Kirjahaku

4m, 2f to play multiple roles / Dramatic Comedy The cuckolded King Shahriyar is marrying a new bride every night and beheading her the next morning. As unrest spreads in the Sultanate, his vizier's daughter Scheherezade hatches a plan: she will offer herself as a bride and seduce the king with stories that leave him hanging on every word. She weaves such tales as "Sindbad the Sailor" and "Alaeddin and His Magic Lamp" with stories of Borges, Flaubert, and Alan and Dahna -- a Jewish man and an Arab woman who have fallen in love in millennial New York City. Shahriyar becomes Alan and Scheherezade becomes Dahna as the worlds mingle and inform one another. Modern speech invades the fantasy tales, and swords and genii appear in the 21st Century, in a dance of cultures and people who are forever intertwined. "[An] explosive, often brilliant work about America, narrative, the Middle East and identity."- Time Out New York "...funny, moving, postmodernist-in-a-good-way...Like Scheherazade's tales, 1001 is endlessly compelling, and also endless (again, in a good way)..." - Boston Globe "Jason Grote is one of a generation of brainy new American dramatists - including Tracy Letts and Will Eno - who understand that to reach new audiences, political theater needs to move beyond moral indignation and outrage, past spoon-feeding an attitude. One key to going forward is looking backward into literature, fable and allegory." - LA Weekly "...a wild and beautiful glimpse at the yarns that shape our lives...Even if it isn't always true, the story we keep telling -- about the power of love, violence, and death -- is a comfort. Grote tackles that concept with gripping imagination, achieving a cosmic scope by eliminating the barriers between worlds." - Variety "Grote's Orientalist fantasia...conjures a storybook world that dissolves, at a moment's notice, into an apocalyptic, 21st-century landscape. Where to begin to describe this seductive if smartalecky, nonlinear play? ...[ 1001] doesn't preach, and it doesn't underestimate the audience's intelligence." - Washington Post

Characters: 1 male, 5 female Multiple Sets Up-and-coming cartoonist Stuart fights to keep the lid on his mother's and aunts' simmering angst. But the family's secrets channel themselves into a bizarre shapeshifter that guzzles soda, communicates by fax, and spouts old German verse. Friedrich Schiller's classic tale of warring queens inspires this gothic romp through the weirder side of suburban America. "Grote has made a name for himself in recent years with scripts that explode the boundaries between the ordinary and the chimerical, the political and the aesthetic, the intimate and the dizzyingly cosmic."- Washington Post "An ingenious tale, and mined with offbeat, explosive devices." - Seattle Times "Maria/Stuart, by Brooklyn-based playwright Jason Grote, is a cleverly built, well-concealed pit trap. At first, the play seems like a pleasant stroll through a family of comical, middle-class eccentrics-in just a few steps, it plunges into a dark subterranean maze...Here's hoping this isn't the last we'll see of Jason Grote." -The Stranger "Written in true Grote form, Maria/Stuart explores-and redefines-the boundaries between reality and fantasy, ordinary and bizarre, chaos and normality. It's also darkly comical, witty and relevant."-Twin Cities Metro "Absolutely astonishing. Tremendous writing, incredible acting. And laughs. Big laughs." - DC Theatre Scene "Crazily entertaining comedy...surreal, witty, expertly performed. Maria/Stuart is a melange of intense, ludicrous, silly, common-garden-variety family hell. It is more than enough for a great night out at the theater." -MetroWeekly