Charles A Duncombe

Over the course of a mysterious, hallucinatory night, the Devil and his entourage pay a midnight visit to Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov, whose recent work Moli re has just been shut down by the authorities. By magic, these characters, having escaped from Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, transform themselves and perform the play, transposing the playwright's 1930s attack on censorship and hypocrisy in Stalin's Soviet Union to the America of today: a government paralyzed by vicious partisanship and a society obsessed with celebrity. Is the Artist a revolutionary and provocateur or does the machinery of mass culture co-opt every act, even the act of subversion itself?"

Two naked humans in a cage-a young woman and a young man. They are good-looking specimens. What are they doing there? What do they think? What do they want? Do they have it easy, or do they miss their freedom? Visitors come and go, staring at the naked people, arguing, and wondering about just those things. A documentarian interviews their Keeper, who tries her best to provide some insight into the keys to these creatures' curious behavior.This new play for City Garage by award-winning playwright Charles A. Duncombe is both a dark satire and an absorbing drama about entrapment. When we look at ourselves, what do we really see? What prisons do we inhabit and how do we end up there?

"Towards the close of Charles Duncombe's harrowing ensemble piece about human rights abuses by Russian soldiers in Chechnya, a young man asks incredulously, "It's not really possible for people to act like that, is it?" The answer is self-evident but far from simple, and rooted in paradox. One by one these] steely-eyed, parlous young men recount nightmarish acts of murder, rape, and torture, committed against men, women, and children. Some speak as if seeking absolution or to assuage tormented consciences, while others glibly justify these acts by war's brutal logic or as necessary acts of vengeance for atrocities perpetrated by the enemy...That we never fully or satisfactorily fathom what makes these men (and others like them) tick is understandable; that we find judging them difficult is what makes the play thought-provoking."--LA Weekly

Nominated for "Best Adaptation," 2009 LA Weekly Theater Awards.Based on first person narratives of atrocities and genocide are drawn from reports published by Human Rights Watch, Congo Watch, the United Nations, and Amnesty International, this powerful new work by City Garage playwright Charles Duncombe resets Euripides famous tragedy in the war-torn Darfur of today. At its heart, the familiar characters of the ancient story-Queen Hecuba, her women, Cassandra, Andromache-watch the destruction of their city, are driven from their homeland, and taken away as slaves. In the foreground are events of today and the recent past: the wars in Darfur, and Congo, Rwanda, Chechnya, Bosnia, and the violence endured by the women and children victimized in those conflicts. "The geopolitical realities in Duncombe's freewheeling text range from the harrowing statistics of recent genocides to sardonic swipes at our blog-infested society. Darfur, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, overpopulation, climate change and more punctuate the same gender positions that have driven this saga since its Peloponnesian War premiere...Duncombe and director Fr d rique Michel pull few punches in the wake of burning Illium...this company watershed is a triumph."--"Critic's Choice" Los Angeles Times

Beaumarchais's notorious comedy was the most scandalous play of the 18th century-and its most incredible theatrical success. In this new translation-adaptation by Fr d rique Michel and Charles Duncombe, Beaumarchais's clever servants outwit, manipulate, and ultimately humiliate their corrupt master, the Count Almaviva, exposing him for the fraud he is. So subversive was the play considered in its depiction of the ruling classes that during World War II, Vichy France would not allow it to be performed. Michel and Duncombe bring it to new and vigorous life: a witty, sexy, outrageous, and delightful attack on privilege and hypocrisy."A shrewd use of artifice as content distinguishes The Marriage of Figaro at City Garage, Freder que Michel and Charles Duncombe's new translation-adaptation of Pierre Beaumarchais' 1784 assault on the aristocracy, the source, of Mozart's deathless opera, hits its marks from the opening prologue and continues thus thereafter...Michel and Duncombe knowingly use the lunatic convolutions of farce to strike more profound cultural targets....adroitly articulate."--"Critic's Choice," Los Angeles Times"The style is the substance. The idiocy of so abusing the limited energy we're given in one lifetime is a statement on the way we feel so obliged, if not honored, to be tethered to puppet strings... this] new translation transfers the subtleties of French idiom very smoothly into English."--"Go," LA Weekly

Nominated for "Best Adaptation" by the LA Weekly, and a "Critic's Choice" in the Los Angeles Times, this sparkling new translation/adaptation of Moliere's classic comedy le Bourgeois Gentilhomme was described by the LA Times as a "gracefully loopy souffl " and an "unguarded hoot." Wealthy and foolish Monsieur Jourdain is in love with the Countess Dorim ne and aches to be what he is not-a member of the aristocracy. Determined to overcome his low birth with an education in high style, he unwittingly surrounds himself with charlatans and swindlers who gleefully take his money and prey on his innocence. Originally written by Moliere as a "comedy ballet" for Louis XIV, this new translation re-imagines the play for today's audience, transporting us into an extravagant fantasy world of song, dance, and upper class nonsense with a French accent."With a generous soupcon of witty anarchy...this sleek City Garage take on Moliere's deathless satire of nouveau riche pretensions and aristocratic machinations is nominally avante garde, but mainly an unguarded hoot....With many wicked analogies to modern mores, Michel and Duncombe slyly tailor our times into their tart adaptation, complete with anachronisms, nonstop postures, and purposely limp songs....everyone embraces the formalized mischief with lan.""Critic's Choice," Los Angeles Times"Frederique Michel and Charles Duncombe's fresh and bawdy translation-adaptation serves up a bouquet of comedic delights.""Go," LA Weekly

A troubled young woman awakes one morning to find her deceased mother busying herself around her apartment... A man makes the desperate attempt to free himself from the year 1905... A hard-boiled babe goes joyriding with the Almighty in a '62 Plymouth Fury (God's favorite) but she's got murder on her mind... Vikings invade Santa Monica... A recently widowed man finds his house slowly filling with the soil from his wife's grave...With a playful touch like a razor's swipe, these eighteen stories explore the mysterious landscape that exists between the real and the unreal - a territory of desire, heartache, sensuality, of brief human connection and the devastation of permanent loss. "A humorous and harrowing meditation on modern-day angst... poignantly exploring love, loss, and the communication barriers between men and women." - LA Weekly

Winner of the Fratti/Newman Award for Political Playwriting. A million dollars to the most patriotic man or woman in America - and America does the voting Do you love your country? Do you stand united? Do you support our troops? Do you have what it takes to make it to the final round?A man reports to a testing center for his final casting interview. There are a lot of forms to fill out. Then there's his psychological profile, his medical testing, and his background check. The questions never seem to stop. Some of them seem awfully personal, some of them almost seem like an invasion of privacy. Don't worry, his interviewers assure him. It's all part of the process. All part of getting selected for the most exciting new reality show in America..."Patriot Act is a very simple piece of political theater but not a simplistic one. Like the would-be contestant, we don't realize until it's too late that each of the man's answers to his interviewers' questions has clicked a lock on his freedom. The frightening thing is that no matter what replies the man (or we) supplies, the judges are likely to interpret them as unreliable and persuade their prisoner that even if he were innocent of any suspected wrongdoing, it is in the country's best interests that he go along with whatever the government declares as truth... Patriot Act is not at all a disposable piece of agitprop likely to fade with the legislation for which it is named. It is a peculiar examination of gullible America's trust in authority that finds us fatally incurious about the matter." - LA Weekly