Cover photo by Paula Barish

Dog Plays

Robert Chesley

This play is included in the collection:

Description

A trilogy of interconnected one-act plays, whose subject matter is the AIDS epidemic. In (WILD) PERSON, TENSE (DOG) Dog and Buck, former lovers, run into each other at a bar. Both now have AIDS. Buck’s disease is in the advanced stages, and Dog refuses to recognize and acknowledge their shared past and, inevitably, their shared future. In THE DEPLORATION OF ROVER Fido is angry that Rover, in spite of being sick, continues to act on his desires. And in HOLD Dog reminisces with Lad, his lover, as he undresses him, but Lad, who has died of AIDS, exists now only in Dog’s imagination.

Production Info

Cast: 5 total (5 male)
Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
Reviews

Press Quotes

“These strange, wonderful, heartbreaking plays go beyond magic realism into something very deep and primal. No matter where he began, in fairy tale or phone sex, Robert Chesley always took his audience someplace new. He could shift from the silly to the dangerous to the tender in the blink of an eye. His plays are not period pieces, but startling glimpses of a recent past that tell us things we badly need to know about our present and future.” —Christopher Bram

“Without question, Robert Chesley is the most incisive gay playwright at work in America today.” —Mark Thompson, The Advocate

“Robert Chesley wrote gut-wrenching plays.” —Linda Winer, Newsday

About the Author

Author

  • Robert Chesley

    Playwright, Composer, Author, Activist. B.A. in Music, Reed College, Portland, Oregon. Robert Chesley is best remembered as a playwright, though he was also an author, critic, and composer. He was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, and taught in private schools in upstate New York for nearly ten years before settling in New York City in 1976. He relocated to San Francisco in the early 1980s where he became a part of the gay theater scene. Chesley composed during the ten-year period 1965 to 1975 and his compositions were almost exclusively for voice. Between 1966 and 1970 he composed 53 songs, mostly to texts by American poets including Emily Dickinson, Willa Cather, and James Agee, and including sixteen settings of the British poet Walter de la Mare. There are also several choral works from the 1970s, with texts by Gertrude Stein and Walt Whitman among others. His few instrumental works include the score to a 1972 film by Erich Kollmar, the "Sonata for Guitar and Harpsichord" (1974), and the "Little Concerto for Two Flutes and String Orchestra" (1968), which was revived in 1991 in a Benson Series concert of Downtown Music Productions, conducted by Mimi Stern-Wolfe. The transformation of Robert Chesley, composer, to Robert Chesley, playwright, roughly coincided with his move to San Francisco. In 1984 the city's Theatre Rhinoceros produced his first one act, HELL, I LOVE YOU and in 1984 Chesley's NIGHT SWEAT became the first produced full-length play to deal with AIDS. In all, Chesley wrote ten full-length and twenty-one one-act plays. Several works were premiered posthumously, and all of his major plays have been published. Robert Chesley died of AIDS in San Francisco at the age of 47 on December 5, 1990.

About the Book

Book Information

Publisher BPPI
Publication Date 10/1/2005
Pages 120
ISBN 9780881452679

Special Notes

Special Notes

Licensees are required to include the original stage producers credits in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
The following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
Dog Plays is produced
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypublishing.com

Productions

Upcoming and Recent Productions

Nonprofessional


7/6/2022 – 8/6/2022
Middlebury College
New York, NY