“Teen Beat,” my truth-based, edgy drama, is available for production. Please contact me at Joeybauer1967@gmail.com if you would like to read the screenplay with an eye on a collaboration. With a mixed gender and culturally diverse cast of nine, a single set and a running time of 90 minutes, the story features a barrage of in-your-face humor and pure provocation. Viewers, particularly ages 16 – 25, are in store for lots of bang for their buck with this one; it brazenly holds absolutely nothing whatsoever sacred: family values, the law of the land nor, especially, authority figures of all stripes. The action is set in a dayroom at Los Angeles County Juvenile Hall and focuses on a very unique group therapy session, for which the closest comparison is a no-rules-ultimate-fighting-cage-match, led by social worker and aspiring movie cowboy, Mel Feinberg, 28, self-described as “a wise ass on a short leash”. The rogues gallery consists of seven inmates, all of them age 17, awaiting sentencing and quivering in a melodramatic display of mock fear of Dr. Crabtree, Afr. Am., the facility’s director, staunch advocate of force feeding her charges with the gospel by any means necessary. As a side bar, we are drawn into the kids’ compelling histories of victimization and mind-blowing mayhem. Meet the boys and girls who might have been you or yours; their pain has a long shelf life, and it demands to be felt. With tongues and minds racing at warp speed and thoughts and emotions jostling for position, they are aggressively sniffing out each other’s identities like a newly formed pack of stray dogs. It will take more than just a head pat and a treat to placate them, as pied piper Mel quickly learns the hard way. Imagine the fair-haired chosen ones, Disneyesque-all-American-magazine-cover-adolescent boys and manic pixy girls, with their sparkling eyes, peaches and cream complexions and teeth pristine enough to make an orthodontist do cartwheels. Then picture them as traumatized, enraged, armed and dangerous, and you’ll start to see our flawed wild bunch’s selfie with all of its scary and exhilarating brightness come into focus. My other work includes the play, “On the Wall,” an urban drama, presented by L.A.’s Barnsdal Gallery Theatre. In addition, “Hotel California,” my psychological thriller, and “Hollywood Cowboy,” my comedy, - (both read at Cleveland’s Ensemble Theatre) – put my stamp on a multitude of theater patrons’ must-see lists. It would be a great honor for me to have you bring “Teen Beat” to life and witness the conflicted Mel, tyrannical Dr. Crabtree and the acapella choir of wayward youth, their hip-hop dreams of glory, glamour and gold still intact, get their day in the sun. Thank you for your interest and very best wishes for continued success. Cheers, Joey Bauer