We Regret To Inform You
by David C. Daheim

In this outrageous satire about professional, not-for-profit theatre, a literary manager and her envious assistant spend their work hours planning luncheon dates or steaming stamps off return envelopes accompanying manuscripts submitted by hopeful playwrights.

When their theatre loses federal funding for lack of artistic ambition, they are commanded by their artistic director to find a "good play," "something different," in the piles of unread manuscripts.

Unused to reading anything other than a menu, the desperate pair dive into the dusty stacks searching for something that will please the artistic director.

They find a new script in that day's mail that is definitely "different": it is about them.

Their names, descriptions, dialogue, action; they have become characters in a play.

Written by a playwright insulted by the literary manager, the manuscript actually contains everything they said and did since the curtain went up.

Worse, it predicts everything they will say or do for the rest of the play; and the end of the play will literally be their end, too.

Unit set.

Approximate running time: 30 minutes.