In David Ives' world everything seems to be possible: a world in which you have to order a cheese steak to get a hamburger, three monkeys who try to write Hamlet, time spinning forward and backward and much more. Be prepared for a night of fun and for getting a new insight into the weirdness of life.
For more information about our contribution to the festival in the Karussel theatre and the author David Ives, see below. Apart from these listed plays, other one-act plays by David Ives are currently being performed in the Tufa, our regular venue, with Wednesday the 10th and Thursday the 11th remaining as performance dates.
Have you ever had the feeling that the people around you misunderstand you all the time, or have you wondered why you got the opposite thing of what you had ordered in a restaurant, or why you are not being served at all? Then maybe you’re living in a Philadelphia like Mark, one of the characters in The Philadelphia. A Philadelphia is a metaphysical place where nothing turns out what it should. As his friend Al explains to Mark, no matter what you ask for in Philadelphia, you can't get it. A nightmare!
In David Ives' marvellous world, it is even possible to jump forward and backward in time. This truly becomes especially helpful when meeting a beautiful woman in a café and failing to arrange a date with her just because you said the wrong thing. Probably, we all know such a situation and the thoughts afterwards: "I'm such an idiot! I shouldn't have said that. Why didn't I say something else?" Thanks to Ives' time travel, the characters Betty and Bill in Sure Thing have more than one try to get to know each other and to find the right words.
Words, Words, Words
Can a monkey write a literary masterpiece such as Hamlet? Many investigations and experiments about monkeys' ability to understand or to utter human words have been made in recent past. In the comic play Words, Words, Words, the researcher Dr. Rosenbaum has an even more daring hypothesis. According to him, three monkeys will be able to produce Hamlet if they sit in front of typewriters hitting keys at random for an infinite amount of time. Without even knowing what a Hamlet is, the three monkeys Swift, Kafka and Milton give their best to attain the requested aim in order to get out of the cage and to get rid of the annoying typewriters.
Variations on the Death of Trotsky
Imagine you are a famous person and you read an encyclopaedia entry on your own death - stating that you had died the previous day. What would you do? This is the scenario of David Ives' Variations on the Death of Trotsky. While having an axe smashed into his skull, Trotsky, the leader of the Russian Revolution, ponders his violent murder after his wife has read to him the encyclopaedia entry about his own death. Unfortunately, an entry in an encyclopaedia often doesn't include the precise circumstances of a person's death. Consequently, these entries are open to varied interpretations. David Ives obviously thought so, too. So, if you have ever been interested in the truth about the death of an historical person, listen carefully, for Ives offers as many as eight variations of Trotsky's death – one version funnier and more absurd than the next.
A Singular Kinda GuyMitch, the protagonist of David Ives' A Singular Kinda Guy, is a lonely fellow having trouble finding a partner. Undoubtedly, Mitch is different from other guys, as he confesses to a nice girl he really likes.
About the Author - David Ives
“David Ives has proved that he is a master of verbal gymnastics.” New York Times, May 15 1993
“These elfin works could be called Stoppard Lite. But they are really Beckett Brisk.” Time, Jan 31 1994.
“He's either a delightful literary anarchist or master of the one-note gimmick.” Denver Post, Aug 30 2007.
David Ives is known for his sophisticated artistic wordplay, a feeling for comic effect and the use of absurd elements, and his contributions to entertaining compositions full of theatrical invention.
He was born in Chicago in 1950. As an undergraduate he attended Northwestern University, where he became familiar with playwrights such as Ionesco, Beckett and Pinter.
The one-acts that were later published in various, ever-expanding collections under the title of All in the Timing (1995) originated as an evening of short plays, premiering at Primary Stages in 1993. It is still uncertain which of the plays is his most successful one: The Philadelphia (according to Wikipedia) or Sure Thing, which is the fourth most popular short play among high school dramatic societies in the United States. In the mid-nineties, Ives occasionally wrote humour pieces for the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker and others. In that period he was named one of the ‘100 Smartest New Yorkers’ by New York Magazine.
Other popular and similar one-acts can be found in the collection Time Flies (2001). Later on, Ives wrote a number of full length-plays, which, up to 2005, are collected in the anthology Polish Joke and Other Plays.
Ives has also embarked on various musical productions. He wrote the libretto for Frances Hodgson Burnett’s children’s classic The Secret Garden. He adapted David Copperfield’s show Dreams and Nightmares for Broadway and Cole Porter’s Jubilee and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific for concert performances at Carnegie Hall. In 2002, he brushed up the German Dance of the Vampires (Jim Steinman/ Michael Kunze) – this project failed in the US.
Ives’ latest projects on Broadway were firstly an adaptation of Mark Twain’s Is he Dead?, which is a musical comedy set in the Paris of 1846. The production only opened on December 9, 2007, and was well-received. The second, which opened shortly afterwards, is an original play called New Jerusalem. It deals with Spinoza’s expulsion from Amsterdam by the Jewish community for his controversial ideas. His latest book, called Voss, published in 2008, is a humourous young-adult novel on a teenage immigrant in Manhattan. We can be sure of many other works to follow!
David Ives is of Polish descent, and originally was called David Roszkowski. He now lives in New York City with his second wife Martha.
Quotes by the author about his plays:
"A quarter of an hour is just about the limit for an exercise in the absurd… I admire pop songs that are perfect at three minutes. Also, I have a short attention span at the theatre."
"They’re word-happy plays, but I don’t think that’s their point… Also , I don’t think they’re about miscommunication. I think they’re more concerned with possibility, and with time."
Brevity gives Ives an undeniable tactical advantage: “With my plays, when the lights go down, at least the audience isn’t thinking ‘Oh God, two more hours of this.’”
The Group
July 5th, 2009, before opening night for Pride and Prejudice.
This summer's production, Pride & Prejudice, has now ended and we are all in our summer break (drama-wise). The production was a wonderful success and we thank all of you, who went to see us and enjoyed an entertaining evening with us.
If you are interested in what the press has said about us, check out the following links.
Volksfreund: Harter Kampf am Heiratsmarkt
16VOR: Stolz, Vorurteil, Happy End
HUNDERTTAUSEND: Very amusing, indeed!
352: Tedium reversed
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The Philadelphia
