Mahinerator + The Barbarians

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

A composer of language's skewed longings, Jerry Lieblich torques and tickles our grammars, taking these jangly, tangling systems as occasions for probing the political structures through which we participate in our and others' demise. This volume collectsMahineratorandThe Barbarians. InMahinerator, an ambitious bureaucrat, speaking in a quasi-English pseudolect, tells his greatliest life story; a story of the banalation of the evilwise, of vacuumic compressulated ecocide.The Barbariansis a loggorheic encyclopedic rambunctious gollywompus of a play concerning speech acts, political power, fractal geometry, eusociality, theater, nonsense, aircraft carriers, cell phone networks, Bifrst, "My Heart Will Go On," semiotics, pyramids, and picturesque American normalcy.

Reviews

Praise for Mahinerator

A hilariously gruesome sci-fi monologueRevolting yet thrillingit uses language alone to melt your brain.
Helen Shaw, The New Yorker

Lieblichs verbally virtuosic play is an eerily funny, deeply chilling demonstration not simply of the banality of evil, but of its absurdity.
Sara Holdren, Vulture

Praise for The Barbarians

Bright, acerbically witty and linguistically acrobatic
The Brooklyn Rail

An unfurling meditation on rhetoric and power (and the power of rhetoric)Jerry's approach to playwriting and enthusiasm for language can be understood as almost scientific.
Kate Dakota Kremer, Culturebot

Painfully funny and utterly terrifyingA freewheeling theatrical adventure that careens through multiple timeframes, realities, and spheres.
David Driver, BOMB Magazine

Countries are made of laws, and laws are made of words. So are plays. How strange. The Barbarians is an imaginative, word-drunk romp through that strangeness, a play about a description of a play about a group of scientists gumming up the linkage between language and political power.
Thinking Theater NYC

Author Bio

Jerry Lieblich(they/them) plays in the borderlands between theater, poetry, and music. Their work experiments with language as a way to explore unexpected textures of consciousness and attention. Their plays includeMahinerator(The Tank),The Barbarians(Harvard University, La Mama (upcoming)),D Deb Debbie Deborah(Clubbed Thumb Critic's Pick: NY Times, TimeOut NY),Tongue Depressor(The Public Theatre / Brooklyn College),Nostalgia is a Mild Form of Grief(developed with Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard Theater, Page 73),Ghost Stories(Cloud City - Critic's Pick: TimeOut NY),Your Hair Looked Great(Abrons Arts Center), andA Discourse on the Method...(Ensemble Studio Theatre), andEverything for Dawn(Experiments in Opera). Their poetry has appeared in Foglifter, Second Factory, TAB, Grist, SOLAR, Pomona Valley Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Works and Days. Jerry has held residencies at MacDowell, MassMoCA, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Arts, NACL, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and UCROSS, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and Yiddishkayt. They have received a EST/Sloan Commission, the Himan Brown Creative Writing Award (twice), and a Martha Boschen Porter Fund grant from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. They are an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Page 73's I-73 Writer's Group, and Pipeline Theater's Playlab group. BA: Yale, Philosophy; MFA: Brooklyn College (Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney, chief instigators). thirdear.nyc