|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Strangerer:
One of the books on President Bush’s 2006 vacation reading list was Albert Camus’ absurdist tale of senseless murder, The Stranger. In hopes that the French philosopher might shed some light on the recent political clime – or vice versa – Mickle Maher’s new play The Strangerer collides several of Camus’ works with the first Bush/Kerry presidential debate in 2004. The formalities of the debate are overturned as Bush and Kerry struggle with the question not of if or why an innocent man should be killed (the man in question being moderator Jim Lehrer), but rather what is the proper manner in which to go about killing him. The Strangerer is part political satire, part classical drama, and part contemporary debate. A murder mystery with the murderers in plain view, it asks one of the most important questions of our day: Why does our president want to kill a lot of innocent people?
Writer Mickle Maher acknowledges, “Trying to say something smart about Bush is monumentally frustrating. The theater that attempts it is today's Sisyphus, an example of absurd futility, forever pushing the stone up the mountain only to have it come crashing back down. But of course, Camus said Sisyphus was made happy by his torture, so who am I to gripe?" In addition to The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus, Maher pulls from Camus’ other works, such as The Plague and The Fall, in an attempt to make sense of what he calls “the noise and blather of the current administration.”
Spirits To Enforce:
Twelve characters, twelve phones. Utilizing choral elements in both the theatrical and musical sense, Spirits to Enforce collides superheroes, telemarketing, and Shakespeare's The Tempest in a single rusting submarine. Onstage throughout, the cast relates the play’s action via telephone, their twelve voices intertwining a myriad of related storylines and themes to reveal a world both fantastic and familiar.
Dense, multilayered, many-storied, comic, melancholic, and sublimely mundane, this is — if ever such a thing existed.
Mickle Maher is a co-founder of Theater Oobleck, and has been a playwright/adaptor/translator for twenty years. He has authored eight plays for Oobleck, including Spirits to Enforce, Hunchback Variations, and An Apology for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening. Other plays include Cyrano (translator) and The Cabinet for Redmoon, and Lady Madeline for Steppenwolf. His works have been produced throughout Chicago, the country, and even Slovenia. His children’s book, Master Stitchum and the Moon, is published by Bollix Books.