this collection contains three full-length plays:
BIERCE TAKES ON THE RAILROAD!
CHOPIN IN SPACE
NIXON APOLOGIZES TO THE NATION
"Truly funny plays that not only make you laugh out loud—even in the
reading—but also make you think for a long time about such big and varied
topics as passion, politics and history, deserve to be kept alive. This new
publication of three of Phil Bosakowski's plays, the first appearance in print
of his last play, NIXON APOLOGIZES TO THE NATION, helps assure that longevity.
Highly adventurous and eminently theatrical, these plays are more like cubist
paintings with musical accompaniments than literature intended to be read. The
texts were written to be played, and for the fullest experience they must
be—even if only by actors moving around with a few props. But the
solitary act of reading them also has its rewards in the fun and detailed
exposure to Phil's comic voice and compassionate world view. His humor, outrage
and sense of American history combine and reconfigure in ways that surprise and
unsettle our complacency, challenging us to look afresh at our history, our
figureheads and ourselves. This is humor with an edge, but it doesn't bite
viciously. Phil's hearty satire borrows from Monty Python and the Marx Brothers
to goad us out of our grudges. With BIERCE (1974) Phil looks at political
chicanery in late nineteenth century America through the hard edged and steady
gaze of the journalist Ambrose Bierce.... ...With NIXON (1994) Phil combines the
two approaches, wrapping the realistic line of development around a surreal
free-for-all. In ten takes facing the television cameras Nixon tries to tape an
apology to the nation, takes which momentarilys tall and inevitably provoke the
eruptions of Nixon's warped visions of people and events in American
history."
from Gay Smith's Introduction
CHOPIN IN SPACE:
"Phil Bosakowski is a cunning humorist. There are enough verbal, visual
and musical jokes in CHOPIN IN SPACE to keep you thinking for a long time about
passion, inspiration, politics, religion, history and—since this is an
affectionate tribute to the playwright's Polish origins—nationality. The play
is really a tumbling procession of blackouts; it would be difficult to be funny
about such subjects in any other format."
D J R Bruckner, The New York
Times
"...CHOPIN IN SPACE is an analysis of modern Polish history from a
Groucho-Marxist perspective.... Bosakowski himself imitates the composer. Logic
and chronology are sacrificed to achieve an almost musical arrangement of
characters, themes, and events: The second scene is written in counterpoint; the
third is a recapitulation of the first, introducing elements to be reshaped in
the sixth; and so on. The jolting juxtapositions and surreal transformations
that result are full of resonance."
Robert Massa, The Village Voice
6 M, 3 F
BIERCE TAKES ON THE RAILROAD!
8 M, 2 F, minimum
NIXON APOLOGIZES TO THE NATION
13 M, 7 F
PLAYS BY PHIL BOSAKOWSKI
I S B N: 0-88145-165-7, $16.95