Kirjahaku

A play centering on the tensions between a political demagogue and the tailor who makes his suit In his Upper East Side atelier, a bespoke tailor, Anselm Kassar, is persuaded by the vulgar real estate mogul turned presidential candidate Kurt Seaman to make him the perfect suit. A suit to "stun them" at the final debate before the election, a suit for him to wear while he takes on his unnamed female opponent. Kassar agrees to make Seaman a suit with magical powers of persuasion, to allow him to "close the deal with the American people." Over the course of three fittings for this exorbitantly expensive and totemic vicu a suit, Seaman cajoles and spars with the tailor and his young Muslim apprentice, Amir. Amir's challenges to Seaman and Seaman's daughter Srilanka over the dangerously xenophobic and inflammatory rhetoric coming out of the campaign make the fittings increasingly volatile in the genteel atelier. Vulnerabilities are exploited masterfully by the candidate, in the manner of a true sociopath with a perfect instinct for other people's weaknesses. Coming out of an election season that laid bare the rage in much of America, Jon Robin Baitz's Vicu a is an astute satire of what--or who--it takes to bring those anxieties to the fore.

Two searing, incisive plays from Jon Robin Baitz, Tony Award nominee and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. Allie Murchow, a retired Hollywood makeup artist, is stuck inside her apartment, stuck in her daydreams of bygone celebrity and glamour, and stuck on hold with her pharmacist. She tries to make sense of the Los Angeles outside her windows, the LA of 2020, but she can't hear herself think over the echo of sirens and her chatty brother's interjections. I'll Be Seein' Ya, written by Jon Robin Baitz, the author of Other Desert Cities and Vicu a, is an unflinchingly funny new play that takes on our anxieties and delusions and reveals new truths about our strange reality. In The Insolvencies, two men--one younger, one older, one a professor, one a former student--recall their relationship and the time they felt "the piercing sting of simply being seen." A study of sex and pleasure, of justice and shame, this short, stirring play completes the affecting pair of new works from Baitz, "the American theatre's most fascinating playwright of conscience" (Michael Kuchwara, Associated Press).

Full Length, Drama Characters: 3 male, 2 female 2 Interior Sets Isaac Geldhart, the imperious scion of a family owned publishing house, is under siege. A takeover is being engineered by his son Aaron, who sees the firm's profitability steadily declining and wants to publish a trashy novel to bring in the bucks. Isaac plans to go on publishing scholarly works such as a multi volume history of Nazi medical experiments. Aaron has the necessary yen from Japanese backers but he needs the votes of his brother and sister. Reluctantly, they side against the old man. The second act takes place in the library of Isaac's townhouse a few years after his forced retirement. He has become so irascible and eccentric that his children have asked the court to judge his competence. Isaac, who survived the Holocaust and transcended the death of his wife to build an important publishing company from scratch, faces his greatest challenge: persuading the psychiatric social worker that he is sane. "A deeply compassionate play." N.Y. Times "A remarkably intelligent drama." N.Y. Newsday.

Ten Unknowns, John Robin Baitz's latest work, is an explosive drama about art -- and what happens when it becomes commerce. Malcolm Raphelson is a painter who was at the top of the art world -- until the critical vogue turned from realism to abstract expressionist work. He has been in self-imposed exile in Mexico for decades, until dealer Trevor Fabricant decides it's time for a retrospective. Trevor sends Judd, a talented and tormented young painter, to serve as Malcolm's assistant and unofficial minder. When they are joined by a beautiful young student, their tense equilibrium is upset. With seemingly spontaneous dialogue and a world portrayed with its many conflicts, Ten Unknowns is an important contemporary work about modern America, bringing into question its morals and sensibilities.

Jon Robin Baitz has been praised as one of America's foremost playwrights on themes of conscience. Now from the author of The Substance of Fire comes an absorbing new play about power and money and the ruinous effects it can have on friendship, love, marriage, and ultimately oneself. In this modern tragedy set in urban New York City, Wall Street powerhouse Sandy Sonenberg finds his personal and professional life threatened by the unraveling secrets of his past. After burying his true sexual identity, a lethal affair with a young male associate forces Sonenberg to confront a lifetime of unrequited love and betrayal.

In OTHER DESERT CITIES, Brooke Wyeth returns home to Palm Springs to visit her parents after a six-year absence. A once-promising novelist, she announces to her family the imminent publication of a memoir dredging up a pivotal and tragic event in the family's history - a wound that her parents don't want reopened. Brooke has come home to draw a line in the sand and is daring her family to cross it. Her brother won't play her game; her aunt knows way too much, and her parents fall into all their old routines as they plead with her to keep their story quiet. In this family, secrets are currency and everyone is rich. In simplest terms, the play is about a girl who comes home to the desert with a story about where she is from, who her people really are, what she thinks they really are. Her parents represent an Establishment that she feels has betrayed this country. She goes to war with them, and blood is spilled.