Two plays by Chicago playwright Mickle Maher. "An Apology..." is a brilliant retelling of the Faust legend. Dr. John Faustus apologizes to the audience for leaving the writing of his life to "long-winded hacks" and explains how Mephistopheles prevented him from recording his own story for posterity. In "The Hunchback Variations" Maher brings together composer Ludwig van Beethoven and Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, for a panel discussion on the pitfalls of artistic collaboration. Their attempts to create an enigmatic sound called for by a stage direction in Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" are thwarted by their deafness, unpleasant working conditions, and the fact that Beethoven has not yet finished reading the "The Cherry Orchard." Two funny, intelligent and highly original two-character plays.

An Apology for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening and The Hunchback Variations

Literature & Fiction

Maher, Mickle

Dramas & Plays

Hope And Nonthings

More If You’ve Got It brings together five full-length plays from Chicago's acclaimed Theater Oobleck. This collection features works by five founding members, each currently active with the company: Ugly’s First World by Jeff Dorchen, in which a singing zombie, seeking revenge against T. S. Eliot, becomes a pawn in a battle to overthrow God; Innocence and Other Vices by Dave Buchen, a half-true, half-blasphemous screwball comedy about the mildly unhealthy relationship between charity and capitalism; Letter Purloined by David Isaacson, a whodunit comedy about war atrocities and a handkerchief; There Is a Happiness That Morning Is by Mickle Maher, a play in rhymed verse, about the poetry of William Blake and having sex in public; and Necessity by Danny Thompson, a bloody and historically inaccurate bio-drama of Thomas Alva Edison. See what audiences around the world have come to know as uniquely Oobleckian: irreverent, vexed, impossibly funny, and unexpectedly transcendent.

More If You've Got It: Five Plays from Theater Oobleck

Buchen, Dave

Isaacson, David

Dorchen, Jeffrey

Thompson, Danny

Drama. It's the first debate of the 2004 presidential campaign and President George W. Bush is determined to kill PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer live on stage. His opponent, Senator Kerry, agrees Lehrer should die--"Indeed, what else tonight besides the manner of Jim Lehrer's execution could be of interest to any man?"--but disagrees on the matter of when and where. 12 years later, Jim Lehrer sits alone in his spacious and indifferently furnished DC suburban home narrating to himself the news of the day. That is until his roommate--also Jim Lehrer--rushes in to warn him of an angry mob descending on their location. Collected here for the first time, Chicago playwright Mickle Maher's THE JIM LEHRER PLAYS--The Strangerer and Jim Lehrer and the Theater and its Double and Jim Lehrer's Double--connect and critique their times' political insanities while pulling inspiration from Camus, Artaud, and Maher's favorite news personality, Jim Lehrer.

The Jim Lehrer Plays

53rd State Press

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.\nProduction rights for any of these six plays can be requested from the publisher.\nThe anthology includes:\nAn 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.\nThe 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.\nSpirits 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.\nIt 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.

Six Plays

Agate Midway

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