Ben Franklin Ate My HomeworkBen

Published by Heartland Plays in October of 2015, this is a fun comedy for kids and community theater. Obnoxiously perfect Molly has had a trick played on her and now, like the rest of the class at Franklin Middle School, the teacher doesn’t think she completed her Famous Americans report. Cast into detention with the other misfits on the day of the Homecoming Pep Rally, they are “supervised” by Iris the crazy janitor, who tells the wayward kids of a strange visit from one of the founding fathers on that very day 25 years earlier. Molly, not believing, accidentally conjures up Ben Franklin, who spouts more than a few words of wisdom. As Ben is Molly’s homework assignment, the other kids immediately see she’s at an advantage—the guy she has to write a report on is right there! Ignoring Ben’s warning, they call their homework subjects into the present too: Abe Lincoln, Calamity Jane, Eleanor Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Paul Revere, and others are whisked into contemporary times—as tweens! Quickly the history kids enjoy the trappings of modern life, and getting them off the iPads and the video games proves difficult to the point that they announce they don’t want to go back to their own times. Now Molly and her school friends have less than two hours to study up and convince them that they must because if they don’t, all American history will be adversely affected! While Ben Franklin Ate My Homework is created as an ensemble comedy for kids, the history is for the most part accurate, encouraging young actors to read and learn more about the historical characters as they develop their roles.

Read a part of it here!

Kevin is a senior writer for Stage Directions Magazine.

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(Performed October 1998, St. Louis, MO). Mary Magdalene Community Theater, St. Louis, mounted this nontraditional view of the Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale.

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(Performed March–May 1997, Century City, CA). This collection of works by Los Angeles writers involved various phobias and included the monologue “Fences,” about a son coming to grips with his father’s death from cancer, and the comic sketch “The Flight” (cowritten with Patricia Cotter), which explored fears of death and flying.

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