The Babysitter Photos by Mei-hui Lao

Miss Julie, David Mamet Fan Club, and Other Plays. Introduced by Yvonne Shafer and Frank Hoff. ISBN 0-9656184-9-8, 294 pages, published by Enfield Publishing, P.O. Box 699, Enfield, NH 03748 U.S.A, phone 603-632-7377. Book price: 16 U.S. dollars.

Contents
Introduction		7
Author’s Preface		17
Miss Julie		21
The Babysitter/Germany		69
East Play		131
David Mamet Fan Club		149
More, For the Art of It		181
Remarks Before the Remaining Plays		185
Jesus and the Monkfish		193
Behave, My Sorrow		219
Live Free or Die		239

From a non-Naturalistic reworking of Strindberg’s Naturalistic classic Miss Julie, to a comic debate on the merits of David Mamet, to Live Free or Die, a border-jumping outdoor play with unpredictable changes in time and location, Lance Tait gives us plays that glory in the freedom of the one-act play form, that reject the limitations upon the imagination so often imposed by notions of realism. In addition to dialogue, poetry, movement and music are integral dramatic elements here. These works are uncompromised by prevailing ideas of what theater is; with style and aplomb they show us what theater can be.

Comments by Yvonne Shafer, St. John’s University, New York:
 
"Strindberg’s Miss Julie was hailed as a masterpiece of Naturalism when it was first written. Tait has taken the main themes and created a version incorporating fantasy and dreamlike scenes. An engrossing aura is created through the use of taped voices that speak and sing, commenting on the action, foreshadowing and intensifying it. The play is a combination of poetry and prose with much of the poetry spoken by a chorus…
 
…"The Babysitter … is a representation of modern society and modern marriage, but not the usual realistic representation seen so often in the theatre…
 
…"In Germany, played immediately after The Babysitter, Tait takes the action to another strange level…, [he] creates a new and unconventional set of characters to be played by the same actors who were in The Babysitter.
 
…"In East Play, Tait makes use of a setting which is simultaneously two quite different places: ‘An Eastside Manhattan apartment and at the same time a prison cell in the Chinese Laogai.’ The playwright uses the setting as a means of teaching the audience about Chinese prison camps and about the extension of business into everyday life in our society. …The language ranges from realistic, to farcical, and to poetic. The mixture of comedy and poignancy leads to a strong conclusion in which the Prisoner relates the events in Tiananmen Square:
 
They gutted the camp in the square.
We ran from that place,
Leaving the opera of youth
Stifled under the groaning sky.
 
"David Mamet Fan Club takes on a provocative subject—the merit of playwright David Mamet. …While the piece is apparently an amusing argument about the merits of a particular playwright, in fact it is a reflection on the whole of modern realistic playwriting."

Comments by Frank Hoff, professor emeritus of the University of Toronto and a specialist in Japanese performing arts:
 
…"The gentle surrealism and the musical qualities of Jesus and the Monkfish disarm the spectator who wants to learn more, in a realistic sense, about the characters of this play. … [Carla's] story … at various junctures the play shows stylistic affinities with Western psychological drama. However, with the otherworldly figure of James, and the barrier-free physical setting of the beach, the music, and the repetitive entrances of the male characters, Jesus and the Monkfish goes its own way in setting up a theatrical world of considerable freedom.
 
…"The playwright credits a production, brought to New York from the countryside of Japan, as having a powerful formal influence upon the writing of Behave, My Sorrow. However rewarding it may have been to see the performances presented by the masters of Awaji Island, Tait, with his good knowledge of theater gained beforehand, certainly brought much himself to his first encounter with ritual puppetry.
 
"With Live Free or Die the dramatist departs from the simplicity, yet technical sophistication of Jesus and the Monkfish and Behave, My Sorrow. At an elementary level, the play has commonalties with the other plays in this volume: an 'open' setting, a disrupted linearity to its storytelling, symbolic characters mixed with a sense of the real, a combination of prose and poetry, etc. …After the prelude, a chorus recites a kind of poetry and sings…
 
…"The enormous power of this play lies in its contrasts, sometimes even violent ones, that focus the spectator’s attention. There is the realistic horror of American prison life, the calm and idealism of Zen…"

An excerpt from Lance Tait’s Author’s Preface:
 
…"Of course, art cannot be truly real, its power lies in the fact that it is glorious fakery. Too often those who advocate realistic drama-making are offering pat answers to the difficulties of telling a story. I want to tell these people that detail is no substitute for depth. And depth is not the winning of predictable responses from the audience, moment by moment throughout an entire piece of theater. Whoever is wont to manufacture all the responses in an audience treats their audience like machines."

The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Plays Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. ISBN 1-893598-05-5. With a preface by Tony McGowan and an introduction by Andrew Sutherland. Published by Enfield Publishing, P.O. Box 699, Enfield, NH 03748 U.S.A, phone 603-632-7377. Book price: 15 U.S. dollars.

Contents
Forward		vii
Preface		viii
Introduction		xiii
The Fall of the House of Usher		1
The Imp of the Perverse		33
Landor’s Cottage Revisited		41
Spectacles		55
Hop-Frog		67
The Man of the Crowd		87
The Power of Words		103
The Man That Was Used Up		119
Some Words with a Mummy		139
The Oval Portrait		161
Additional Suggestions for the Actor		172
The Haunted Palace (Song)		174
Afterword		176
Acknowledgments		184

“…consider anew what are the capabilities of the drama – not merely what hither to have been its conventional purposes.”
– E.A. Poe “The American Drama” August, 1845

The author’s foreword:
 
“The scripts of my plays inspired by Poe are the chief components of this book. The plays can be read in any order. Each one-act play has before it a performance note; but I would advise the reader to at least read the performance note to the one-act play, The Fall of the House of Usher before starting on any of the scripts.
 
“In addition to the scripts, this book contains various observations and interpretations by others and myself. Some of these will be of interest to actors and theater directors, some will be of interest to general readers, others will be mostly of interest to students, teachers and literary and theater academics. I hope that this book might meet a few more people than it would if it were designed for only one segment of the populace.
 
“Tony McGowan has generously provided a preface that, among other things, speaks to what many Poe fans are concerned with, that is, how do I deal with fear and effect—do I get it right? Andrew Sutherland has been kind to give us a stimulating introduction that helps to equip us for a new journey into the many dimensions that Poe lives in and that I explore. One of these dimensions is comic. Scholars know that Poe wrote comedy, though few others do. Most people associate comedy with fun and laughter and find any writing about it tedious. Composing anything worthwhile about comedy is very difficult; there has been some trouble saved here by passing up the chance to prepare the reader at length for the comedy that is to follow in these pages.
 
“I imagine that if refinements in the acting of these plays are to be made, they should be made along the lines I mention toward the end of the book.”
 
 
 
An excerpt from the preface by Tony McGowan:
 
“On January 18th, 1845, Poe wrote in The Weekly Mirror, ‘While every art has kept pace with the improving and thinking spirit of the age, [drama] alone has remained stationary, prating about Aeshulus [sic] and the Chorus.’ Poe believed the drama of his era to be the least vibrant of all the art forms; he thought it ‘essentially imitative,’ and to Poe this meant,
 
‘less originality—less independence—less thought—less references to principle—less effort to keep up with the general movement of the time—more supineness—more bullet-headedness—more rank and errant conventionality… than in any single thing in existence which aspires to the dignity of art.’
 
“He concluded that theater ‘[did] not deserve support’ until it could ‘burn or bury the old models.’
 
“The idea that drama needed to ‘burn or bury the old models’ is no mere figure of speech for Poe. His slash and burn attitude made him many enemies in literary circles. ‘Regeneration through violence’ (Richard Slotkin’s phrase of some years ago) can be necessary in drama, in literature, in art. Should not the ‘stationary’ drama’s stubbornly defiant rules be made to burn just as the cruel authorities are burned in ‘Hop-Frog?’
 
“But Poe did not fully mean his condemnation of the theater. Rather he wanted to condemn American uninventiveness at the time of his Weekly Mirror article. Taking a broader view of the writer, we see that "old models" and the theater far from bothered him at times...”
 
 
 
An excerpt from the Introduction by Andrew Sutherland:
 
“Edgar Poe was literally born to the theater.
 
“His mother, Elizabeth Arnold Poe, was one of America’s most popular actresses when Poe was born in 1809. The pretty, talented girl first appeared on the American stage in Boston at age nine before going on to play hundreds of roles. Poe’s father, David Poe, Jr., was a handsome young actor who sometimes appeared opposite Elizabeth. As is the case in so many of Poe’s tales, however, the promise of beauty and art succumbed to the complexity of the human heart and to the terrible fact of mortality. David abandoned his pregnant, 22-year old wife and their two young children before Edgar had reached his first year. Benefit performances and well-publicized charity drives were held for Elizabeth in Boston, Richmond, and New York, but she fell ill and died a few weeks before Poe’s third birthday. Poe and his siblings, an older brother and infant sister, were split up and raised by foster families. During a difficult upbringing in the Allan household, the brilliant Poe seems never to have forgotten the excitement of his mother’s world--the world of the theater.
 
“Poe’s only play, Politian, was never finished, but his poetry and short stories are among the best known and best loved in the English language. Their dramatic elements may go far in explaining the popularity of Poe’s work. The strong characters, singular images, and striking scenery tend to impress readers long after an encounter with pieces such as ‘The Raven’ or ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’ It is the very force of his genius, however, that seems to have prevented modern audiences from appreciating Poe’s depth and range.”