A Brief Interview With the Supreme Being

by Gregory Von Dare

God is not in a good mood, and he’s especially upset about those jokes that begin, “A priest, a minister and a rabbi…”. Some trailer park is going to suffer, that’s for sure.

When his shy teenage daughter commits suicide after being outed as a lesbian, religious Joe B. prays that he be allowed to speak directly with God, because he simply can’t fathom what happened, nor can he stand the grief and guilt he feels. His request is granted, but he must wait until the Supreme Being has a free moment to see him. While he waits, Joe witnesses all kinds of cruelty and excesses caused by religious fundamentalism and intolerance. When Yahweh finally arrives, he’s bitter, narcissistic, belligerent, and not very interested in anything Joe has to say. But, the appearance of an older and wiser God helps Joe put things into perspective and helps him find peace.

(Two-act comedy – about 80 minutes – six characters)

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JAZZED – The Women of F. Scott Fitzgerald

by Gregory Von Dare

Written on commission for the City of West Hollywood in 2012 to promote reading awareness and Fitzgerald as a great American author, this play is a collage of Fitzgerald’s writings, plus pieces from Zelda Fitzgerald and Sheila Graham. It examines the four major women in Fitzgerald’s life and the impact they had on his writing. Some dialog from Tennessee William’s play about Fitzgerald, “Clothes for a Summer Hotel”, is included as well as significant original material to bind the segments together and give the piece an ending. Read by a cast of professional actors (pictured) to a live audience at a performance space in 2012, this play was a highlight of the “Big Read” event.

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Time Apart

by Gregory Von Dare

Odysseus has just finished the Trojan War and is desperate to get home after ten years away. But, in a raging storm, he’s shipwrecked on the island of Calypso, a lonely goddess craving a man to make her happy. When they meet, Odysseus pretends to be a common sailor and Calypso pretends to be a noble woman in exile. Calypso’s three serving girls trick “Oddy” into revealing his true identity, and he tricks “Cally” into revealing her true identity. She claims that she cannot help him get home, her powers are too weak. But she slowly and powerfully seduces him and they have a volcanic affair that includes some raging kinky sex. After two years in residence, Odysseus also sleeps with one of the serving girls and she confesses that Calypso is a powerful goddess who could send him home any time. When the messenger god Hermes arrives to warn Calypso that Zeus is not happy with her for consorting with a mortal, Odysseus gets his chance to escape. Will he make it?

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Gertrude Stein In Hell

by Gregory Von Dare

Two sophisticated women, Beryl and Irene, one a writer and one an editor in New York of the 1950s, pretend to be Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in order to soothe their own troubled relationship. As they play out the life stories of Gertrude and Alice, Beryl and Irene get a renewed sense of their love for each other and come to appreciate the horrors of war-torn Europe in the 20th Century and the difficulties of being an innovator in literature.

(One Act – Two characters – about 60 minutes)

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