About the Plays:

Editor Craig Pospisil compiled the following one-act plays by the great American playwright, William Inge:

Bad Breath: What starts as a seemingly light spoof of 1960s Mad Men-era advertising and the All-American Family turns darker, exposing lies and betrayals behind the glossy sheen. (Cast: 9 female, 6 male, doubling)

Cinderella: This sharp and sly retelling is set in a pretentious middle-class home, somewhere in America. But this young woman seems to have everything in hand to save herself. (Cast: 4 female)

The Disposal: Jess was convicted for killing his pregnant wife, and now he sits on death row, awaiting execution today. He alternates between calm acceptance and violent hysteria, raging at his fellow inmates and the prison's chaplain. Jess is desperate for forgiveness from his father, but his father refuses to accept that Jess is guilty, robbing his son of the possibility of some kind of understanding. (Cast: 1 female, 8 male)

A Hero of Our Time: Bonnie and Vic are teenage neighbours who have the eye for one another, but their families keep them apart. Bonnie's father worries that his daughter hangs out with bad company. Vic's religious and conservative mother wants her son to steer clear of impure thoughts and deeds. And so the parents condemn their children to lives of dissolution and repression. (Cast: 4 female, 4 male

A Murder: A private man with a box of memories seeks lodging at a strange boarding house - a place where the weather and time itself can change in an instant. When the man discovers the dead body of a young boy in the wardrobe, we wonder if we really have crossed over into another dimension. (Cast: 1 female, 2 male)

Venus in Therapy: The owner of a small beauty parlour in a country village, Venus loves to be in love. She seems to be ageless, and it's possible that she really is an embodiment of the goddess of love. But this Venus feels that her lifelong desire has become a curse, and that in the face of sexual obsession, people don't think of love as something real. (Cast: 7 female, 6 male, doubling)

About the Playwright:

William Inge (1913-1973) may justifiably be called the first playwright to examine the American Midwest and its people. He was born in Independence, Kansas, and was educated at the University of Kansas. After working as a teacher and an actor, he became the drama critic for the St. Louis Star-Times. During the 1950s and early '60s, no other American dramatist with the exception of Tennessee Williams could compare with William Inge in his prominence on the Broadway stage and in films. As Tennessee Williams tapped into the mannerisms and neuroses of the American South, Inge did much the same for the Midwest racking up a stunning track record on Broadway – four plays, four hits – and all of his theatrical successes were turned into big-budget Hollywood movies with blue-chip casts. Like Williams, he also occasionally wrote film scripts, and he won an Oscar for Splendor in the Grass.

Craig Pospisil is a multiple award-winning American playwright and filmmaker. His work has been seen around the US, and in two dozen countries on six continents, and translated into seven languages.