Six Plays

(Paperback)

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This anthology features six plays by celebrated Chicago playwright Mickle Maher, who has been described by the Houston Chronicle as one of the most original voices in American theater today, and by the Chicago Reader as a master at creating complex, paradoxical works that encompass their own contradictions. Mahers plays engage classic literature as a jumping off point for seriously unusual comedic dramas, often dealing with the absurdity, difficulties, and rewards of artistic endeavor. His work has been influenced by or compared to Eugne Ionesco, Maria Irene Fornes, Kenneth Koch, and Edward Albee, among others. This edition is designed to be useful for schools and other organizations that wish to mount productions of Mahers plays, which generally feature small casts and simple scenery and stagings, and thus can be easy to produce.

Production rights for any of these six plays can be requested from the publisher.

The anthology includes:

An Apology for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening
On the night Faustus concludes his bargain with Mephistopheles, he apologizes to a group of random people for his failure to keep a diary of his fabulous life.

The Hunchback Variations
Ludwig von Beethoven and Quasimodo present a panel discussion on their failure to create an impossible sound called for in a stage direction in Chekhovs The Cherry Orchard.

Spirits to Enforce
Twelve telefundraisers with secret identities work to raise money for a superheroic production of The Tempest in a bid to save Fathomtown from Professor Cannibal and his band of evil doers.
There Is a Happiness That Morning Is
Having engaged the evening before in a highly inappropriate display of public affection on the main lawn of their rural New England campus, two lecturers on the poems of William Blake must now, in class, either apologize for their behavior or effectively justify it to keep their jobs.
Song About Himself
In a dystopian future, a woman made extraordinary by her ability to speak relatively clearly tries to connect with others on a mysterious social media site created by a rogue artificial intelligence.

It Is Magic
Deb and Sandy are auditioning Tim for the role of the Wolf in a production of The Three Little Pigs, but theres a mysterious haze in the basement of the Mortier Civic Playhouse and that, in addition to interruptions from the director of the Scottish play thats going on upstairs, is making things difficult. Then, Liz shows up and throws the whole room into (further) chaos. It Is Magic reveals the deep, ancient evil at the heart of the community theater audition process.

Reviews

Praise for Mickle Mahers There Is a Happiness That Morning Is: Masterful. .. this is what theater is supposed to be. Houston Press Savagely funny Mahers There Is a Happiness That Morning Is is a joy, an unexpectedly raucous celebration of art and ardorand public sex. Cleveland Plain Dealer Delightfully original If you prize imagination, intelligence and genuine passion, youll be on cloud nine through all 90 minutes of this utterly unpredictable experience With its grace, wit and profusion of clever rhymes, the language alone is reason enough to attend There is an exhilaration that true inspiration bringsand thats exactly the high delivered by There Is a Happiness That Morning Is. Houston Chronicle Mahers most powerful play to datesoul shaking. Chicago Reader An enjoyably lunatic endeavor. Chicago Tribune A bizarre, brilliant play that is capable of reordering your brain a bit. Austin Chronicle Consistently and thrillingly entertaining. Cleveland Scene 90 witty and entertaining minutes of poetic and comic bliss. Cleveland Jewish News Almost endlessly engaging and frequently hilarious. Time Out Chicago Riveting and wonderfully ridiculous. News-Herald Funny, witty, literate, and profound. Windy City Times Fun, stark, strange, and ridiculous. Broadway World Praise for Mickle Mahers Spirits to Enforce: Mesmerizing the stuff that great theater is made of. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Entrancingbeguilingthe play is like a dance, a 90-minute linguistic ballet a rollicking, cerebral delight. Cleveland Plain Dealer Hilarious, layered, well-executedthe show leaves you feeling fuller than when you walked in. Austin Chronicle A dazzling algebra of memory, identity, and the fluid but fixing cruelty of time. Highly Recommended/Critics Choice Chicago Reader Highly entertaining and thoroughly imaginative. The Shakespeare Review Enters a language-rich dream world that draws inspiration from comic-book morality tales, Shakespeare, and from the great globe itselfonce the revels are ended, you feel like something earth-shattering has taken place. Milwaukee Magazine Delightfully unconventional With Spirits to Enforce (Maher) mixes the most unlikely elements into an enthralling show thats absurd, funny, and touching. Chicago Free Press This show is amazing! Its like The Tempest fell into a vat of toxic waste and now has the power to make us laughreally hard. Chicago Theater Beat Praise for Mickle Mahers The Hunchback Variations: Theater Oobleck playwright Mickle Maher is a master at creating complex, paradoxical works that encompass their own contradictions. While his comedies leave a somber aftertaste, his forays into satire with a serious edge are gut-bustingly funnyIn The Hunchback Variations Maher mocks academic examinations of the creative process even as he engages in a complicated deconstruction of creativity. Chicago Reader Tantalizes with swirling bits about the nature of creativity, grief, the endless universe, the physical world, the theatera thinking mans vaudeville. You wont soon forget it. Houston Press Terrifically funny for even non-geniuses I havent laughed this much at a show in an awfully long time. Applause Meter Seriously crazedacquires rueful resonance, even amid the resolute absurdity of it all. Houston Chronicle Named One of the top five productions of the year by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Praise for Mickle Mahers An Apology for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening: A decade ago, the initial run of this diabolically clever monologue established the singular genius of playwright Mickle Maher, insouciantly infecting the Western canon with his dark brand of whimsy(and) did we mention the plays hilarious Time Out Chicago Intellectually spry and surprisingly funnya fascinating piece of avant-garde Chicago brain candy. Highly Recommended Chicago Tribune An Apologyquite simply put, is one of the most incomparable undertakings that has graced the stage (a) complete masterpiece. Chicago Stage Review Its hard to miss Mickle Mahers brilliance in this ingenious retooling of the Faust legend. Chicago Reader One can see not only Mahers passionate engagements with language at diverse levelsfrom the rhetorical mastery of syntax and cadence to the semantic wizardry of words, their ability to conjure habitable worlds out of bare ice and airbut also two of the issues that drive Maher throughout his various theatrical follies. There is the idea of the impossible or meaningless project as not just an intellectual limit or an aesthetic curiosity, but an ethical necessity: a life-duty. And there is the sense of inescapable loneliness heightened by the attempt to communicate, as though the fundamental ethical task is to make ones own singularity intelligible and thereby transcend ita task which in Mahers universe seems inevitably doomed to failure. John Beer, The Point Superbmiss (this play) at your peril. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Praise for Mickle Mahers Song About Himself: Nearly perfect a world of ridiculous, ominous inadequacy. Chicago Reader Wonderfully, exceedingly weird. Chicago Tribune Subtle, elegiac. Houston Chronicle A rich psychological and metaphysical landscape. Newcity An engaging, resonant ode. Time Out Chicago Praise for Mickle Mahers It Is Magic: Hilarious tragedy. Chicago Reader A harrowing, hilarious journey into the eldritch heart of the theatrical experience. Austin Arts Watch

Author Bio

Mickle Maher is a co-founder of Chicago's Theater Oobleck, with whom he has produced plays for more than thirty years. He lectures on playwriting at the University of Chicago, and lives with his wife and son in Evanston, IL.

Loren Krugeris Professor of Comparative and English Literature, and Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago, and has been watching Mickle Mahers plays since 1988. She is the author of several books, most recently A Century of South African Theatre (Bloomsbury), Imagining the Edgy City (Oxford University Press), and the award-winning Post-Imperial Brecht (Cambridge University Press), and her articles on theatre in Chicago and elsewhere have appeared in many publications, including Critical Stages, The Drama Review, Theater, Theater der Zeit, Theatre Research International, and Theatre Journal.