-in-law does not know the father-in-law is wealthy, nor does he know a good many other things about his new wife, whom he has married suddenly. But he finds out as the father-in-law very gently reveals to him: she is not the age she told him, she has three difficult children, she is a multiple personality, and she even has a different name. (Chekhov)

Two male actors [65, 45]

Totaled
Dead of a rainy night in a restaurant in the middle of nowhere. A man with an urgent deadline organizes his important papers, which have been disarranged through a car accident. The driver at fault comes through the door to exchange information; he is drunk; he also turns out to be the second husband of the other man’s first wife. The police are on the way. But is forgiveness on the way? (Noir/Garrison Keillor)

Two male actors [30-50]

Sisterhood
A woman is throwing out her sister’s clothes, along with her sister. The sister comes in and is accused of an unnamed atrocity. She in turn accuses her sister of unnamed atrocity. They draw cell phones to call hit men to do each other in. They circle one another like gun fighters. But the draw ends in a draw. They end up laughing together hysterically over the remembrance of a cookie jar in their childhood. (The Sopranos)

2 female actors [30s]

Loudmouth
A man has a job interview with his potential boss. The problem is that whenever the man whispers his voice is huge and deafens the boss but whenever he shouts he is almost inaudible. They both need him to work there, but how can he be hired when he has this oddity? (Vaudeville/Sid Caesar)

2 male actors [20-30, 45-65]

Birthday*
A woman stands in her kitchen throwing away the clothes of a 12-year-old. In comes her 24-year-old son with a birthday cake. In a fury the woman tells him her age for the first time: 36. He learns she had him when she was 12, that the father he never knew was also 12, and that she is finished with the entire life she had to lead to support this child. In the course of the action she says everything every mother has longed to say. By the end, both have grown up a little. (Ionesco)

1 female actor [36]; 1 male actor [24]

A Single Famished Kiss
A young woman practices a desperate love-speech for a failing affair. A man comes in whom we assume to be the unwilling mate, but we find out that he is the director of a play she is in and that she has been rehearsing a speech from that play, and he directs her in it. And we then find out that he is not the director of a play, but her actual acting partner playing a director in the scene and her actual mate and that they actually get along like gangbusters. (Pirandello)

1 female actor [25-30s]; 1 male actor [25-35]

What’s For Supper?
A grandmother prepares supper while she figures out how to talk about sex to her 16-year-old grandson, who lives with her. He has a crush on another 16-year-old male and has resolved to declare himself to him. The boy comes in and, while the grandmother is offstage, he soliloquizes about how he is repelled by what the boy expected him to do sexually. He tells his grandmother who is flummoxed. While at supper the other boy phones. Will he answer the phone?

1 female actor [65]; 1 male actor [late teens]

Loafing*
A cranky older woman on a massage table, whose masseur is overly polite. The masseur utters new-age bromides. The older woman calls her on every one of them. This older woman does not want to save the world or be “good” or “spiritual”; she just wants to loaf around reading good novels. But the Bering Straits are in grave danger. The older woman decides to save them. Will they go off together to do it?

2 females [one 65, one 25]

The Love of Your Life
A man lies on a beach chair overlooking the ocean. He has just had the best lovemaking of his life. His wife comes out to join him. She has just had the best lovemaking of her life. They kid one another. They notice far down on the beach a woman going in to swim in the surf. They bring out binoculars. They watch her from time to time. But their focus is really on one another and on their mutual love. When they leave they do not understand what the audience understands—what has become of the woman on the beach. (Noel Coward)

1 female [30s or older]; 1 male [30s or older]

Instead of Which or Mr. Shaunderson’s Story*
Two 70-year-old widowers in a restaurant await their lunch. They have been neighbors for thirty-five years and are best friends. One of them reveals to the other that he is an alias and a former FBI agent and that his house has been a safe house. The criminal he has been hiding from is about to turn up to kill him. The other man realizes he might be killed too. And then—the criminal actually shows up! (Abbot and Costello)

2 males [65 or older]

Random Act*
On the top of a (San Francisco) hill sits a bench put out by the homeowner for weary passersby. An old man sits sunbathing. A younger man comes up to him and speaks to him, and the old man flies off the handle at him, although he does not know him. The younger man is a man of considerable accomplishment, while the older is a man maybe one step above a bum. They talk about the bench and the kindness of the homeowner putting it there. The old man leaves. The younger man goes into the house, thus revealing that he is the bestower of the random act of the bench. (O’Henry)

1 male actor [65]; 1 male actor [good looking, late 30s]

Heaven on Earth
A man has a telephone call from God. God tells him that his nemesis from childhood is coming to ask forgiveness so as to get out of Hell. The nemesis comes and the man does not want to forgive him, partly because the nemesis is impenitent. (Frank Capra)

2 male actors [65]

Teeny
Two boys in the bedroom of one. One at the desk does homework and does a soliloquy of what goes on in his mind, really—and it has nothing to do with homework. The other, the whole time, is in a position of prayer on the floor. When the first boy is done, the second, still praying, recites the inner soliloquy of playing a violent video game. (Beckett)

2 males [teenage, 14 or so]

Fair
A beautiful young woman comes out and delivers a monolog on the behavior of males toward her. All her life she has just naturally and unwittingly generated a buzz in men and so has never known when any particular man has actually loved her. An old man comes out and says he feels just such a buzz toward her. Sexual energy in the old! Very natural also. What is to be done? Each one brings out tea things from the wings, and they take tea together. That is one common ground. Then she teaches him a dance. That is another.

1 naturally seductive female, 1 male over 65

If the Shoe Fits
A male and a female wonder where they are, for they have woken up in a strange unidentifiable dark. They describe their past lives, and are perplexed as to where those past lives have disappeared to. It slowly becomes evident that one of them is an old combat boot for the left foot, and the other one is an old ballerina slipper for the right foot. They come to realize that they are on a high shelf in a Goodwill store promoting the whereabouts of the shoe department. They take great satisfaction in this new use for their lives. (Hans Christian Anderson by Robin Williams)

1 male any age, I female any age. (This could be a children’s play, for it is really suitable for actors of any age whatever.)

The Speechmaker
An important speech is in the offing. The person who wrote it is coaching the person making the speech. Comic interpolations and intrusions on the part of the author of the speech end up in the speechwriter becoming the person delivering the speech and actually assuming the office and the person elected to the office left wondering what happened. (Jack Benny)

2 actors of any age or gender

*Plays in the San Francisco 2008 production.

You choose the subject and actors, I will write the play for your particular company.