from Interview, August 1987 by Kevin Sessums: "There's a creature known in the South as a feist dog. Little. Scraggly. High-strung. You know where one lives by a backyard full of barks. The thing'll take on a German shepard-shit, the whole German army-if it thinks its territory is being threatened. But it likes kids too. And it likes the feel of a hand on its underbelly. Playwright and screenwriter Alan Bowne, whose work concerns the scraggly underbelly of life itself, has the friendly tenacity of one of those tight-tailed mutts… Bowne didn't start writing until he was 35. Before that? 'I bummed around. Drug dealer. Movie extra. Junkie…' …he begins to growl away at a number of subjects. …Love: 'Living without love is death itself. If you have love in your life-the true thing-then you've got everything.'"And that is what Alan Bowne's great plays-BEIRUT, SHARON AND BILLY-are about. COCAINE & UNDERPANTS tells the story of a small-time drug dealer and his girlfriend, who turns tricks to get by. A man visits them to extract retribution for a little mistake they made…
Subtitled "A Documentary Fantasy Musical About Life in Prison", BABES IN THE BIG HOUSE explores feminism, sexuality, and the degradation of women. "BABES IN THE BIGHOUSE is a wildly varying production, with situations so funny they're sad, so tragic they're hilarious. The characters are acid-strong."Steve Jordan, Omaha World-Herald "BABES is a funny, shocking, affecting piece of theater. Ms Terry's jazz-like verbal constructions were absolutely great."Maggie Hawthorn, Seattle Post-Intelligencer "Megan Terry, like Kafka did in The Trial, uses razor-honed, sardonic gallows humor to coax empathy and understanding-so her theme-the dehumanization of incarcerated people aided and abetted by sexist stereotyping and sadism-comes across with even greater power and urgency."Victor Livingston, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
"If an existentialist philosopher attempted a light romantic comedy, it would sound a little like LAUGH IT UP, STARE IT DOWN..."The New York Times "Engaging, entertaining, and existentially satisfying and well worth the visit to the iconic Cherry Lane Theatre."CEO Express "...Those aware of theatre's ability to act as a mirror will not only be entertained, but will also be left empowered."Stage Buddy "Part absurdist comedy, part a musing on fate."Huffington Post, Stage Door "LAUGH IT UP, STARE IT DOWN rests squarely in the modern absurdist tradition..." TheaterMania
A story that focuses on life, death, and choice, draws together the lives of five seemingly disparate characters: A hard-driving businessman struggling to raise his grandson. A paroled convict hoping to find redemption. A shy college professor trying to win the approval of his students. A middle-aged office manager pressured to hide her secrets. And a haunted young man hungry for revenge. As their stories unfold in plots both tragic and comic, these desperate souls find themselves intertwined in each other's battles and dreams."It's a small world, and for the disparate and troubled characters in INTERCHANGE, Ken Jaworowski's engrossing new play ... their universe will be reduced to one degree of separation before the evening is done. In a series of 19 taut and well-constructed scenes, Mr Jaworowski plots the course of five seemingly unrelated lives that are gradually revealed to be closely interconnected and that will be irrevocably altered through circumstance and coincidence. In the poignant opening, a son tells his irascible father while on a fishing trip that his cancer is no longer in remission. The son, a single father of a seven-year-old, pleads with his dad to raise his grandson in kindness rather than anger. Other vignettes introduce a milquetoast economics professor who secretly pines for an English professor colleague; a former Wall Street trader just out of prison and desperate for a job; a middle-management executive under the thumb of her harridan of a boss; and a disturbed young man in a court-ordered counseling program bent on a private vendetta. As their stories unfold, each will face disillusion and disappointment as the thread that will ultimately bind them together becomes discernible. By the end, there will be heartache for some and hope for others. Along the way, each will learn that a little compassion can have resounding repercussions ..." -Willborn Hampton, The New York Times
Originally written to protest thoughtless urban renewal, THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT has remained remarkably up-to-date. When it was first revived, the actor Georges Wilson wrote, "It is a prophetic play in the sense that the dangers denounced more than twenty years ago have become true and immediately observable in everyday life. The theme is alienation. The Madwoman tells us, 'Poor fools, take the time to breathe, you soon will be the living dead, mindless robots.'" Today, the play speaks to environmental concerns, the destruction of the natural world, and the manipulation of world financial markets.
Christopher Marlowe, sixteenth-century author, was murdered at the age of 29. This tragicomedy speculates that his death was tied to his scandalous play about the relationship between Jesus and the disciple John."Playwright Tom Jacobson is a linguistic gadfly. Often, you are tickled by him. Occasionally you are bedeviled by him. Once or twice, you just want to swat him. Linguistic pyrotechnics explode in Jacobson's period verse drama THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. Little is known of Marlowe's life. It is certain that he was an atheistic iconoclast whose heretical views placed him in constant danger of arrest. The motive for his murder in 1593 remains murky. In this clever attempt to solve the mystery, Jacobson's precocious use of language is rivaled only by the sheer effrontery of his subject matter." -F Kathleen Foley, Los Angeles Times
A woman is run over and critically injured. The driver appears at her bedside. There are encounters in life that take you somewhere you've never been and never meant to go."Lydia Stryk's compelling AN ACCIDENT ... is a fictionalized account of the recovery process the playwright herself went through after [an] accident seven years ago, but it's equally the drama of something Stryk was denied - coming to terms with the man who hit her. In an acting pas de deux ... Libby's recovery is mirrored by that man's wrestle with his guilt and responsibility. The sharply defined stages of her progress occur within the context of their wary, forthright, prickly, warm, confrontational and erotically charged interactions ... the spare, concentrated poetry of Stryk's language. [And] the degree to which [the character] makes us feel her physical struggle in our own bodies makes her sinuous progress ... our triumph, too." -Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle"... a visceral and emotional story about recovery, memories, and even the discovery of self. Introspective at times, and often seething with cynical humor, AN ACCIDENT is uncompromisingly human ... [The play] takes us on a roller-coaster of emotion. It's all here: guilt, sorrow, remorse, fear, shame, longing, desire ... Its truth cannot be denied. It's powerful and riveting theater." -Clinton Stark, StarkSilverCreek"Lydia Stryk's play is a pounding two-person drama with utterly compelling pile drivers of empathy for the characters and surprisingly good humor ..." -Albert Goodwyn, San Francisco Examiner"AN ACCIDENT has a harrowing sense of truth that is hard to shake. With her stark, poetic language, Stryk captures the frailty of life and the omnipresence of mortality in everyday activities ..." -Karen D'Souza, San Jose Mercury News
An emigration interview grows darkly menacing as it turns into an interrogation by government bureaucrats."Throughout history words have been man's most eloquent and efficient tool of progress. Words have transported the knowledge that has set men free; they have framed concepts of liberty and propelled righteous revolutions. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but, like a blade, it cuts both ways. Tyrants, too, have used words to perfume their evil intentions. Recall Adolph Hitler's fiery speeches that held Germany enraptured and led the world toward horror and destruction. In a dramatic demonstration of this power, INTERVIEW/ENTREVISTA illuminates oppression with the same weapons used by the play's government-sanctioned thugs - words. 'They use language as a form of torture,' says Jonathan Moscone, who directs the play for the Dallas Theater Center's Big D Festival of the Unexpected, 'There's no physical violence, no guns in this play, but ultimately there's a real brutality. Playwright Gil Kofman uses the language itself to create a visceral experience. The action of the play moves as quickly and intricately as the mind does.'" -Joy Dickinson, Dallas Morning News"Gil Kofman's INTERVIEW/ENTREVISTA examines a grueling and mischievous interrogation of a Latina, who's seeking her emigré brother, by two bureaucrats from some unnamed government agency." -Steven Mikulan, L A Weekly
Three boys meet in the worst way: fleeing the horrors of war. And as they team up on a perilous journey to a refugee camp, they exchange heroic survival stories, song and even laughter. Thus begins an extraordinary passage that eventually takes three boys of the Dinka tribe to, of all places, Fargo, North Dakota, where drought, crocodiles and guerrillas are replaced by malls, video games, and Skittles."Much as, say, Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation was an excellent movie about jet lag, this is an excellent play about culture shock. And about making your way as a stranger in a strange land. Like the Coen brothers (who love this same human and physical landscape), Carter satirizes the good people of the Upper Midwest while celebrating their fundamental decency " -Chris Jones, The Chicago Tribune"Several tall, young, slender African men bearing beaming smiles and the slightest hint of ritual scars on their foreheads strolled through the lobby of the Victory Gardens Theater on Sunday night. They were the real 'lost boys' of Sudan - victims of the horrific civil wars that raged in that enormous, oil-rich country from 1983 to 2005, leaving the population decimated. Now twentysomething, and residents of Chicago, the men had come to watch playwright Lonnie Carter's immensely imaginative, linguistically dizzying, tragicomic rendering of their history. To be sure, it's a fantasia rather than a documentary, but one that captures the essence of their experiences in a uniquely theatrical way." -Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times"THE LOST BOYS OF SUDAN turns out to be more joyous than the title might suggest ... theater sometimes can do what documentaries sometimes can't - tell stories with the power of poetry, metaphor and music ... all the musical language in Lonnie Carter's script. There's a palpable sense of magical realism in his play." -David Hawley, Pioneer Press (Minneapolis)"Playwright Carter says that his script is 'hip-hop infused,' and it is, at times. But mostly, I felt it was in the great tradition of English verse that moves from Shakespeare and Marlowe to Ntozake Shange and beyond." -Paul Thompson, BroadwayWorld.com
A brutal account of the effect of the Iraq war and past wars on soldiers and military families. What is the legacy of war on the home front? How do we best serve our country?"Does anyone remember David Rabe's STICKS AND BONES? ... The play was a hard-hitting commentary on the then-raging Vietnam War ... Before anybody mounts a revival that would comment on our own times of war and the serious injuries that present-day soldiers sustain, they should take a look at Lydia Stryk's powerful new drama AMERICAN TET ... In these times, we need a hard-hitting play like this one ... It's the finest drama I've seen in months." -Peter Filichia, TheatreMania.com"AMERICAN TET ... treats the Iraq war much as MACBIRD, OH, WHAT A LOVELY WAR and Platoon did Vietnam. It's as subtle as napalm." -Michael Kilian, Chicago Tribune"Stryk's AMERICAN TET is as raw and discomforting as a frequently chafed sore ... and brings reality to a career military family grappling with the special self-sacrifices, denial, acceptance and questioning that goes with serving in our country's armed forces during an unpopular war." -Pittsburgh Tribune-Review"Juxtaposing one American generation's experience in Vietnam with today's involvement in Iraq makes an emotionally affecting statement about the impact of public policy on private lives. Lydia Stryk raises issues without pretending that there are simple answers." -Brad Hathaway, Potomac Stages
A renegade investigation of endangered post-September 11 civil liberties."... Kofman's renegade investigation of endangered post-September 11 civil liberties ... Kofman's profanity-laced voice is didactic, but it's purposeful didacticism, unrepentant and self-assured ... Kofman's ferocity is frequently hysterical and finally unsettling. AMERICAN MAGIC ... casts a lingering spell." -David C Nichols, Los Angeles Times"... a smart production ... something between Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theater and an extended Saturday Night Live skit." -New York Times"... With his cerebral and absurdist script, Kofman interrogates the assumption of the Patriot Act: that increased security must come at the expense of civil liberties. The play addresses the converse ¿ illustrating that the sacrifice of civil liberties does not necessarily bring safety, and may, in fact, create an apocalyptic climate of fear and violence ... AMERICAN MAGIC has its moments of black humor and scathing political critique ..." -Nicole Citron, Show Business"Gil Kofman's new farce, AMERICAN MAGIC, has the look and feel of kinky political satire. Not only is this tweaked fable a refreshing antidote to all the post-9/11 paranoia we've been tube-fed by the government and media, it also exhibits a sexy chaos not often glimpsed onstage ..." -L A Weekly
Lord Loveworthy has a problem. His only daughter is soon to be married. And the only way to pay for her wedding is to blackmail the vicar who's seducing his wife. But how does a Victorian pornographer commit extortion, without inordinate discord, at tea?"Jeff Goode's deeply silly, thoroughly enjoyable period satire on sexual hypocrisy. Goode can tease the bejesus out of a comic premise, and his gleeful dismantling of the British gentry's corseted mores spins into an unhinged anarchy that would please past masters Wilde and Coward." -Los Angeles Times"Few fellows have found fancier, funnier ways to turn a phrase than Jeff Goode, who with his new work pays homage to the humorous plays of the Victorian era and injects a healthy dose of modern edge to the clever dialogue, loaded with alliteration." -Backstage"Jeff Goode has fashioned a faux British Victorian farce that is linguistically bracing. A capable ensemble serves up arched barbs and ripostes." -Variety"A perfectly calibrated send-up of English gothic literature ... Goode's clever writing comes marbled with alliterations and a well-sculpted structure ... Funny stuff!" -L A Weekly"Ingenious wordplay drives ... verbal virtuoso Jeff Goode's ... playful homage to drawing room comedy!" -Houston Chronicle
Human spontaneous combustion is not something that most people worry about, but Amalia Parker does, and that's why she won't sleep with Rob. Sex with someone she doesn't care about might not be so dangerous, but with the man she truly loves? A definite possibility. This is the kind of logic that only makes sense in the Parker household, where Mom cooks obsessively, Dad has turned the house into an 18-hole golf course, and ancient maiden Aunt Emily does laundry and practices the family art of selective sight. A sweet, quirky comedy.The critics on Sherry Kramer's plays:DAVID'S REDHAIRED DEATH: "Sherry Kramer's extraordinary play ... is like a puzzle: after slowly and painstakingly connecting a series of dots, one uncovers an integrated image out of what appeared to be chaos." -The Chicago ReaderTHINGS THAT BREAK: "... a terribly difficult, painfully beautiful play ... This is a wildly imaginative piece of work." -Nelson Pressley, The Washington TimesTHE WALL OF WATER: "THE WALL OF WATER quickly bursts through the dam of conventional theater for two hours of the kind of inspired and breathtaking chaos so rare on America's stages that we may have forgotten the word for it. The word is farce." - Margaret Spillane, New Haven IndependentWHAT A MAN WEIGHS: "... its view of sexual politics becomes more and more complex, funny, and biting." -TimeWHEN SOMETHING WONDERFUL ENDS: "As timely as it is revealing, and as witty as wise." -Austin Chronicle
Nikolai Gogol's classic and hilarious satire of bureaucratic ineptness and corruption in a first-class translation by Laurence Senelick."The emperor deigned to attend the premiere with the heir apparent: he was extremely pleased and laughed heartily. The play is very entertaining but an intolerable insult to the nobility, the civil service, and the merchantry." -Khrapovitsky's diary, 1836"Everybody got his and me first of all!" -Tsar Nicholas I (allegedly), 1836"The audience, struck by the novelty, laughed enormously, but I expected a better reception ... One of my friends explained the reason jokingly. Says he, 'How can you expect them to give a better reception to this play, since half the audience is made up of those who are 'getting it,' and the other half those who are 'giving it.'" -Mikhail Shchepkin, 1838"The comedy was accepted by many people as a liberal manifesto ... a political bombshell flung at society under the guise of a comedy." -Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky, 1836"I decided to gather into one heap everything in Russia that I was aware of at the time, all the injustices committed in those places and on those occasions where justice is especially required of humanity, and, at the same time, to laugh at it all. The effect, as everyone knows, was astonishing. Behind the laughter which had never before spurted from me with such force, the reader can notice sorrow ..." -Nikolay Gogol, 1847
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