The Wild Goose Circus
Play Description
The story of a dysfunctional circus in which a fortuneteller has wrested control of the circus from her ringmaster. Beasts and dark shapes never seen on earth come forth to present, or disrupt, their acts. Until an absent clown, or child, finally comes back to lead the circus's opening parade.
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (5 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“There is something tragic about [in the] askew big-top setting, even before the disheveled, vaguely European ringmaster explains that his menagerie of minstrels is somewhat ‘dysfunctional.’ Banners are frayed and tutus are tattered, but the colors still gleam and the tightrope is taut, giving this gaggle of grotesques just enough dignity to hold their shoulders square. Within this broken calliope frame, Davis piles a fantastic compost of meaty metaphor and biblical allegory, bears on unicycles and sad French clowns. The rich, layered text gives way to inspired surreal absurdity that isn’t merely a self-conscious jab at surrealism and absurdism … From trapeze to pirate ship to a monster walrus head, the staging is visual poetry, making THE WILD GOOSE CIRCUS all the more strange and beautiful and rare.” —Tom Orr, The Seattle Times
“I remember the community at Sundance after two and a half weeks of work and the play’s final reading: everyone was deeply, deeply moved. Some were stunned. Both Oskar Eustis and Steven Dietz who had worked on the play — and had had reservations about how completely the play might work — were shocked — registering that it amazed them, with all their professional work, that they hadn’t seen the real power and potential of the play up until the final reading.” —David Kranes, Artistic Director, Sundance Playwrights Lab
“Maybe it was the emotion at the end of the Lab, or the incredible work of the actors especially Walter Bobbie who read the lead, but the reading was the most memorable and moving in my ten years with Sundance.” —David Chambers, Managing Director, Sundance Playwrights Lab
Author(s)
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 | 12/17/2020 |
| Pages | 102 |
| ISBN | 9780881458039 |
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com
Related Plays
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
It's the year 2057, and the planet's climate crisis has passed the point of no return. Fires rage, cities drown, cancer rates soar, and the population is forced to live nocturnally. Humanity's last hope lies with a coven of teenage witches. There are just two little problems: these kids are tapping into forces more powerful than they could ever imagine — and, they don't exactly know what they're doing.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (5 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
A brilliantly conceived and highly theatrical experience in absurdist drama, in which the audience is taken on a wild and funny metaphysical journey into the fertile imaginations of the diverse characters whose bizarre stories are deftly interwoven into the fabric of the play. DARK RIDE is comprised of a series of vignettes involving characters who, at first, appear to bear no relation to each other. A mysterious figure gives a scholar an ancient manuscript to translate; a thief steals an enormous jewel; a woman assures us that life is all coincidence; a dream-like waitress serves her customers all manner of thoughts and suggestions but no food. The images are bizarrely funny and provocative and, in time, coalesce into a pattern of driving concerns and obsessions that come into focus when the various characters finally meet at an oculists convention in Mexico City. Phantasmagoric, the play takes us on a journey that, in the final essence, transcends the physical world to explore the inner recesses of the mind.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (4 female, 6 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
García Lorca's passionate, lyrical tale of longing and revenge: a twentieth-century masterpiece.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (7 female, 3 male, bit parts)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
When the Ring family of Rhode Island assembles to take the family portrait, they somehow get it dreadfully wrong and must do the century all over.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male, doubling, bit parts)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Christmas Eve. New York City. An aspiring writer and a struggling actress meet while looking at the famous holiday windows, and the characters in the displays come to life and look back at them, including a lecherous elf with eyes for Mrs. Claus; Scrooge and Tiny Tim arguing about being portrayed as zombies; a street-wise Little Match Girl; Jim from “The Gift of the Magi” enjoying his wife’s new androgynous haircut; and a jealous Joseph The Carpenter. A smart, sweet, slightly twisted holiday romantic comedy.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male, flexible casting, up to 17 actors)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
This provocative chronicle, interspersed with fantasy sequences from Alice in Wonderland, traces the career of Charles Dodgson (better know as Lewis Carroll) from his first work on the immortal classic to his near downfall when accused of immorality.
Production Info
Cast: 11 total (4 female, 7 male, doubling)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Danny Petrelli, a 60-year-old man, wakes up one morning as his 23-year-old self. When he attempts to reconnect with his future wife and rectify mistakes he has made, he inadvertently changes (and possibly destroys) everything he values. LOST IN TIME is about the destructive power of manipulating your life. And the losses you will suffer if you don't embrace what's in front of you, in the here and now.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
In the second part of Tony Kushner's epic, the plague of AIDS worsens, relationships fall apart as new ones form, and unexpected friendships take form.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 220 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Part murder mystery, part unrequited romance, and part absurdist debacle about the denial and transcendence of death, TRANSATLANTICA tells the story of Dr Reginald Reinhold, whose psychoanalytic session with an eccentric patient, Ilyria (of the land of Ilyria), is interrupted by his wife with news that she is dying. By coincidence, Ilyria too is dying, as is every subsequent visitor to his home — a parade of increasingly eccentric guests. With death dancing at every door, Dr Reinhold is forced to confront his own peculiar relationship with mortality. The setting is the parlor of Dr Reinhold's mansion (festooned with mythical taxidermy and curious artifacts) on the shores of the fantastic continent of Transatlantica, a topsy-turvy world where gardens are planted with cake and lovers grow into trees.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$0.00–$15.95
Play Description
Pony up, America! Equestria is a land of friendship. Equestria is a land of magic. Equestria is Ben's apartment in rural Pennsylvania. Every Tuesday night, Ben hosts “The Rust Belt Ponies Meet-Up Group for Adult Fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.” Sharing fun with these friends is a wonderful place to be. After all, nothing bad can happen in Equestria … But when an ominous neighborhood watch brigade starts patrolling the streets, fear and paranoia creep into the circle of friendship. The outside world is turning more violent and authoritarian, and it is sucking our heroes into an entirely different story. A timely new comedy that explores the rise of a new social order and how the currents of history, normalization, and fear can sweep up even the most generous bronies.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
A fantastical “Kafkaesque” journey through time and space.
Production Info
Cast: 12 total (6 female, 6 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Three years after Josie’s mother died, no one expects her to telephone from a bus station in North Dakota. This comic study of love and letting go gives a look at the disparity between what you expect and what is delivered.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (4 female, 1 male)Full Length Comedy (about 85 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements