About the Play:

Long Ago And Far Away and Other Short Plays contains five one-act plays by David Ives. Comedy and drama come together in this volume of plays by the award-winning playwright. The title work is a more serious, nostalgic look at two generations of apartment dwellers who meet in a time warp. Also includes Mere Mortals, an ideal choice for high school drama contests and one-act festivals.

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 self-styled Don Juan, and his girlfriend on a date at the miniature golf course. When they move to the second hole, a slightly older Chuck II appears with another date. Finally, Chuck III, now in his late thirties, arrives with a young date. His latest date doesn't get his jokes, and worse, she's beating him at golf. (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. It opens as Paul, Hazel, Ruth and Jack are having dinner at a restaurant called Seven Menus. They are as matched and mismatched as most couples, except that Jack is awfully edgy, not a good omen for his relationship with Ruth. A bell brings a blackout, and when the lights go up, Barry has joined the table as Ruth's newest lover and fiance. Life, after all, does go on. Each time the bell sounds, the game of musical chairs and unmusical couples changes. David Ives' comment on the vagaries of mating is funny and character-rich. (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)

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. (2 female, 9 male, flexible casting)

What people say:

"The best work is Seven Menus … the clever staging and the compression of the one-act form give a biting sense of the instability of contemporary urban existence." — The Record

"[In Foreplay David Ives has composed an intricate pattern of dialogue, tracing three separate scenes, or are they seductions? It's a well-crafted sextet." — Show Business

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.