About the Play:

Bloody Jack is a full-length drama by Tim Kelly. A stage adaptation of the Jack the Ripper legend, Bloody Jack focuses on a series of grisly murders that occurred in London in the late 19th Century. The city is in a frenzy as police work feverishly to find the culprit; everyone is a possible suspect. Particularly suitable for high schools and play contests.

Bloody Jack is a thriller about the notorious Jack the Ripper who terrorized London in the late 19th century. Who was Jack the Ripper? The very name brings chills and eerie images of a shadowy figure wielding a menacing blade. For three months in 1888, death stalked the foggy, gas-lit streets of Whitechapel, in the East End of London. Seven women were brutally murdered; the bodies were horribly mutilated. The murderer was never caught or identified, and the play offers theories as suspects visit the home of Dr. Thaddeus Sargeant. Each person who comes to visit him could well be the notorious Bloody Jack. "In traditional mysteries," Tim Kelly said, "the audience is supposed to guess who. In Bloody Jack to get the who, you have to establish the why." Carefully constructing his plot, Tim Kelly throws suspicion on each character, with the final revelation coming as a surprise.

Bloody Jack was originally performed (as The Whitechapel Horror) in 1980 by the Colonial Players at the East Street Theater in Annapolis, Maryland. It was performed (as The Ripper) in 1981 at Northern Michigan University at Marquette, and presented later that year as Bloody Jack at Wayne State University in Detroit. The play has been performed in regional, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 4 female, 4 male

What people say:

"A fine, literate thriller." — Stage Review

"This show was very fun to produce and students had a blast. Since it was just one set, we could focus on character development and costumes. Lots of dialogue and not as much action, but our audience loved guessing who the murderer was! We got many compliments." — Jamie Scherer, Dayton High School, Yerington, Nevada

About the Playwright:

Tim Kelly (1931-1998) is often regarded as the most-published playwright in America, with over 300 titles to his credit under both his real name and at least four pseudonyms (Vera Morris, J. Moriarty, Robert Swift, Keith Jackson). Many of his plays, like Les Miserables, M*A*S*H and The Uninvited, are adaptations of novels, films. or television series, although he also wrote a host of parodies a well as original scripts and musical libretti. While his plays have been performed off-Broadway and by such companies as the Royal Court Rep, the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) and Seattle Rep, he is best known for writing for university, community and school theatre.