About
the Play Collection:
Sure Thing has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female/Male Scenes.
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.