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Jim Lawry

JIM LAWRY  (1940 - )

 Nationality:    USA
email:    Click here to contact     Website:    Click here

Literary Agent:    n/a


Jim Lawry (James Lawry). Scientist, physician, University professor retired. Now playwright full time. associated with Taffety Punk Theatre, Washington DC.

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below is a list of Jim Lawry's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

 Alighieri's Assent         Cain's Pawn         Cucumber Song         Dropped         Enemy Aliens         Fire In Da Hole         Gomorrah Revisited         Hard Landing         Hostia Ad Absurdum         Ice Artist         It's A Crime To Be Inert, Mother         Martyr To Music, A         Otto's Inferno         Palolo Moon Or Strap On         Rite Of Spring, A         Stalingrad, A Christmas Play         We Are All Music

Alighieri's Assent

Synopsis:
During Patton's landing in Sicily in 1943, alighieri, an excommunicated monk, returns to his monastery, to hear his commandant's confession.

Notes:
aka Mezzoviolino, 'Half A Violin'

1st Produced:

Organisations:
Taffety Punk Theare Company as part of the Page to Stage Festival

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
80 min Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Cain's Pawn

Synopsis:
Two brothers consumed by war's elixir over centuries, keep war's resolution eternally open

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama 90 min Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  5            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Cucumber Song

Synopsis:
My story concerns a woman carrying a cucumber. I remember her from the Golden City. They called her Nazar. Our cucumber woman. Fascinating history really. Turned me around. It is the kind of story we hear far away in the mountains. If you expect lightning and thunder you'll be disappointed. You won't believe it is happening, but each time sun and moonrise, and bees visit Red Everlastings, each time it is happening, but you still won't believe. I still have a hard time. and here I am back in the Golden City at Hezekiah's tunnel near the pool of Siloam and the Gihon Spring, the center of the world. I come to remember. Hear that noise? arab areas are filled with nasty kids and dogs.

Notes:
BaTTLE is between Middle Eastern And Western views of reality (What Aspects do we choose to see And why? How do we interpret what's before our eyes?) A reporter changes evidence implicating Nazar, A sage And healer, to explore how cultural And religious differences And motives provoke violence And fanaticism.

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
Golden Thread

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama 90min

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  2            Other:  <5

Further Reference:
-

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Dropped

Synopsis:
Bill Werder, a bombardier in the Gomorrah raids on Hamburg 1943, audrey, his wife, Julia, their daughter, Dedee, a resistance fighter. BILL bails out over Germany, is rescued by Dedee of allied Resistance. Bill returns home experiencing severe post-traumatic stress; his marriage falters, he has an affair with Dedee and dies; then Julia and Dedee live together into their sixties. Themes: How do aging children penetrate the personalities of their parents when living apart from the sites of their memories? Play explores aUDREY, JULIa and DEDEE and their differing relations to BILL over their lives. The women are forced to take care of others and respond to everybody else until they've lost themselves. after BILL dies they must rediscover themselves and what they want to be, but now time becomes an actor and is of the essence. We think we are stable unto ourselves and our own persons, but we're changed by everyone we meet and all the ways we meet them.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
Taffety Punk Theatre

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  3            Other:  voices

Further Reference:
-

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Enemy Aliens

Synopsis:
In Enemy aliens, a San Francisco immigrant fishing family, confronts the war-time frenzy. after the Pearl Harbor attack 1941, Mario, their American born son, returns to SF and his Italian family after dishonorable discharge, now designated Enemy aliens by FDR'S decree, to confront his grandfather's funeral, his father's rage and his mother's seizures. 90 min

Notes:
aka Killing Line, or Il Sultano

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
Taffety Punk Theater

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama 90 min Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  2            Other:  4

Further Reference:
-

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Fire In Da Hole

Synopsis:
Shakedown and Joe's harmonica's up for grabs

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama 5 min Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Gomorrah Revisited

Synopsis:
Memory struggles against forgetting during Operation Gomorrah in 1943 and again in 1963, as repressed hostilities erupt in murder and suicide

Notes:
reworked As Tales Of A Summer Night

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama 90 min Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Hard Landing

Synopsis:
DR NaGEL: When I was interning at the Brigham they told me we remember the patients most like us and those we'd most like to be like. Well, Daniel's mine. Yes and even I, even I, Dr. Ralph Nagel MD and trustee of Stanford University, even I killed a patient that year. No. Not intentionally. I'd missed the diagnosis. (Pause) Yes. He was a remarkable case. Showed me the inferno and all the dark labyrinths of misery and despair available to us all and so close by really. Took a chill on that pole spouting his nonsense about sainthood. Reminds me of the religious sense of the world we glimpse as children, a theme from which I too can never wholly escape. Had a sick man's command of higher things. Even now I'd stake my professional reputation on my observations.. anyway, there I was, presumably sane and certainly healthy, telling my colleagues how a train had passed right through this guy leaving a pile of roses.

Notes:
Two players play All parts. SET: Stage bare except for A pole with A small platform on top center rear. In Scene 1, PROLOGUE, A single club chair; in Scene 2 MOTE IN THE EYE OF GOD, two chairs. In scene 3 CHURCH SCHOOL, two chairs. In scene 4 CONFESSION, A grille separates the two chairs drawn close; in Scene 5 FLaGPOLE, A park bench, In Scene 6 SUBWaY, An old couch.

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
Catalyst Theater

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Hostia Ad Absurdum

Synopsis:
Eva and Hitler H?:How great to see you all here. So you want a story? a story finished in five? But some things are not for me to decide. Like whether we're forgiven. When we die and where. ( Enter EVa listening to ear phones, dancing..) am I still a stranger to you sometimes? EVa: ?Can't hear. (Earphones off) You should be ashamed. H:?a stranger to you don't I sometimes seem? Ignore her. (To audience) Remember me? I'm your fear. Here's my story. EVa:? Philanderer of the worst sort. Irresistibly attractive? How does newness come into the world? I married him out of cowardliness. Now I'm doing something brave. To be born again first you have to. . . H: ?Salvation damnation, the usual. What angel would not wish to speak to me? Last night a priest told me of a change in his church's attitude towards the Eucharistic wafer. For generations Catholic children were taught the wafer must be held in the mouth and allowed to melt. Why is that? To touch it with the teeth is blasphemous. You know what I mean? I'm speaking.

Notes:
text is onlin: http://theaterjblogs.wordpress.com/2007/05/30/5x5-hostia-ad-absurdum/

1st Produced:
Theater J Washington DC    30 May 2007

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Five minute response to Hannah and Martin

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Ice Artist

Synopsis:
Story of Hans, a German wartime physician, Uta his old girlfriend, and Uwe an aphasic artist, twenty years after WWII in Germany when survivors with mangled limbs and minds must suppress old memories to survive postwar society. Meeting by chance, Hans and Uta visit the town where they spent the war to confront their demons. The time is 1943, 1963 and an undefined present. The conceit is that there is no unique time but only separate highly subjective recordings of the past and present that run parallel but often contradictory and rarely intersect.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  1            Other:  1c; doubling possible

Further Reference:
-

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It's A Crime To Be Inert, Mother

Synopsis:
Monolog of a photojournalist in Jerusalem based on 'Hannah and Martin'

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Theater J, Washington DC    2005

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
5 min Monologue One act

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Martyr To Music, A

Synopsis:
The New Jerusalem Quartet takes on a pick up violist with connections

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Catalyst Theater Workshop, Washington    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama 90 min Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Otto's Inferno

Synopsis:
German failure probably had nothing to do with either scientists conspiring to withhold their ideas or Heisenberg's miscalculation. Germany believed the war would be over shortly and only invested in weapons programs doable within two years. Ironically, unknown to the allies, Germany's program was not a real threat. Otto's Inferno presents Werner as a vestigial eighteenth century personality struggling to confront a new world as his freedom collapses. Werner, error prone, wants not to believe. "I live between Machiavelli and my father. My father told me it doesn't take much strength to pull a trigger but more to get up every morning and go to work. The saddest thing is wasted talent. I think it's about regret. I couldn't give as much as was needed." Otto contrasts. after Hiroshima Otto becomes depressed and immerses himself in the dark side of existence as he's now forced to confront what he shut out of himself to become an objective scientist. Lise saw they had fission when Otto didn't see it himself. Otto becomes Dionysus to oppose apollo. When the scientists in Farm Hall find bugs and realize that they may die as Nazi criminals Otto fears dissolution of their individual rational minds, even dismemberment when Claire suggests torture.

Notes:
Otto's Inferno concerns Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner And eight German scientists incarcerated in Farm Hall in 1945 showing how German scientific hubris collided headlong with Allied scientific power. Why had Germany not built An Atomic bomb After Hahn And Meitner had discovered nuclear fission in 1938? Play contrasts Noh's understatement, Abstraction, And refinements with western theater images, to reveal the Yugen or the essence or soul of what's beneath the surface. "When you enter Farm Hall, you leave the world." Who is responsible for what human beings create, our 'technical Arrogance' that inflates our hubris when we build what we can think with our minds? How does history change the heads of scientists? Farm Hall's lavish Accommodations included hidden listening And recording devices. These records helped form the play. Characters: Otto, Werner, Claire, Hiroshima, Lise, Fuji (a mute child) chorus of scientists, Oliva, Dido, guards, voices of Edith, Sir Oliver, BBC Stage: Noh space with traditional walkway Adjoins A Western Acting space. Action Alternates between spaces but merges in the last scene.

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama 90min

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  6            Other:  Chorus and others

Further Reference:
-

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Palolo Moon Or Strap On

Synopsis:
Goldsmith a mediocre playwright, having written She Stupps To Conquer that has bombed on broadway, receives a catheter change in hospital and dozes off, entering the play he has written and is trying to direct. In the play, Momus, goddess of satire and ridicule, together with abcynthia, a Bacchusian serving wench, and Sparks their mercurial messenger, conspire to trick Juno, Captain Jove's rigid spouse, by getting Captain Jove to fall in love with Palolo, a rich Samoan Beauty who changes her sex each year when the moon turns. When Juno raises Palolo's veil to see whom her husband is kissing, the moon is already changing, and pandemonium ensues.

Notes:
aka Moon For Mating, A

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
Taffety Punk

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Farce

Parts:
Male:  5            Female:  4            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Rite Of Spring, A

Synopsis:
The premiere Parisian performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama 60 min Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Stalingrad, A Christmas Play

Synopsis:
a child sends a Christmas package to her father in the Battle of Stalingrad

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama 15 min One act

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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We Are All Music

Synopsis:
alfred North Whitehead who taught at Harvard during the 1920's describing himself as the typical Victorian Englishman, is interviewed by a modern member of the Christian Right. The interviewer, frustrated by Whitehead's answers, blurts out the question he's been waiting to ask -

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Theater J Washington, DC    2005

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama, 5 min

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  -            Other:  1 m/f

Further Reference:
-

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