On the Verge or The Geography of Yearning
Play Description
Among the most imaginative works of the 20th century, Eric Overmyer’s ON THE VERGE OR THE GEOGRAPHY OF LEARNING captivates with its abundant invention. Three Victorian lady travelers take it upon themselves to discover the mystery of things as they set out for Terra Incognita and discover the future.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (3 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 95 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
- Productions
Press Quotes
“Cross the wordplay of S J Perelman with the world-in-a-time-warp vision of Caryl Churchill and you might approximate the special flavor of ON THE VERGE. In Eric Overmyer’s chimerical new comedy, three Victorian lady explorers set out on an adventure that takes them to darkest Africa, highest Himalaya and Terra Incognita … Blending Tom Stoppard’s limber linguistics with the historic overview of a Thornton Wilder, Mr Overmyer takes his audience on a mirthful safari … spinning into time travel. Three ‘sister sojourners’, each a prototypical Victorian lady explorer, equipped with dialog as pithy as their helmets, thwack their machetes through the wilderness while telling tales of past jaunts among the natives. As intrepid trekkers, they put the lie to any charge that they are representatives of a weaker sex. Mr Overmyer has written a play that is joyfully feminist. Heroines to their heart, the explorers can accommodate themselves to any emergency (natural or man-made), although they are momentarily disoriented as they approach modern times. In their kaleidoscopic adventure, they journey through a rain forest of hundreds of artifacts from the future — household utensils, mechanical contrivances and a side-view automobile mirror that reads ‘Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.’ How does one deal with such a chimera? … In the play there is wit within the palaver. As one traveler says, ‘I have seen the future and it is slang.’ The author himself is an ecologist of language and a shrewd observer of our quest to control our environment — and the environment of others … A frolicsome jaunt through a continuum of space, time, history, geography, feminism and fashion, Mr Overmyer’s cavalcade is on the verge of becoming a thoroughly serendipitous journey.” —Mel Gussow, The New York Times
Author(s)
Eric OvermyerEric Overmyer is a playwright and a television writer and producer. He graduated as a theater major from Reed College in 1973. His plays include ON THE VERGE, THE HELIOTROPE BOUQUET, IN A PIG'S VALISE, DON QUIXOTE DE LA JOLLA, NATIVE SPEECH, MI VIDA LOCA, IN PERPETUITY THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE, and DARK RAPTURE. Mr Overmyer has written extensively for television, including for Homicide: Life on the Street, The Wire and Law & Order, and has been nominated for two Emmy Awards. He received an Edgar Award for the television feature Rear Window. Overmyer was also a co-creator of the HBO series Treme, about musicians in post-Katrina New Orleans.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 2/28/2014 |
| Pages | 88 |
| ISBN | 9780881455809 |
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them 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:
First produced by Center Stage, Baltimore
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypublishing.com
Upcoming and Recent Productions
Professional
Nonprofessional
Related Plays
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
KRAKEN explores the true-life encounter between legendary American novelists Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1856. Melville, in the midst of a spiritual journey to the Holy Land, stops to visit with his old friend Hawthorne, now the American consul in Liverpool. As they spend the evening together, they discuss and confront their, fears, failures, things of this world and the next, books and publishers, and all possible and impossible matters.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Two imprisoned young women, one African American and the other white, form a perilous bond. As they serve time they forge a plan for survival. They practice hard. If they don’t get it right they’ll lose everything: the outside world is even more dangerous to their friendship than the jail itself. Exploring the fierce dreams of youth and the brutal reality of adulthood in 1950’s segregated America.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (4 female, Multiethnic Cast)Full Length Drama (about 75 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
A factual dramatic account of the advancing history of the Brown v. Board of Ed Supreme Court decision in counterpoint with the personal drama of Senator Strom Thurmond's unacknowledged mixed race daughter, Essie Mae Williams Washington.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 85 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Based on the actual minutes of a women’s club formed in rural South Dakota in 1934, this poignant comedy charts 70 years of personal and national history, from skinning skunks and julebukking in the ’30s to restoring native prairie in the new millennium.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (5 female)Full Length Comedy (about 140 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
A Yale professor recruits a student to be a spy in this spine-tingling tale about the birth of the CIA in the 1940s.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Danny Petrelli, a 60-year-old man, wakes up one morning as his 23-year-old self. When he attempts to reconnect with his future wife and rectify mistakes he has made, he inadvertently changes (and possibly destroys) everything he values. LOST IN TIME is about the destructive power of manipulating your life. And the losses you will suffer if you don't embrace what's in front of you, in the here and now.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Three generations of a family move ever westward, restless, seeking. As they migrate from Croatia, through Wyoming, and on to Japan, the land of opportunity keeps moving, and the past keeps catching up. This unforgettable family provides an exquisitely rendered commentary on the human condition.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 135 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
A disillusioned young woman traveling with her hippie mother’s ashes. A disillusioned TV star hitch-hiking across America. A Russian dissident turned motel owner. A lovesick farmer and a kidnapped beauty queen. Conjoined twins escaping a cult once led by a dead Senator reincarnated as a real-estate developer. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF TULSA LOVECHILD is a freeway fantasia about love and hope.
Production Info
Cast: 13 total (6 female, 7 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
TEATIME AT GOLGOTHA is “a heady, wittily self-effacing drama” about the unenviable search for meaning in what is — in all likelihood — a cold, cold world. Following the stories of Longinus after the crucifixion, the last hours in the life of astronomer Tycho Brahe, and a modern day hostage situation, TEATIME leaps back and forth through the millennia, drawing meanings, parallels, and conclusions that the characters themselves characteristically fail to notice.
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (1 female, 8 male)Full Length Drama (about 80 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
The true story of two actors who hired themselves out to the Long Beach Police Department in 1914 to entrap “social vagrants” in public restrooms. Thirty-one men were arrested, and the ensuing scandal led to an ordinance against “oral sodomy” in California.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
GIRLS IN TROUBLE is a striking and ferocious play which dares to explore the controversial history of abortion, through its life-changing affect on women across several generations. This darkly humorous, shocking work is sure to inspire spirited debate.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (4 female, 3 male, Multiethnic Cast)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.95
Play Description
The Left is personified in Richard Nelson’s idealistic and intellectual characters, whose fascinating friendships are as fraught as the political history through which they’ve lived.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes