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Six Plays
by Mickle Maher
Foreword by Kruger Loren
Published by: Agate Publishing
Sales Date: 2022-04-12
264 Pages
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.” Maher’s 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 Eugène 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 Maher’s 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 Chekhov’s 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 there’s a mysterious haze in the basement of the Mortier Civic Playhouse and that, in addition to interruptions from the director of the Scottish play that’s 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.
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 Chekhov’s 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 there’s a mysterious haze in the basement of the Mortier Civic Playhouse and that, in addition to interruptions from the director of the Scottish play that’s 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.
INTRODUCTION/PREFACE
1. AN APOLOGY FOR THE COURSE AND OUTCOME OF CERTAIN EVENTS
2. DELIVERED BY DOCTOR JOHN FAUSTUS ON THIS HIS FINAL EVENING
3. THE HUNCHBACK VARIATIONS
4. SPIRITS TO ENFORCE
5. THERE IS A HAPPINESS THAT MORNING IS
6. SONG ABOUT HIMSELF
7. IT IS MAGIC
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
1. AN APOLOGY FOR THE COURSE AND OUTCOME OF CERTAIN EVENTS
2. DELIVERED BY DOCTOR JOHN FAUSTUS ON THIS HIS FINAL EVENING
3. THE HUNCHBACK VARIATIONS
4. SPIRITS TO ENFORCE
5. THERE IS A HAPPINESS THAT MORNING IS
6. SONG ABOUT HIMSELF
7. IT IS MAGIC
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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 Kruger is Professor of Comparative and English Literature, and Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago, and has been watching Mickle Maher’s 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.
Praise for Mickle Maher’s There Is a Happiness That Morning Is:
“Masterful. .. this is what theater is supposed to be.” —Houston Press
“Savagely funny… Maher’s ‘There Is a Happiness That Morning Is’ is a joy, an unexpectedly raucous celebration of art and ardor—and public sex.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Delightfully original… If you prize imagination, intelligence and genuine passion, you’ll 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 brings—and that’s exactly the high delivered by There Is a Happiness That Morning Is.” —Houston Chronicle
“Maher’s most powerful play to date…soul 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 Maher’s Spirits to Enforce:
“Mesmerizing… the stuff that great theater is made of.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Entrancing…beguiling…the play is like a dance, a 90-minute linguistic ballet… a rollicking, cerebral delight.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Hilarious, layered, well-executed—the 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/Critic’s 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 itself…once 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 that’s absurd, funny, and touching.” —Chicago Free Press
“This show is amazing! It’s like ‘The Tempest’ fell into a vat of toxic waste and now has the power to make us laugh…really hard.” —Chicago Theater Beat
Praise for Mickle Maher’s 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 funny…In 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 theater…a thinking man’s vaudeville. You won’t soon forget it.” —Houston Press
“Terrifically funny for even non-geniuses… I haven’t laughed this much at a show in an awfully long time.” —Applause Meter
“Seriously crazed…acquires 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 Maher’s 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 play’s hilarious?” —Time Out Chicago
“Intellectually spry and surprisingly funny…a fascinating piece of avant-garde Chicago brain candy.” Highly Recommended —Chicago Tribune
“An Apology…quite simply put, is one of the most incomparable undertakings that has graced the stage… (a) complete masterpiece.” —Chicago Stage Review
“It’s hard to miss Mickle Maher’s brilliance in this ingenious retooling of the Faust legend.” —Chicago Reader
“One can see… not only Maher’s passionate engagements with language at diverse levels—from the rhetorical mastery of syntax and cadence to the semantic wizardry of words, their ability to conjure habitable worlds out of bare ice and air—but 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 one’s own singularity intelligible and thereby transcend it—a task which in Maher’s universe seems inevitably doomed to failure.” —John Beer, The Point
“Superb…miss (this play) at your peril.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Praise for Mickle Maher’s 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 Maher’s It Is Magic:
“Hilarious tragedy.” —Chicago Reader
“A harrowing, hilarious journey into the eldritch heart of the theatrical experience.” —Austin Arts Watch