Site by
David
Kruh
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|
 David
Kruh (Book,
Lyrics) is a former New Yorker and a 1978 graduate of
the University of Maryland. Using
his college education to its fullest, David, much to his father's chagrin,
became a disc
jockey. After several years at stations in towns too small to
mention, he came to Boston to work as an engineer at WRKO-AM and WROR-FM
while getting his Masters in Computer Engineering at Boston University.
He
has also worked full time as a copywriter, computer programmer, radio
producer, radio engineer and, for a few years in the mid-1990s, as a spokesman
and web master for the Big Dig. David has also dabbled in acting
and stand-up comedy, but prefers to eat, and so currently works full time
as a Marketing Communications Manager for Analog
Devices, a semiconductor manufacturer. He is a member of his
local Historic District Commission and, in the spring, David enjoys helping
coach his daughter's baseball team.
Here are the pieces for the stage written by David Kruh. Links
are provided for the publisher of each piece, where appropriate.
Contact
David directly about production rights for the others, for which there
are links to PDFs of the scripts:
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TITLE
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Basics
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Synopsis
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Production history
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Publisher or PDF link
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The Curse is Reversed* (formerly The Curse of the Bambino)
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Musical
8M, 1F
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Rewritten with a new, happier ending after the 2004 season, this
is the tale of the Red Sox struggle for a World Championship after the
1920 sale of Babe Ruth (The Bambino)
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Premiered at Boston's Lyric Stage in 2001. Subsequent
productions at Stoneham's Theater To Go and Waltham's Hovey Players
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Go here to
visit the official web site of the musical, or click here
to view the PDf of the script
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Resurrection
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Short form
1M, 1F
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Eugene O'Neill once suggested
that man should experience a resurrection a week. How do you suppose
mankind would react? Resurrection is a short play that presents
one possibility.
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The piece premiered simultaneously
in 2005 at both the brown couch
theatre in Chicago and Studio Rep
of Rhode Island, was presented as part of the 2006
Boston Theater Marathon and the Curan
Theater of New York City's Notes from the Underground one-act festival
|
Click
HERE
to view the PDF
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Good for Nothing
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Short Form
2M, 1F
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A wild take on reality-based
TV shows
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Produced by several companies
, including The Barn Players of Waltham.
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Brooklyn
Publishing
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Arnold Nawrocki is Dead
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Short Form
2M
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Two men ruminate over the obituary
of the man who perfected the process of individually wrapping cheese slices
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Premiered at the 2004 Boston
Theater Marathon
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JAC
Publishing & Promotions
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The Riverbank Code
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Full length
6M, 2F
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Based on the true story of the
people who in 1916 proved in court that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare
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Stage-read at the Union Club in Boston in November 2006
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Eldridge
Publishing Company
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GUILTY!
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Short form
2M, 2F
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The idea for this
play came after Robert Mattson mentioned that one of Patrick Brennan's
plays would be produced at ACME the same year as Good for Nothing.
I joked "knowing Patrick it will probably be another syrupy love story,"
to which Robert replied "yes, but in his story the couple will be forced
to fall in love." I immediately replied "Robert, that's a great idea
for a play."
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Presented by The Barn Players in 2006
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JAC
Publishing & Promotions
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The End
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Short Form
3M, 2F
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A father's impending death affects
his three sons in very different - and life-changing ways
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JAC
Publishing & Promotions
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Top of the World, Ma!
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Short Form
2M
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A spoof of "Outward-Bound" type
of programs for executives in which two office workers find they are the
only ones to have survived the day's challenge
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Presented July 2001 as
part of Waltham's Hovey
Players Summer Shorts Festival and was also produced at Maynard's
ACME Theater in 2005
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Brooklyn
Publishing
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I.P.O.
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Full length
6M, 3F
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On the last full day of the
1990s we follow a Harvard drop-out who has started a company, to grab his
share of the Internet boom. He battles with his investor-father, his competitors,
his girlfriend, and a myriad of temptations of the 1990s, while his company
rises from nothing (we start with an empty stage in the morning) to the
height of a media-driven frenzy (mid-day the office is crowded with furniture,
reporters, and lawyers) to the inevitable collapse of the company (as the
last lines of the play are spoken, a worker is removing the desks and chairs.)
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A staged reading is currently planned for October 2008 at
the Quannapowitt
Playhouse.
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Click
HERE
to view the PDF
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Immaculate Deception
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Short Form
3M
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Pittsburgh natives Harry and Frank return to their boyhood homes
after their father's funeral. There, they learn that the secret their
deceased mother had been hiding from their father - and them.
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|
Heuer
Publishing
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Secret Love
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Super Short Form
1M
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The harrowing tale of the the perhaps inevitable result of man's
love for computers
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|
Click
HERE
to view the PDF
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Seven Stages
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Short Form
3M, 2F
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A collaborative piece, in which one page at a time was written
by eight different playwrights whose only task was to add to the previous
page and set up the next playwright. The writers were, in order:
David, Jerry Bisantz, Robert Mattson, Steven Bergman, Glen Doyle, Melinda
Lopez, Norman Lasca, and Michael Bettoncourt.
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Click
HERE
to view the PDF
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What Would A.R. Do?
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Short Form
2M, 1F
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Also titled, "Maintaining Appearances," it is a spoof on the life
styles of the rich and self-centered
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Produced for the 2003 ACME Theater New Winter Works
Festival in Maynard, MA
Read by The Bacchanal Players of Concord, MA in 2008
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Click
HERE
to view the PDF
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Ice Age
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Short Form
1M, 1F
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When baseball fans learned that Ted Williams, the Splendid Splinter,
was, after death, a frozen popsicle, it begged the question "what will
happened to the greatest hitter that ever lived?" This short play takes
a stab at one scenario
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Produced by the Barn Players of Waltham, MA in 2006
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Published in September 2005 as part of the anthology "Fenway
Fiction: Short Stories from Red Sox Nation," by Rounder Books
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Cinema Verite
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Short Form
3M, 3F
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It's a hot summer day in Boston and four college students ponder
the choices at their local multi-plex, as well as the state of their lives
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Presented in February 2002 as part of ACME Theater
New Winter Works Festival in Maynard, MA.
|
Click
HERE
to view the PDF
|
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The Man Who Saved the World
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Short Form
2M, 1F
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An astronaut returns to earth after deflecting an asteroid that
would have killed all life on the planet. But his reward is a celebrity
that for him is a fate worse than death
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Presented at the Annual Arlington Center for the Arts
New Works Festival in November, 2002
|
Click
HERE
to view the PDF
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Upon Seeing God in Dearborn
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Short Form
2, M or F
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Percy is a birthday present on his way to a little girl's party.
Life couldn't be better. But into the mailbox falls Raymond, a PAYMENT
OVERDUE notice, who doesn't share Percy's rosy view of the world and the
mail
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The Barn Players of Waltham produced this piece in 2004
|
Click
HERE
to view the PDF
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Marooned
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Monologue
1F
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An astronaut, marooned on an alien world, makes a desperate call
to mission control, while fighting off the abductors who are trying to
control her mind
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*With composer Steven Bergman
Colene Byrd and Ray Baker in the brown couch production of Resurrection,
directed by Allison Quetel
David, director Carmel O'Reilly, and the cast of Sugan Theater's
production of "Arnold Nawrocki is dead, performed at the 2004
Boston Theater Marathon.
David's screenplays and novels include...
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PONZI! a film script (a collaboration
with Arnie Reisman) is about the infamous Boston swindler who, coincidentally,
operated at the exact same time that Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the
New York Yankees.
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Placed in the quarter finals
of the 2001 Scriptapalooza Screen Writers competition
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Honorable mention in the Writer's
Network FADE IN contest in 2003.
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PONZI is being shopped by Two
Rams Entertainment.
David packing them in during a standup gig...
David Kruh is also a published author and columnist...
New from
Rounder
Books
|
Just released, in the summer of 2007,
is FURTHER FENWAY FICTION, the second Red Sox-inspired anthology assembled
by editor Adam Patcher. This new collection of 18 works of fiction
devoted the Boston Red Sox contains the new ending to David and Steve Bergman's
musical THE CURSE IS REVERSED, one in which the lead character watched
his beloved Red Sox win the World Series in 2004. FFF is a follow-up
to FENWAY FICTION, published in 2005, that contains two works by David,
one a ten-minute play titled
ICE AGE, which is about the collective
fate of Ted William's frozen body and head, and an excerpt from David and
Steve's musical THE CURSE OF THE BAMBINO. |
Also from
Rounder
Books
|
David's first book, Always
Something Doing, Boston's Infamous Scollay Square (published originally
by Faber and Faber in 1990) had a second edition published by Northeastern
University Press in 1999. Click the book's image on the right to
visit the Scollay Square web site.
"Subtitled "Boston's
Infamous Scollay Square," this delightful book, now in its second edition,
gives the full history, with all the tassels twirling, the sailors swooning,
the beer halls filled with guzzlers, and so on. A really fine book about...the
Boston that's gone." David Brudnoy, WBZ radio, Boston
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His second book on Scollay
Square was published by Arcadia Publishing in 2004. Titled Scollay
Square, it is filled with 180 images many of them, in fact which
have never been published before, including extremely rare views backstage
at the Old Howard. |
| In 2003 Arcadia Press published Building
Route 128,
which David co-wrote with Yanni Tsipis. The book
chronicles the road’s planning and construction, from the early days of
main streets and back roads in towns such as Dedham, Waltham, Lynnfield,
and Beverly, through the construction and reconstruction of the modern
expressway. A click on the link or the cover on the right will take
you to the book's website. |
 |
 |
He is the co-author, with his father
Louis, of Presidential Landmarks (Hippocrene Press, 1992),
which contains a brief personal and political history of all the Presidents,
plus a comprehensive description of their birthplaces, homes, libraries,
museums. Presidential Landmarks also contains contains the largest
collection of photographs of presidential sites ever published. The
book was sold out, but copies can be special ordered through Amazon.com. |
With Dottie Domino in a scene fromBoston
Baked Theater's production of The Dining Room
David's columns
have appeared in a number of publications including the Boston Globe, Boston
Herald, Boston Magazine, Boston Business Journal, and Yankee Magazine.
He is also a frequent speaker
on a variety of subjects, including the Big Dig, Scollay Square, and the
presidents. (Regarding his Scollay Square presentation, the Boston
Globe wrote that "Kruh is full of splendid anecdotes..."
and that his is "...a fascinating slide show... ...a trip to the past...")
A
complete list of speeches, a schedule of upcoming appearances, and contact
information can be found
here.
As you can see, David has tried many things. It hasn't been
easy, folks, but through it all, you can be sure that he has always clung
to his most precious possession, his dignity...
(With Robert Jacobs and Mauzy Stafford. Courtesy Big
Smile Productions)
A proud member...
Thanks to his 7.4 seconds on the HBO
special "The Curse of the Bambino" (yes, he timed it)
David has his very own page on the Internet Movie Database website.
It's as close to Hollywood as he'll get...
Click on the IMDB logo to view
Email
David
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