About Mushroom Cloud Press | Student Interp and Theatrical Script Publishers

Hi, I’m Joe.

I’ve been the owner and publisher at Mushroom Cloud Press for over 25 years. In that time, we’ve become the #1 publisher of scripts (or pieces, or plays, whatever you want to call them) for competitive high school interpretation and theatrical performance. Our tournament-winning humorous, dramatic, and duo scripts have been endorsed by coaches and students across the country and have won many state and national tournaments. Along the way, we also became the spot where dozens of young writers had their first work published.

Here’s how it happened.

In the year 2000, I was a high school senior, competing on the speech & debate team (then called forensics, of course) for Trinity Prep in Winter Park, FL. 

My duo partner Greg and I wanted to perform the duo “Everyone’s Gonna Die” at the upcoming Crestian Classic tournament. One problem: The author of the piece, Clyde Hendrickson, had not published the piece.

So my forensics coach Darcy Butrimas (The best and the wisest coach! We called her Yoda) gave us a small loan to buy an ISBN number and get 20 copies of the script printed up at Kinko’s. Remember Kinko’s??? 

I was 18, and I thought the name Mushroom Cloud Press sounded pretty out there for a publishing company. It stuck. Later that year, I also published another piece by Clyde, The Merchandise King. 

Coaches started asking how they could buy these scripts, so the summer between high school and college I set up a website where you could do so. Back then, I printed all the scripts on my home computer and stapled them together myself before mailing them out. 

Soon, we had a couple authors who wanted their own work published: Taylor Shann and Lawrence Atkinson. Both of them still have work in print with us. As does Clyde, of course. 

Throughout our growth into a publisher of over 200 scripts, we’ve stuck to a few editorial principles that have served us well:

1. Only acquire pieces we’d like to see performed. That means an emphasis on quality, originality, and a certain liveliness to characters that makes their words pop off the page. Don’t bore the audience! 
2. Look for themes that high school students will relate to, whether wacky, wild, irreverent, angsty, intense, and/or real. If you’re going to perform a piece for a whole season, it should mean something to you, not just be a means to an end.
3. Constantly expand our collection in ways that coaches and customers ask for to make sure we are serving the community that supports us.
   

That determination to always offer up plays that work in competition while giving students room to grow has served us and our community well. 

In 2024, we started our next chapter when we acquired SpeechGeek & SpeechGeek Market from Corey & Stephanie Alderice, longtime companions and partners in the forensics publishing world. This merger gives us more ways to get plays to the students and coaches who need them. 

Thank you for reading, writing, performing, competing, and being part of our community.  There’s so much more to come from Mushroom Cloud Press. The judges haven’t called time on us yet. 

Sincerely,
Joe Gallagher
Founder & Publisher

P.S. Feel free to email me anytime at joe@mushroomcloudpress.com. I’m always happy to help or chat.