About the Play:

The Day the Whores Came Out to Play Tennis & Other Plays is a collection of absurdist one-act comedies and dramas by Arthur Kopit. In The Day the Whores Came Out to Play Tennis, wealthy, influential men gather to socialize at their country club. When a group of women break into the club and take over the tennis court, chaos ensues, and the status quo is challenged. Despite the title, it has intense meaning for these times.

Chamber Music is set in 1938 and this strange meeting features eight famous women from different historical periods who all are interned in the same insane asylum. The women are "or at least believe they are" author Gertrude Stein, martyr Joan of Arc, activist Susan B. Anthony, politician Queen Isabella of Spain, Constanze Mozart (wife of the famed composer), pilot Amelia Earhart, silent-film actress Pearl White, and explorer Osa Johnson. The business at hand is how to attack the men's ward before they attack the women and devour them like cannibals? A ruse is needed so they kill the Aviatrix named Amelia Earhart. This exercise causes them to lose the strand of their thought and forget why they did it. (Cast: 8 female, 2 male)

The Questioning of Nick: Two detectives are trying to break the story of a local high school student suspected of being bribed to throw a basketball game. Playing on his pride, they learn bit by bit of his recent experiences, concluding with the fact he knows a certain racketeer. Eventually, the student's boasting betrays him. (Cast: 3 male)

Sing to Me Through Open Windows: For five years the boy has been coming to this sinister house to be entertained privately by a passe magician who lives in shadows with an impish and diabolical clown. The clown is really the master; his arts succeed while the magician can pull only rabbits out of the hat. Yet the boy is enthralled and wants to stay with the magician, but time has expired and he must vanish forever. (Cast: 3 male)

The Hero: A tired man walks across the desert with an attache case and tall scroll. He takes out binoculars and looks around, unrolls the scroll (it's blank), sets it up like a billboard and begins to paint an oasis on it. A woman enters. She can't see an oasis, even with binoculars, but she's happy to try to eat his rock hard sandwich and join him as the sun sets and the cold of night approaches. (Cast: 1 female, 1 male)

The Conquest of Everest: A delectably loony play. It starts off quite properly, with a man and woman scaling Mount Everest through the clouds – in summer clothes and barefoot. They are well equipped, however: a sandwich, bottle of coke, a Brownie camera and a penlight in case it gets dark on the way down. They mount the summit just before the arrival of a Chinese soldier, with oxygen mask, banner and machine gun. He is considerably perplexed. But back to our two American tourists: they decide that they like each other, that they ought to quit their guided tour and proceed by themselves, and that it is now time to descend. (Cast: 1 female, 2 male)

The Day the Whores Came Out to Play Tennis: The scene is a room in a wealthy country club, to which the men's committee is hastily summoned early one morning after a carousing dance. Problem: what to do about the 16 luscious but low life females who drove up in a Rolls Royces and then proceeded to the tennis courts, where they are now disporting. While the committee huddles, we learn that they are the vulgar, crass people. They are good for nothing but blustering and simpering. It is the attendant, far more refined than they, who is invited out to play with the bevy of beauties, just before the final assault and the collapse of their cardboard world. (Cast: 6 male)

The Day the Whores Came Out to Play Tennis played in 1965 Off-Broadway at Players Theatre on a double-bill with Sing to Me Through Open Windows.

About the Playwright:

Arthur L. Kopit (1937-2021) was an acclaimed American playwright whose writing career spanned seven decades. A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and a three-time Tony Award nominee, he also wrote the scripts for several TV miniseries, and collaborated with Maury Yeston on the Tony Award-winning musical Nine.