Viet Rock
This play is included in the collection:
Play Description
Through the use of dialogue, music, chant, dance, pantomime, and image, the play satirizes attitudes toward the Vietnam war. It attempts to present the very complicated, tragic, and helplessly divided atmosphere that prevailed in America, and to look at hapless emotions in a hopelessly complex mythology of war. With the technique of “transformations” the play unfolds. People change from flowers to individuals to machines, from one character to another, from character into actor into bystander and back to character or abstract image or comment; women change to men and back to women again. Americans change into Vietnamese into Viet Cong and back to American soldiers. The line of the play follows several soldiers from birth, to induction, to indoctrination, to overseas, to battle, to fraternization, and to death. Along the way we meet their mothers, their instructors, their superiors, their elected officials, their friends and their enemies, their tormentors and finally their ghosts. A strong ensemble spirit emerges via the actors' technique and interaction with one another and with the audience. The form of the play is constructed so as to manifest the reality of theatre — not as a replica of or comment upon life but as a part of life — and thus restore its urgency and relevance.
Production Info
Cast: 13 total (6 female, 7 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
Press Quotes
“The work of no other contemporary American playwright can boast the extraordinary scope of that of Megan Terry. In the course of over thirty years her collected plays have become a virtual compendium of the styles of modern drama, ranging from collaborative ensemble work to performance art to naturalism … Beginning with her earliest work, she has devised a politically and socially activist theater, using a diversity of nonrealistic forms to challenge a culture which has systematically disparaged nonlinear drama. Megan Terry remains a key figure in the development of the American alternative theater.” —David Savran, In Their Own Words: Contemporary American Playwrights
“… the best new play since THE BRIG and THE CONNECTION … the theme and scope the variety and density of VIET ROCK would have excited Brecht.” —Richard Schechner, T D R
“VIET ROCK vividly expressed is a breakthrough … extraordinary on at least two counts. It is the first realized theatrical statement about the Vietnam war … and a rare instance of theater confronting issues broader than individual psychology … I would like to assert my admiration.” —Michael Smith, Village Voice
“Wild … an acid indictment … ensemble acting effects that have to be seen to be believed … VIET ROCK has been brilliantly staged, these Open Theater types are contributing something new to the concept and technique of stagecraft.” —Tomo., Variety
“VIET ROCK is more important than what it means … it is an original and gutsy bit of theatre. It is a theatrical demonstration that … ambushes an audience with an extraordinary evening of theater and … it wins as an emotional gut shot at the tragedy of the times.” —Al McConagha, Minneapolis Tribune
Author(s)
Megan TerryMegan Terry's plays include BREAKFAST SERIAL, CALM DOWN MOTHER, KEEP TIGHTLY CLOSED IN A COOL DRY PLACE, HOTHOUSE, EX-MISS COPPER QUEEN ON A SET OF PILLS, THE PEOPLE VS RANCHMAN, GOONA GOONA, MOLLIE BAILEY'S TRAVELING FAMILY CIRCUS: FEATURING SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF MOTHER JONES, PRO GAME, BODY LEAKS, SOUND FIELDS, and OBJECTIVE LOVE. She has published over forty-five plays. Most have been translated and produced worldwide. She has won a number of major writing awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Obie Award for APPROACHING SIMONE. She was elected to lifetime membership by the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, installation at the Kennedy Center, Washington, DC, in recognition of: "Distinguished service to the profession by an individual of acknowledged national stature." In 1992 she was named Nebraska Artist of the Year. Ms Terry is photographer and co-editor of Right Brain Vacation Photos, New Plays and Production Photographs 1972 – 1992. Ms Terry has a degree from the University of Washington, certificates in acting, directing, and design from the Banff School of Fine Arts, Banff, Alberta, Canada, and was awarded the Yale-ABC Fellowship: Writing for the Camera at Yale University. She has had a long association with the Omaha Magic Theatre, in Omaha, Nebraska, as playwright in residence, photographer, performer, and musician.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 12/1/2000 |
| Pages | 180 |
| ISBN | 9780881451856 |
Related Plays
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
I have always loved the story in Henry James’ novel, Washington Square, and I needed to find something for a young Hispanic actress I wanted to work with, so with Ron Bashford’s help, we adapted the story. As we worked on it, we found that it fit really well in the early Sixties, on the verge of the huge social revolution. This time period also made sense because the female lead was trapped in the fifties by her conservative mother, a successful woman who was ashamed of having a half-Hispanic child. Sometimes, when you’re working on a play, things fall in place — the backstory for our play (I say “our” because Ron Bashford was such a close collaborator) arose effortlessly out of the story we were presenting. As the last scene takes place, the young Hispanic daughter hears the beginning of a Sixties protest and leaves the house to join them.
—Constance Congdon
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (4 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
In the Bolivian jungle, Che Guevara is captured and held in a one-room schoolhouse. For two days neither the Bolivian President nor the U.S. State Department is able to decide Che’s fate. The young schoolteacher of the village insists that she be given permission to speak to the famous revolutionary. Her conversations with Che — based on historical fact — are the heart of the play.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Set in 1963, LAST DAYS OF THE HIGH FLIER is the story of a young man waiting for his life to begin, the mysterious ex-pilot who enters his life, and the intricate dance of friendship, betrayal, and forgiveness that takes place between the two men. Historically based, the story revolves around political conspiracies, including the CIA’s secret war in Laos. It also addresses personal struggles that occurred almost a half-century ago but still have relevance in an age in which intelligence failures and civil liberties threats dominate the news.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (4 female, 6 male)Full Length Drama (about 130 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Memory and song converge as Judy Holliday, the “dumb blonde” with a genius IQ, charts her experiences from Greenwich Village to Broadway and beyond with notable show business alums, including Leonard Bernstein and Marilyn Monroe.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male, doubling)Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
It’s 1961. Fidel has turned Havana upside down. Veronica’s family has fled the country, leaving her behind to find a new family. Pregnant and ready to participate in whatever Fidel throws her way, she is not fully prepared for everything the revolution has in store. ILLUMINATING VERONICA is a play about betrayal and hope that looks at Castro’s Cuba, not as a demonic state, nor as a perfect paradise, but as a work in progress.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 115 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
It is Armistice Day, 1962. Three veterans of the World Wars exchange army stories, lament the vagaries of age, and wait for the arrival of Harry, their old army buddy. OLD SOLDIERS is about friendship, loyalty, and the very personal realities of war.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (1 female, 3 male)Short Drama (about 50 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
LOOPED depicts an actual 1965 recording session in which an intoxicated Tallulah Bankhead required eight hours to dub a single line from her final movie Die! Die! My Darling! while antagonizing the film editor assigned to the job.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem for the trial of the century.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (1 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
Rural Central Texas, 1962. Dave, still lives in the old family home that his father built. The family is still the only Jewish family in this isolated country town. As his son Nathan faces the (to him) bizarre prospect of becoming Bar Mitzvah, his wife Rachel faces an even greater crisis of faith. As Dave encounters the remoteness of his community, and the even further distance from the faith of his father, his entire family faces the legacy left behind by their immigrant forebears: What do the Jews believe? This is a fictionalized account of the next generation of the family introduced in THE IMMIGRANT, and the second play in Mark Harelik’s Texas saga of one Jewish-American family.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95
Play Description
In 1962, on location in Rome, a fading movie star and his wife are entangled in an unraveling web of secrets, lies, and sexual impropriety that threatens to tear apart their family.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
It’s the summer of ’69, and the death of music icon Judy Garland has emboldened her gay followers. A routine police raid on an underground Greenwich Village hotspot erupts into a full-scale riot, the impetus of the modern gay rights movement. That’s the well-known, oft-rehearsed myth of Stonewall, anyhow. Smash that myth against the vivid theatrical imagination of playwright Ike Holter, add a howling live rock ‘n’ roll band, and you get HIT THE WALL. Remixing this historic confrontation reveals ten unlikely revolutionaries, caught in the turmoil and fighting to claim “I was there.”
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (3 female, 7 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes