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In Darkest America: Two Plays
In Darkest America: Two Plays
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Last Copy!
Author: Joyce Carol Oates Publisher: Samuel French (cover may change) Format: Softcover # of Pages: 102 Pub. Date: 1991 Edition: Acting ISBN-10: 0573622329 ISBN-13: 9780573622328 Cast Size: 1 female, 1 male; 3 female, 1 male
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About the Play: Tone Clusters and The
Eclipse are one-act
dramas by the renowned
author Joyce Carol
Oates, paired under the title
In Darkest America.
Tone Clusters can be
– and often is – performed as a stand-alone one-act (popular
choice for one-act festivals), but has been performed together with
The Eclipse as a
double bill to create a full evening of entertainment.
Tone Clusters is a gripping ten-minute drama that takes the form of an
interview between the middle-aged, middle-class parents of an alleged
killer, and how they are forced to deal with the media. Frank and
Emily Gulick are a nice couple with a house in a nice neighbourhood.
Why are they under so much strain? They are interviewed by an unseen
interrogator and their story emerges: the body of a 14 year old girl
Edith Kaminsky was found in their basement and their son Carl is
charged with the murder. They are adamant that their son is innocent,
and what unfolds is a clash between the worldly, condescending media
and two individuals' desperate attempts to claim ownership of their
own lives. Do they share in the guilt? Could we find ourselves in
their situation? (Cast: 1 female, 1 male)
The Eclipse is a haunting one-act drama about a mother and daughter
at odds who must learn to live together. A middle aged professor
lives with her ailing mother. The old lady, once a brilliant teacher,
moves in and out of reality, has a fantasy Latin lover, and makes her
daughter's life miserable. One night she whirls in a torrid dance
with her lover while her daughter sleeps; death has released both
from suffering. (Cast: 3 female, 1 male)
Tone Clusters and The
Eclipse premiered in 1990, under
the collective title In Darkest America,
at the famed Actors Theatre of Louisville (ATL) as part of the annual Festival of New American Plays, an influential showplace for playwrights, where Tone Clusters won the ATL's Heideman Award as part of the National 10-minute play contest. Tone Clusters later received the Fringe Report Award
for Best Play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The Eclipse
was subsequently produced Off Broadway in the Ensemble Studio
Theatre's continuing ''Marathon 1990'' of one-act plays.
What people say:
"Tone Clusters
... proved eerily prescient in depicting the media's ever-increasing
voracious and invasive exploitation of tragedy." — Los
Angeles Times
"Tone Clusters
... would be a thought-provoking, current piece of theatre at any
time. Her prescient subject ... the 24/7 news cycle and how it
gobbles up people's lives to fill time." — Coast to
Coast Newspaper
"When
Joyce Carol
Oates's Tone
Clusters opens,
a crime has been committed and a suspect taken into custody. Frank
and Emily Gulick sit before a television camera ... they could be
anybody's parents – they could be the parents we see on TV doggedly
insisting that the killer was a good boy and blaming 'the system' for
his transgressions." — Chicago Reader
About the Playwright:
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of many distinguished books
in several genres. Between her novels, books published under
pseudonyms, short story collections, fiction for children and young
adults, books of poetry, essays, and memoirs, she has produced about
150 different titles. Its rare to see an author succeed across so
many genres, but succeed she does. Throughout her career, which spans
more than 50 years, she has won scores of awards, including the
National Book Award, two O. Henry Awards for short stories, and one
of the 2010 National Humanities Medals. Three of her novels were
nominated for Pulitzer Prizes. She is also a playwright whose plays
have been performed widely in the United States and abroad.
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