About
the Play:
The Great Gromboolian Plain is a comedy by Don Nigro.
The title play, The Great Gromboolian Plain, is a love story that revolves around a young woman,
institutionalized by her sister, who believes she can travel through
time. She makes friends with a male fellow inmate, who, it turns out,
is working for her sister and who presses her for information.
The Great Gromboolian Plain is a popular choice for high
school drama festivals. This long one-act is a love story that takes
place on the grounds of a mental institution. A young girl who
believes she can time travel meets a man who is not what he seems.
Institutionalized by her sister to coerce her into revealing the
location of their father's last poems, Dinah is protecting a deep
secret. Magellan's attempts to understand her send him back to the
turn of the last century, back to a place where a young man is
forever asking a pretty nurse to dance to the carousel music. (Cast:
3 female, 2 male)
The collection The Great Gromboolian Plain and other plays
also includes five short plays by Don Nigro. The plays
include:
Sin Eater: Based on a Gaelic ancient tradition that says
when somebody dies their body is dealt with by a sin eater, this
intense, darkly comic 10 minute play tells of an outcast whose life's
work is to eat a symbolic meal off the chests of the dead to take
their sins upon himself before they are buried. When his sister asks
him to perform this ancient Welsh custom for a girl he desperately
loved, he can't resist doing a bit more. But his beloved is not
really dead and she is equally terrified of being buried alive and of
being kissed by the filthy sin eater. (Cast: 2 female, 1 male)
Ballerinas is a popular choice for high school drama
festivals. Three delicate ballerinas are in the dressing room during
an intermission for Swan Lake. Scheherazade smokes cigars to relax.
Petroushka, who has a drinking problem, is worried about how many
buttocks she has and would kill for a meat loaf. Both are worried
about Giselle who is so convinced that she is a swan that she is
laying eggs. The roof leaks, they have not been paid, and Giselle is
molting. A funny take on the transformational magic of art. (Cast: 3
female)
The Lost Girl: A young tourist lost in a strange country
with an erroneous map, sees Lara sitting on a bench reading a black
book. Mala manages to communicate her situation and ask Lara for
directions. Strangely, she understands Lara's foreign language more
and more as the play progresses. She senses that there is something
mysterious about this place but doesn't comprehend what it is until
it's too late. (Cast: 3 female)
The Babel of Circular Labyrinths: An old blind writer sits
in a circle of light in a dark library asking why he doesn't just sit
in the dark, why a raven is like a desk and what is the nature of
labyrinths. He hears footsteps and smells perfume. The intruder is a
beautiful woman who may or may not be a character in a story he is
writing. She brings a knife from the labyrinth of mirrors. Someone is
going to die in this unusual play about art, time and the
relationship between fiction and flesh. (Cast: 1 female, 1 male)
Seance: Sir William Crookes, a respected physicist in 1875,
is investigating a beautiful young medium. He becomes convinced that
her alter ego from the spirit world is real, and she, seeing the
great man falling under her spell, confesses that the vision emerging
from the cabinet during séances in merely her underwear. Crookes
refuses to believe she is a fraud until the spirit appears to settle
the argument. This twisted love story about how desire subverts
understanding is based on a true story. (Cast: 2 female, 1 male)
The Dead Wife:
On her wedding night Laura sits in her nightgown waiting for her
husband. His dead first wife appears to warn her that her groom is a
murderer and, preying upon Laura's doubts, fears and terror of
mirrors, she plants a deadly seed of suspicion. The husband, a
celebrated hero praised for his socially approved acts of violence,
is coming up the stairs. Laura must decide what is real in this
Gothic battle of wills. (Cast: 2 female)
The Wonders of the Invisible World Revealed: A young
housemaid is fascinated by a bad tempered and impatient yet
compelling lodger whose room is full of strange bottles. Wrapped in
bandages with no flesh showing, he tells her he is invisible. She
thinks he must be a dangerous lunatic until he describes some private
moments in her bedroom. By turns funny and frightening, this dark
love story reveals the wonder of many kinds of invisibility. (Cast: 1
female, 1 male)
About the Playwright:
Don Nigro is a prolific American playwright with over 400
works touching on a wide variety of themes including murder mysteries
(the Inspector
Ruffing series), American history (the Pendragon County
plays), Russian life and culture, art and artists, and more. His work
has been produced around the world and translated into ten languages.
He has twice been a finalist for the National Repertory Theatre
Foundation's National Play Award, and has won a Playwriting
Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as
grants from the Ohio Arts Council.