About the Play:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

Three Really Nasty Plays contains three full-length plays by Ron Chambers. This collection of three plays won the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama from the Writer's Guild of Alberta. Marg Szkaluba (Pissy's Wife) is about a woman escaping an abusive marriage who starts a new life as a country singer in small town bars. In Pretty Blue, a welfare recipient becomes a catalyst in the lives of a lawyer and his professor wife. Dirt is a comic murder mystery in which two eccentric cops attempt to pry the truth from a cruel, cantankerous murder suspect.

What people say about Three Really Nasty Plays:

"Ron Chambers writes angry plays, so angry that audiences often get angry back at him for being so damnably dark. But if you dive in with the denizens of such bonanzas of bad language as Pissy's Wife, Dirt and Pretty Blue, you find a vein of dialogue so richly evocative of the underclass that it begs comparison with the great George F. Walker." — The Vancouver Sun

The collection Three Really Nasty Plays provokes reconsideration of value systems with these three compelling and really dastardly plays, which tweak our social consciousness while moving us to laughter and tears. It contains:

Marg Szkaluba (Pissy's Wife) follows the travails of Marg Szkabula, an Alberta farmwife who marries young and struggles to escape an abusive marriage. When she joins a group of singing women and discovers she has a voice, she breaks free of the isolation and rough environment. While playing a country blues set at a local honky-tonk bar, Marg Szkabula tells the crowd how she did it through song and story. This self-proclaimed 'hard woman' tells of her abusive marriage to Pissy and her escape to a surprising new life as a country blues singer. A bitterly funny night featuring such memorable melodies as "Bad Breath and Uncut Toenails", "Was it Love?" and "Get on Your Horse and Ride", in a genre the Calgary Herald dubbed "vintage country punk". Canadian Theatre legend Sharon Pollock made her professional singing debut at age 75 in a remount of this one-woman play, in which she delivered a tour de force as the abused spouse-turned-honky-tonk entertainer. (Premiered in 1994 at Theatre Network in Edmonton; Cast: 1 female)

What people say about Marg Szkaluba (Pissy's Wife):

"Ron Chambers' fine script is a model of restraint, bleak humour and economy." — Edmonton Journal

"Ron Chambers creates a wonderfully dimensional character...." — Edmonton Sun

"So thoroughly descriptive is Ron Chambers' script, one can almost smell the sharp scent of the Szkaluba farm and feel the oppressiveness of Marg's bleak situation. ...a genuinely uplifting play...." — Calgary Sun

Dirt is a Fargo-esque, dark comedy that begins with a gruesome murder in a small town somewhere in the northern Midwest. Who did it? And who else may die? This gritty play is centred around an unsavoury, dislikeable man who lives on welfare. He is the sole suspect in the death of his woman friend, and the play draws in a number of eccentrics who attempt to pry the truth from him. Its five robust characters both attract and repel us as they taunt one another and teeter on the edge of farce. Yet in the midst of it Dirt asks the provocative question "What happens when society gives itself permission to get rid of its undesirables." (Premiered in 1996 at Theatre Network in Edmonton and subsequently produced in Los Angeles; Cast: 2 female, 3 male)

What people say about Dirt:

"Dirt sticks – on the hands and in the craw." — Edmonton Journal

"Ron Chambers has written a strong play.... Dirt is as gritty and abrasive as those uncomfortable questions it raises. Dirt is coarse and vile and very provocative." — See Magazine

"Dirt is the sitcom from hell." — Edmonton Sun

Pretty Blue, which won the 1993 Alberta Culture Playwriting Award, is about a long-term welfare recipient and semi-street person who has little and aspires to nothing. He is so lonely he steals a parrot from a pet shop one New Year's Eve to keep him company. He ends up enlisting the services of an upwardly mobile legal aid lawyer to defend him in court. He does a little time, but also begins a bizarre "friendship" with the lawyer and his college professor wife, forcing them to reconsider their values. (Premiered in 1994 at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto; Cast: 1 female, 2 male)

What people say about Pretty Blue:

"Ron Chambers' Pretty Blue is a charming three-hander with a lot going for it: sharp comic banter, a pinch of social conscience and three tasty roles." — The Globe and Mail

Ron Chambers is a Canadian a playwright whose work has been produced across Canada and in the United States. Though he had intended to become an engineer, he studied drama at the University of Lethbridge, in Alberta, and has been teaching there since 1988. He is currently an associate professor and the Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dramatic Arts.