About the Play:

Winner! 1981 Annual New York City Metropolitan Short Play Festival

Sundance is a one-act comedy by M.Z. Ribalow. This hilarious satire on violence follows the confrontation between various western archetypes, killers and cowboys, cowards and revolutionaries and how they come to swap stories and bullets. But what happens when such figures are presented with the ultimate killer?

Sundance takes place in a postmodernist western saloon. The characters include the Wild West's greatest outlaws – Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James, Billy the Kid – and the inevitable Barkeep. Hickock and Jesse sit in a bar and talk about the morals of murder. Hickock kills to uphold the law. Jesse kills for pleasure. The Kid kills in the cause of political freedom. What if, wonders the Barkeep, they met up with the Ultimate Killer – who kills for no reason, who kills simply because that's what he does? Enter the Sundance Kid himself. He does not kill to uphold the law, for pleasure, or to make a political statement, or because he had a deprived childhood. He kills for no reason at all. And he proceeds to kill everyone, exiting at the end with his sixguns blazing! Sundance is a western that challenges the classical stereotypical roles of the western genre.

Sundance was first performed in 1976 at the Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York City and won a Best Play Award at the 1981 Double Image Theatre Festival at St. Clement's Theatre. Since then it has been performed in high school and college theatre productions and as "pop-up" fringe play to spotlight local performers.

Cast: 5 male

What people say:

"A deceptively savvy cultural essay about the mechanics of a beloved American genre wrapped inside a pitch-perfect satire." — New York Times

"Witty, strong, precise, unusually well written." — The Guardian (UK)

About the Playwright:

Meir Z. Ribalow (1948-2012) was internationally renowned American playwright, poet, novelist, critic, and activist whose greatest legacy may be his profound impact on the lives of hundreds of other artists whose work he nurtured, furthered, supported and celebrated. His dramas have received over 180 productions worldwide and regionally across the United States and Canada.