Plays by Russell Davis
Description
This collection includes three full-length plays: SALLY’S GONE, SHE LEFT HER NAME, APPOINTMENT WITH A HIGHWIRE LADY, and SALLY’S PORCH. SALLY’S GONE, SHE LEFT HER NAME: A play about the last two weeks in the life of a perfect American family. APPOINTMENT WITH A HIGHWIRE LADY: The play is about Richard, a young man in trouble, who cannot remember his past, and Louise, a friend, who comes to visit. SALLY’S PORCH: A movie star visits his mother in a psychiatric hospital.
Plays in This Collection
Press Quotes
SALLY’S GONE, SHE LEFT HER NAME
“I first encountered the work of playwright Russell Davis … at the world premiere of his FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SALLY … I found myself hanging on every word and admiring Davis’s singular communicatory skills more with each passing moment … amusing us more than a little en route with a verbal wizardry that warms and delights. Davis at the same time painlessly imparts a deeper universal meaning having to do with personal signposts lost and regained …” —Nels Nelson, Daily News
APPOINTMENT WITH A HIGHWIRE LADY
“Having flirted with death, a young man has crash landed into a state mental hospital, where he sits silently in the dayroom. He has lost his sense of touch and his ability to focus his eyes and his attention. In Russell Davis’s APPOINTMENT WITH A HIGHWIRE LADY, the patient … is gradually drawn back into life by a friend from his past … Mr Davis is subtle and unsentimental in telling a story about two people trying to find a connection that has previously eluded them. The play … has a sensitive awareness of the renewable vitality within an interrupted relationship. In extremis, says the playwright, can come understanding.” —Mel Gussow, The New York Times
“There’s so much good writing in Russell Davis’s APPOINTMENT WITH A HIGHWIRE LADY … During it’s penultimate moment, APPOINTMENT WITH A HIGHWIRE LADY achieves a level of descriptive prose rarely seen on a stage … all of Davis’s ideas merge into an ornate tapestry and the delicacy of his weaving becomes, for the first time, apparent.” —Bob Harrington, New York Post
SALLY’S PORCH
“Cynthia Decker, who’s committed herself to a psychiatric hospital, is visited by her movie-star son, Christopher. She’s seen his latest western, and especially liked the way he rode a horse. Christopher must tell her that Richard, his stuntman, did that. She’s disappointed. But Cynthia disappointed Christopher six years earlier when she walked out of the house and his life. She doesn’t seem particularly sorry, and tries to explain much of what she’s done via her rewrite of the Cinderella myth … when Christopher agrees to direct mom’s Cinderella play, he decides to ask stuntman Richard to play one of the fairy godmothers … it must be said that Davis is an expert at exposition. The way we gradually learn who Cynthia and Christopher are — and their relationship to each other — is as good as playwriting gets.” —Peter Filichia, The Star-Ledger
Author
Russell DavisRussell Davis grew up in Europe and the Middle East and then went to college in the United States. His plays have been produced at various theatres, including People's Light & Theatre, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, Long Wharf Theatre, Center Stage, Yale Repertory, and Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival. He has been a 2008-10 recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. He was resident playwright at People's Light for the residency program of the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group. He has received grants and fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, McKnight Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Tennessee Arts Commission, as well as two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a past member of New Dramatists. He has been a visiting artist at institutions such as Lehigh University, Yale University's Divinity School, Virginia Tech. University, Ohio University, University of Utah, and University of Puget Sound. He is also a juggler and was one of four jugglers featured in 'The Best Jugglers You've Never Heard Of' (cover story JUGGLE magazine, Winter 2007, published by the International Jugglers' Association). He has performed as a juggler and unicyclist for The Road Company's Flying Lemon Cirque, for The Instant City Circus at Pittsburgh's City Theatre Company, and in People's Light's production of his new vaudeville piece for all ages, The Thoughts & Travels of Nicki. He worked with Jon Held, a juggler and former member of Airjazz, to develop Jon Held's solo performance piece Tales of Lunacy which was produced by Touchstone Theatre. He directed Tony Duncan who won the juggling championships at the 1994 International Jugglers' Association Convention, and worked with the juggler Michael Moschen in Michael Moschen in Motion at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's 1988 Next Wave Festival and at the Lincoln Center's SERIOUS FUN! Festival 1990. He has led circus workshops at various theatres, universities, and schools. He has been a juggling/unicycling instructor for the Big Apple Circus' education program and at HB Studio in NY.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 12/31/2003 |
| Pages | 180 |
| ISBN | 9780881452143 |