Dark Comedy. 20-25 minutes. 2 any gender. Suitable for middle school and older.
Premiered at Free Space Theater (Harrison, NY).
The author grants productions pre-approval to make cuts to meet time limits and community standards regarding profanity and obscenity for Texas UIL and other one-act competitions.
Gorgeous and Cutesy weren't born yesterday. In fact, it's been minutes since they hatched, but they're already facing big bird problems: One of their fellow ducklings is "ugly." Yes, that one. Gorgeous would never dream of harming the strange sibling they love "so so much," but Gorgeous doesn't want to end up exiled to the sewage swamp like the goose family with the red-eyed gosling. On the other hand, if they got Cutesy to do something about the problem, that wouldn't be so bad, right? Cutesy's a certified good egg, but can the youngest duckling stand up for their cross-species sibling, or will Gorgeous get the ugly outcome Gorgeous wants?
"In The Prettiest Duckling, Tara Meddaugh channels Hans Christian Andersen via Mean Girls to give us a hilarious twist on a classic fairy tale. The characters are so riotously funny that it's easy to forget that they're up to no good. Even then it's almost impossible not to laugh out loud at their witty repartee, clever zingers, and Machiavellian scheming." - Kevin Christopher Snipes, creator of The Two Princes for Gimlet Media and author of Milo and Marcos at the End of the World