Category: drama

DRAMAS FOR AN INSANE WORLD

A groundbreaking collection of experimental plays by Erik Belgum —
a master of innovative fiction.

ADVANCE PRAISE:

“These wonderfully entertaining plays by Erik Belgum are a suite of performance scores and prompts that expertly transform what might otherwise offend into a perplexing soup. Infused with absurdity, the ridiculous and sometimes abhorrent is whipped with humor until frothed anew.” — Galen Joseph-Hunter, Wave Farm (WGXC) Executive Director Emeritus

“What I admire most in Belgum is the rigor of his instability. These works are not random, though they may flirt with accident, disruption, and pummel us to overload—they are exquisitely built, restrained to the razor-like logic of a roller coaster.”
— Jay Scheib, Director / Professor for Music & Theater Arts at MIT

WE’RE MOVING ON NOW TO THE NEXT PHASE
Plays by Erik Belgum
Trade paperback; 140 pp., $12.95
ISBN 979-8-9932444-2-6

TYPO 14 — SPRING BREAK!

Never before has there been anything like TYPO #14. An assemblage of avant-garde truth-telling: Zabolotsky, Blanzat, Rilke, Guro & Devaulx. You owe it to yourself to be informed — get TYPO.”

A big new issue has just arrived — featuring Tim Newton Anderson; Károly Bari; Pierre Bettencourt; Steve Biersdorf ; Jean Blanzat; Alex Cigale; Norman Conquest; Noël Devaulx; Shawn Garrett; Edward Gauvin; Elena Guro; Gabor G. Gyukics; Mark Kanak; Amy Kurman; George MacLennan; Dmitri Manin; Joshua Martin; Marty Newman; Sarah Louise Pieplow; Mirtha Pozzi; Rainer Maria Rilke; Jason E. Rolfe; Paul Rosheim; Genrikh Sapgir; Emilio Settumelli; Doug Skinner; Kristen Szumyn; John Vieira; Gregory Wallace; D. Harlan Wilson; Bill Wolak; and Nikolay Zabolotsky.

Spring Fever!

Spring Fever hath sprung with the special “Goddess Issue” of TYPO—packed with an international cast of luminaries: Tim Newton Anderson; Tom Bradley; Anton Chekhov; Norman Conquest; Caroline Crépiat; R J Dent; Max Ernst; Eurydice Eve; Luc Fierens; Leonor Fini; Théophile Gautier; Harold Jaffe; Amy Kurman; Lo; Michael Maier; Dmitri Manin; Elena Marini; Lilianne Milgrom; Opal Louis Nations; Marty Newman; Claudio Parentela; Angeleaux Pastormerleaux; Paul Rosheim; Jasia Reichardt; Doug Skinner; Phil Demise Smith; Tabarin; Lono Taggers; Corinne Taunay; Shyam Thandar; Stefan Themerson; Konstantin Vaginov, and Gregory Wallace.

IN THIS ISSUE:

·     TYPOGLYPHICS

·     THE LOVES OF PHARAOH

·    GODDESS OF NOIR

·     MAX ERNST & LEONOR FINI LOVE LETTERS

·     MEXICO’S SURREALIST GODDESSES

·     SEXY PRINTER ORNAMENTS

·     THE LOUIS XIII JOKESHOP

·     CONJOINING WORDS

·     SEMANTIC POETRY

·     THE WOMEN OF ROME

·     A BILINGUAL ACROSTIC REBUS

and much more

TYPO #5: The International Journal of Prototypes
edited by Norman Conquest
trade paperback; 152 pp., illustrated; $20
ISBN 979-8-9894330-5-6

TYPO 2

T Y P O: Journal of Lettrism, Surrealist Semantics, & Constrained Design

Our second issue is packed with treats from around the world…

Alien alphabets

Prismatic subdivisions

Principles of double-talk 

Post-Neoist portraits

Desiring specimens 

Asemic architecture

Paul Éluard poetry

Titular typography

Surrealist trivia

Italian eye candy

Curlicues in review

Generic Sheet Music

Jarry on the English language

Historical filler text translations

& much more

Pierre Albert-Birot; Guillaume Apollinaire; Mark Axelrod-Sokolov; Tom Barrett; Allan Bealy; Miggs Burroughs; Jahan Cader; Janina Ciezadlo; Norman Conquest; Farewell Debut; R J Dent; Karen Eliot; Paul Éluard; Paul Forristal; Ryan Forsythe; Jesse Glass; Rick Henry; Rhys Hughes; Rory Hughes; Alfred Jarry; Richard Koman; Márton Koppány; Amy Kurman; Peter F. Murphy; Pata-No UN LTD; Gaston de Pawlowski; Derek Pell; Harry Polkinhorn; Tom Prime; Jason E. Rolfe; Ded Rysel; Doug Skinner; Giovanni Antonio Tagliente; Félix Vallotton; Andrew C. Wenaus; Adolphe Willette; Carla Wilson;William Wordsworth.

Trade paperback; 152 pp., $14.95
ISBN 979-8-9869224-5-4

THE PLAY’S THE THING

Harold Jaffe‘s new collection, Strange Fruit & Other Plays, challenges the reader to confront an America awash in racism, hatred, and violence. With cunning precision, Jaffe employs 20th century icons of art, cinema, music, & literature, to illuminate the dark place we find ourselves in today.

Here are nine diverse and innovative one-act plays, featuring Billie Holiday & Lester Young;  Antonin Artaud & Georges Bataille; Marilyn Monroe & Marlon Brando; Samuel Beckett; condemned prisoners in Texas making their final statement before execution; Israelis & Palestinians in life-or-death dialogue; Charles Manson unleashed; Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin & Jim Morrison burning it at both ends; & the potently satirical “Splish Splash,” exploring gender discord.

Harold Jaffe is the author of 30 novels, short fiction collections, essays, and plays. His recent books include Porn-anti-Porn and BRUT: Writings on Art & Artists. He is editor-in-chief of Fiction International.

 

 

 

LOOK OUT MAMA, IT’S DEBAUCH-O-RAMA!

“A harsh, hilarious, scurrilous, and scatological satire.”
—Ed Simon, JSTOR Daily

Poet John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, was considered one of the greatest English satirists — a nimble wit and scribbler of sublime wordplay, parodies & pornographic puns.

Hailed by Graham Greene and Ezra Pound, Wilmot is perhaps best known for his outrageous libertine satires, including this wickedly funny Restoration drama.

Originally titled The Farce of Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery, DEBAUCH-O-RAMA is an absurdist “closet drama” – written to be read aloud and not performed.  It consists of five acts in raunchy rhyming couplets and a madcap cast of characters:

CAST

  • Bolloxinion – King of Sodom
  • Cuntigratia – his Queen
  • Pricket – young Prince
  • Swivia – Princess
  • Buggeranthos – General of the Army
  • Pockenello – Prince and favourite of the King
  • Borastus – Buggermaster-General
  • Pene & Tooly – Pimps of Honour
  • Officina – Maid of Honour
  • Fuckadilla – Maid of Honour
  • Cunticulla – Maid of Honour
  • Clytoris – Maid of Honour
  • Flux – Physician to the King
  • Vertuso – Dildo- and Merkin-Maker for the Court

Let the curtain rise and the laughter begin!

DEBAUCH-O-RAMA
A Restoration Closet Drama
by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
Pocket Erotica  [№ 11 ]
65 pp.; paper, perfect bound; 4 x 6 inches; $10
ISBN 978-1-7357646-2-7

BRING ME THE HEAD OF FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN!

Jason E. Rolfe‘s mesmerizing new chapbook, THE PUPPET-PLAY OF DOCTOR GALL, is a shadowy existential drama — an absurdist murder-mystery set in Vienna in 1820, with a cast of curious characters: Franz Joseph Gall, The Stranger, Ernst Sieber, Tomas Hocheder, Madam Denebecq, and Count Sedlnitzky.

Are they mere puppets whose every move is directed from above by Madam Denebecq, a self-titled mechanikus? Or are they all too human, performing their lives before our very eyes? And who, in the name of heaven, has stolen the head of Franz Joseph Haydn?

We had intended to reveal the answers to these questions but, alas, it’s too late. The lights have dimmed and the audience is holding its collective breath (if breathe they do).

Order your copy before the curtain rises.

No strings attached.

Sucker Punch Gala in NYC

(photo by Karina Tarnawsky)

If you were in NYC on June 15th and missed the BLACK SCAT SUCKER PUNCH bout between high lit  heavyweight champs Yuriy Tarnawsky (seated)) and Alain Arias-Mission —shame on you! You missed a bloody good reading.

The Emily Harvey Foundation. provided ringside seats,  booze & noisemakers  to an unruly crowd of fans. Tarnawsky threw wicked upper-cuts from his classic collection of “short shrift fictions,” CROCODILE SMILES, while Arias-Misson responded with  a blazing left hook from his new novel THE DETECTIVE WHO DIDN’T HAVE A CLUE.

Alas, both titles are out of print.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…insane!

screen-shot-2017-02-03-at-12-54-00-pm
These plays, plays by Axelrod, Mark, the other Axelrod, not the one who worked for Obama, Obamaless, the other Axelrod, his plays, are. And are the plays of Axelrod, no
t the one who worked for Obama, Obamaless, and are the plays of Axelrod, Axelrodian.  Yes, in all manner of speaking, speaking high or low, they are and you, the Reader, Reader of Axelrod, not the one who worked for Obama, Obamaless, the other Axelrod, should read these plays with relish. For without relish, they would not be as absurd.
—Samuel Beckett


Can Superman avoid deportation?

Will Van Gogh survive an IRS audit?

Does Donald Trump talk to himself?

Has the world gone mad?

This outrageous and timely collection confronts our contemporary nightmares with devastating wit and insight. In the provocative title play, Superman stands trial as an illegal alien. In “A Colloquy of Birds,” Axelrod takes aim at a flock of notorious Republican women — the “politically effete.” And just when you thought it was safe to applaud, experience the maniacal monologues of Chairman Trump.

Here are eight rousing absurdist dramas destined to be modern classics.

SUPERMAN IN AMERICA & OTHER ABSURD PLAYS
by Mark Axelrod
Trade paperback, 354 pp.,  $16

CLICK HERE TO ORDER ON AMAZON

 

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