Peter Tolan wanted to be a playwright. The story goes like this: Tolan was one half of a stage comedy team that aspired towards the kind of comic fluidity of Nichols and May. After a single performance, an agent approached Tolan and told him that he liked his writing, but that his writing belonged on television. Tolan might have been horrified. He thought that television was beneath him. He only wanted to write for theater. He didn’t. He went on to write for Murphy Brown and The Larry Sanders Show before co-creating Rescue Me and The Jim Gaffigan Show.
Tolan has a few short plays that occasionally get produced. This month All-In Productions stages a pair of shorts by Tolan as a fundraiser that it’s calling Manhood. Michael Stoddard directs stagings of Best Half Foot Forward and Pillow Talk for the show.
Best Half Foot Forward features four men in their late twenties dealing with life and insecurities alone in the wilds of New Hampshire at the end of a long weekend. Featured in the short are Jonathan Wachala, Tyler Stanley, Sam Pickart, and Eric Pfeiffer.
Pillow Talk involves Mitch Weindorf and Brad Novak as a pair of heterosexual men forced to share a bedroom together in the mobile home of an old grandmother.
Manhood runs May 27 - 28 at ComedySportz on 420 S. 1st St. For ticket reservations and more information, visit Brown Paper Tickets online.
