Category: Plays


BLOODLINES

Filed Under: Plays
Mar.09, 2010

BloodlinesArtBLOODLINES
By Paula K. Parker
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$8.00
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4m / 1f / 1f teen/ 2 boys/ 4 children / 12 m or f, doubling possible
FEE: $75 per performance
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Ladies and gentlemen of the gallery. Before you are three condemned men. You are here to witness their execution.

Jake and Joey are brothers in crime. They are also brothers in life; tied together by the blood that flows through their veins. But while they share the same blood, they don’t share the same vision. Jake is a hard man, and getting harder. Joey has a softer side, and that could present a problem for Jake and the rest of their ‘family.

The brothers have spent years recruiting street kids into their family of pickpockets and con artists. But while on the biggest score of their career, Joey finally does something he’s wanted to do his whole life. He stands up to Jake, and the repercussions take an unexpected twist as Joey learns a whole new meaning for the word, ‘family.’

“Jake was right. Being part of a family is important. It’s in the blood,” says Joey, the central character in Bloodlines.

Jake was right – in more ways than he knew. Bottom line is, we are all part of a family, the family of man, a family with a vast capacity for love and compassion, vision and passion, grace and beauty. And we all have common blood running through our veins. The problem is, that common blood is tainted; has been since the Fall. How else do you explain our equally vast capacity for hate and violence, fear and selfishness, cruelty and suspicion?

We’ve all been given the magnificent gift of free will; the gift of causation. Some gleefully choose to use this gift for self-glorification or self-gratification. Some use this gift for selfless dedication to the betterment of mankind. But ultimately we all choose to misuse this gift. We all stumble. And fall. We can’t help ourselves. It’s in the blood.

What we need is a transfusion of fresh, untainted blood flowing through our veins.

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Oscar Wilde’s DORIAN GRAY

Filed Under: Oscar Wilde's DORIAN GRAY
Feb.16, 2010

doriancover250Oscar Wilde’s DORIAN GRAY
By Mike Parker
Trade Paper
$8.00
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5m / 8f / 1f child
FEE: $75 per performance
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Performance Rights Request

In the preface to his only novel, 19th Century English playwright, Oscar Wilde commented, All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their own peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.

That novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is undoubtedly a work of art, filled with surface and symbol. It is also a work of exquisite beauty. Few writers of any era can match Wilde for his marvelous manipulation of the English language. And yet, there is something more. Something almost…autobiographical about this curious retelling of the Faust myth.

An adherent to the pseudo-religion of aestheticism, a philosophy that worships beauty above all things, Wilde used The Picture of Dorian Gray to explore the breadth and depth of that peculiar faith. In the end, Oscar Wilde, along with his creation, Dorian Gray, discovers that beauty is a gift, but only for a season. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish, Lord Henry asserts. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets. King Solomon, perhaps, said it better, Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.

Mike Parker’s stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s DORIAN GRAY takes some literary license, the first and most striking of which is the recasting the genders of several pivotal characters, most notably that of Dorian Gray.

“In our society it is not much of a challenge to show a man traveling down the road to perdition,” Parker asserts. “Indeed, it is almost assumed that a man will become debauched and derelict. There is something more disturbing about a young woman who chooses to walk that path.”

For those who would hazard to look beneath the surface to read the symbol of Oscar Wilde’s DORIAN GRAY – be careful. You might find in it the autobiography of your own soul.



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Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice

Filed Under: Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, Plays
Jan.04, 2010

prideprejudicecover250“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

Jane Austen’s PRIDE & PREJUDICE
By Paula K. Parker
Trade Paper
$8.00
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11m / 17f
FEE: $75 per performance
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Performance Rights Request

It is no exaggeration to say that Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is one of the most beloved novels ever written in the English language. 2003 BBC poll placed “Pride and Prejudice” in the #2 spot in their list of the “UK’s Best Loved Books, right behind Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.” A 2008 Australian survey pegged “Pride and Prejudice” on top of the “101 Best Books Ever Written.” The novel is no less popular in the US, having spawned numerous film and stage adaptations including the 1940 version starring Sir Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson and the 2005 version with Matthey MacFayden and Keira Knightley in her Oscar-nominated roll as Lizzy. The 1995 BBC mini-series with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, popularized on PBS stations, is credited with spawning a renewed interest in Jane Austen among American teens. Amazingly, Jane Austen sold the copyright to “Pride and Prejudice” for the sum total of 110 Pounds Sterling, and never earned a penny in royalties.

Paula K. Parker’s sparkling new stage adaptation of the beloved Jane Austen classic, “Pride & Prejudice,” pits the lovely but opinionated Lizzy Bennet against the handsome, wealthy, yet brooding and taciturn Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy in a fencing match where reputations, family fortunes, and hearts are at stake.

Middle Tennessee-based playwright, Paula K. Parker, adapted the novel with an eye for authenticity and a determination to maintain the integrity of the original work. “There is a tendency for some contemporary playwrights to inject their own values or agendas into the script when they adapt a popular novel for the stage or screen,” Ms. Parker declared. “But Jane Austen’s work stands on its own. Lizzy, Mr. Darcy, Mrs. Bennet, and Mr. Wickham are delightful characters as Jane Austen created them, without trying to infect them with 21st Century proclivities.”



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