About the Play Collection:

Winner of the Outer Circle Critics John Gassner Playwriting Award.

The world according to David Ives is a very odd place, and his plays constitute a virtual stress test of the English language – and of the audience's capacity for disorientation and delight. His characters plunge into black holes called "Philadelphias," where the simplest desires are hilariously thwarted. Chimps named Milton, Swift, and Kafka are locked in a room and made to re-create Hamlet. And a con man peddles courses in a dubious language in which "hello" translates as "velcro" and "fraud" comes out as "freud."

At once enchanting and perplexing, incisively intelligent and side-splittingly funny, this collection of David Ives's plays includes Sure Thing and English Made Simple, which are ideal choices for high school drama contests and one-act festivals.

Sure Thing is a classic of contemporary comedy: Two 20-somethings meet in a coffee shop and find their way through a conversational minefield. Every time they make a relationship-killing mistake, an offstage bell rings and interrupts their false starts, gaffes, and faux pas and they get a series of do-overs on the way to falling in love. (First produced in 1988 at Manhattan Punch Line Theatre; Cast: 1 female, 1 male)

Words, Words, Words is particularly suitable for schools and play contests. It shows three monkeys which are being used to test a researcher's theory that if apes are left with a typewriter for long enough they will eventually write Hamlet and asks: What would monkeys talk about at their typewriters? The monkey talk is a mixture of gibberish and the erudite as the play builds to a surreal ending. (First produced in 1987 at Manhattan Punch Line Theatre; Cast: 1 female, 2 male)

The Universal Language brings together Dawn, a young woman with a stammer, and Don, the creator and teacher of Unamunda, a wild comic Esperanto-like language. Their lesson sends them off into a dazzling display of hysterical verbal pyrotechnics – and, of course, true love. (Cast: 1 female, 2 male)

Variations On The Death Of Trotsky shows us the Russian revolutionary on the day of his demise, desperately trying to cope with the mountain-climber's axe he's discovered in his head. (Cast: 1 female, 2 male)

The Philadelphia presents a young man in a restaurant who has fallen into "a Philadelphia," a Twilight Zone-like state in which he cannot get anything he asks for. His only way out of the dilemma? To ask for the opposite of what he wants. (Cast: 1 female, 2 male)

Long Ago And Far Away is a domestic drama of a troubled young wife who finds herself crossing through time – and identities – on a fateful winter evening in an empty apartment. (Cast: 2 female, 2 male)

Foreplay Or: The Art Of The Fugue brings us Chuck, a would-be Don Juan, in three rounds of seduction with three different women on a miniature-golf course. (Cast: 3 female, 3 male)

Seven Menus shows a round-robin of relationships at a restaurant table, as demonstrated by a group of friends that change, couple by couple and course by course, throughout several different meals. (Cast: 4 female, 4 male)

Mere Mortals eavesdrops on a lunch hour on a girder 50 stories over the street, as three construction workers share increasingly amazing secrets of their past. (Cast: 3 male)

English Made Simple is about two people and the party that brings them together. A young man and woman meet, they talk awkwardly, and their immediate romantic attraction is translated into comically unromantic grammar lessons as they struggle to free themselves from the banal constrictions of party talk. (Cast: 1 female, 2 male)

A Singular Kinda Guy: A monologue about a man who believes he is actually a typewriter. (Cast: 1 male)

Speed-The-Play is a crash-course send-up of David Mamet, presenting the complete works of the master of scatological dialogue in just under eight, male-bonding minutes. (Cast: 3 female, 3 male)

Ancient History: A couple discusses tradition and relationships before and after they hold a party; one of the few dramatic works in this collection. (Cast: 1 female, 1 male)

Philip Glass Buys A Loaf Of Bread takes the words in half a dozen everyday sentences and throws them back and forth between characters in a verbal take-off on the rhythms and repetitions typical of acclaimed composer Philip Glass's work. This send-up in spoken dialogue of the distinctively minimalist Glassian musical style will not only delight, but also question what we think we know about theatre and performance. (First produced in 1990 at Manhattan Punch Line Theatre; Cast: 2 female, 2 male)

All in the Timing premiered in 1993 at Primary Stages Off-Broadway in New York City and won the Outer Critics Circle Playwriting Award. It ran for two years Off-Broadway, and became one of the most frequently produced American plays of the 20th century. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is now massively popular with community theaters and regional repertory houses. High-school and college students frequently perform the plays, often due to their brevity and undemanding staging requirements.

What people say:

"Like sketches for some hilarious, celestially conceived revue. The writing is not only very funny, it has density of thought and precision of poetry … All in the Timing is by a master of fun. David Ives spins hilarity out of words." — New York Times

"Theatre that aerobicizes the brain and tickles the heart. Ives is a mordant comic who has put the play back in playwright … A wondrous wordmaster." — Time Magazine

"An original turn of mind is to be saluted in our tired theatre…A playwright with ideas, his own ideas, in his head is relatively rare. Such a one is David Ives." — New York Magazine

About the Playwright:

David Ives is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist who was born in Chicago and educated at Northwestern University and Yale School of Drama. He is perhaps best known for his evenings of comic one-act comedies, a reputation which resulted in the The New York Times referring to him as the "maestro of the short form". A former Guggenheim Fellow in playwriting, he has also written dramatic plays, narrative stories, and screenplays. He lives in New York City.