About the Play:

Sure Thing has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female/Male Scenes.

All in the Timing contains six one-act plays by David Ives. This critically acclaimed, award-winning evening of comedies combines wit, intellect, satire and just plain fun. All in the Timing is a hilarious sextet whether played together or separately. This volume includes Sure Thing and Words, Words, Words, which are ideal choices for high school drama contests and one-act festivals.

Sure Thing is a classic 10-minute 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 timid young woman with a stammer, and Don, a dashing teacher of language, who find that communication via a common language can unite even the most opposite people. Their lesson sends them off into a dazzling display of hysterical verbal pyrotechnics – and, of course, true love. (Cast: 1 female, 2 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)

The Philadelphia is a 10-minute play that 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)

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)

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.