About the Play:
The collection Plays by Russell Davis: Volume Two contains three full-length plays by Russell Davis: The Last Good Moment Of Lily Baker, The Wild Goose Circus, and The Second Death Of Priscilla.
The Last Good Moment Of Lily Baker: Bob and Lily Baker get together with Sam, Bob's best friend, and Molly, Sam's wife, for a 15th wedding anniversary. What is intended as a celebration of enduring companionship begins to be undermined by a sense of misgiving and a strange sadness that seems to have befallen Lily. This is a tale of a difficult, challenging weekend, during which two marriages seem on the brink of collapse. But it is also the weekend when Bob and Lily Baker fall in love with each other again. (Cast: 2 women, 2 men)
What people say:
"…there is a richness of characterization and scope here that tease, please and surprise, and with a mythic stretch that is, at its best, reminiscent of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?...." — Los Angeles Times
"…amusing us more than a little en route with a verbal wizardry that warms and delights. Davis at the same time painlessly imparts a deeper universal meaning having to do with personal signposts lost and regained…." — Philadelphia Daily News
The Wild Goose Circus: The story of a dysfunctional circus in which a fortuneteller has wrested control of the circus from her ringmaster. Beasts and dark shapes never seen on earth come forth to present, or disrupt, their acts. Until an absent clown, or child, finally comes back to lead the circus' opening parade. (Cast: 4 women, 2 men)
What people say:
"...in Russell Davis' The Wild Goose Circus, these crafty artisans hit fertile pay dirt. …Within this broken calliope frame, Davis piles a fantastic compost of meaty metaphor and biblical allegory, bears on unicycles and sad French clowns. The rich, layered text gives way to inspired surreal absurdity that isn't merely a self-conscious jab at surrealism and absurdism…. From trapeze to pirate ship to a monster walrus head, the staging is visual poetry, making The Wild Goose Circus all the more strange and beautiful and rare" — The Seattle Times
The Second Death Of Priscilla takes place in Priscilla's bedroom, in a forest, and in the big blue sky outside. A friend named Peter comes to visit Priscilla. There is a wolf who lives in a fabulous land next door. It is a play about Priscilla who sets out in her mind to slay this beast which lurks outside her window. (Cast: 4 women, 3 men)
What people say:
"The Second Death Of Priscilla, a look inside the mind of a woman who's losing it, is a play of shifting reality and poetic beauty…. Russell Davis' play, [is] a childhood story twisted into a metaphorical fairy tale for grownups…. Priscilla is a woman afraid to leave her room. Her mind is besieged by an obsessive internal voice, depicted as a wolf disguised as a man…. He lurks outside Priscilla's window. He stalks, beguiles and snarls in his effort to keep Priscilla under his control. …I found myself lost in Priscilla's delusion and moved by her transformation…." — The Courier-Journal (Louisville)
About the Playwright:
Russell Davis is an American playwright. His plays plays have been produced at various theatres, including People's Light & Theatre, Actors' Theatre of Louisville, Yale Repertory, Long Wharf and Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey. They have also been presented at the Mark Taper Forum's New Work Festival, the Sundance Institute Playwrights Lab., O'Neill Center's National Playwrights Conference, Playpenn, National New Play Network's Showcase of New Plays, and New Harmony Project. He has been a visiting artist at institutions such as Lehigh University, Yale University's Divinity School, Virginia Tech. University, Ohio University, University of Utah, University of Puget Sound, and with New York Stage & Film at Vassar College.