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Preston Jones

PRESTON JONES

  (1936 - 1979)
Nationality:    USA
email:    n/a     Website:    n/a

Literary Agent:    ICM Partners  

Preston Jones, born and raised in Albuquerque, graduated from the University of New Mexico in 1960. Two years later he joined the Dallas Theater Center, where he became actively involved with the professional company as an actor, a director, and finally as a playwright. When A Texas Trilogy was first produced by the Dallas Theater Center under Paul Baker's direction, the three plays broke all attendance records and received standing ovations. The first play in the trilogy, The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia, was chosen by the American Playwrights Theatre as its 1975-76 offering, and the play was produced by numerous regional, university, and professional theater companies. In the spring of 1976, the John F. Kennedy Center presented A Texas Trilogy (The Last Meeting, Lu Ann Hampton Laverty Oberlander, and The Oldest Living Graduate) in repertory. The plays ran for a ten-week season starting on April 20, under the direction of Alan Schneider. On August 5 the trilogy was brought back to the Kennedy Center for a five-week run prior to its New York opening at the Broadhurst Theatre on September 21. Richard L. Coe, the drama critic for the Washington Post, wrote: "Not since the Philadelphia premiere of Death of a Salesman have I been so profoundly satisfied . . . . The audience stood and cheered and I crouched in my seat fingering the tears from my eyes." A few years after the success of A Texas Trilogy in New York, in 1979, news reported that Preston had died due to complications in surgery for a bleeding ulcer. He was in his early forties. It was a sad day. He had a great future that we shall never see or know.
from the Beinecke Library website at Yale University

Research:    http://www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu/research/a-z/jones.php

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

         Juneteenth         Last Meeting Of the Knights Of the White Magnolia, The         Lu Ann Hampton Laverty Oberlander         Oldest Living Graduate, The         Place On the Magadela Flats, A         Remember         Santa Fe Sunshine

Juneteenth

Synopsis:
a newcomer to a small Texas town is the object of a practical joke involving Juneteenth, the celebration of the emancipation of the slaves

Notes:
in Holidays

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

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Genre:
Short Play One act

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Last Meeting Of the Knights Of the White Magnolia, The

Synopsis:
a fraternity of Bradleyville's "good ole boys," which meets in the now decrepit Cattleman's Hotel, the Knights of the White Magnolia has long since lost sight of its espoused concern with patriotism and racial purity and has become an excuse for a handful of cronies to share a game of dominoes and a spot of liquid refreshment. Having dwindled steadily in membership, the lodge has unaccountably found a new recruit from a neighboring town, and his appearance gives the remaining members a chance to resurrect their ancient "mystic" initiation rite, an event which, for all its intentional seriousness, becomes one of the wildest, funniest scenes imaginable. However, in the end the inevitable disillusionment sets in-sending the would-be applicant scurrying for home and leaving the others to contemplate the wreckage and loss of still another glory that once was.

Notes:
One of the three independent plays comprising the celebrated A Texas Trilogy

1st Produced:
Dallas Theater Center, TX, USA >>>    1974-1975 Season

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Dramatists Play Service, NY,    -

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:
Comedy Drama Comedy

Parts:
Male:  9            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Lu Ann Hampton Laverty Oberlander

Synopsis:
the place is Bradleyville, a small town in West Texas, where Lu ann Hampton, seventeen and a high school cheerleader, dreams of far-off places, but settles for marriage with a friend of her Korean War veteran brother. In the following act, ten years later, now divorced and working as a "beauty technician," Lu ann meets and marries Corky Oberlander, only to lose him in a fatal auto accident. then, a decade later again, we find Lu ann still in Bradleyville, with her teenaged daughter, her now alcoholic brother, and a mother who has been enfeebled by a stroke. In a moving scene she is visited by her high school sweetheart, who has become a successful preacher, and as they review the past it becomes eloquently clear that Lu ann's life has come full circle-with her hopes and dreams sacrificed to the realities of everyday life, and with only her resolute spirit to sustain her towards the inevitable grayness of the future.

Notes:
One of the three independent plays comprising the celebrated A Texas Trilogy

1st Produced:
Dallas Theater Center, TX, USA >>>    1974-1975 Season

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Dramatists Play Service, NY,    -

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:
Comedy Drama Comedy

Parts:
Male:  8            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Oldest Living Graduate, The

Synopsis:
the locale, once again, is Bradleyville, Texas, where Colonel Kinkaid, a crusty World War I veteran now confined to a wheelchair, regales anyone who will listen with tales of "Black Jack" Pershing and his days of campaigning in France. His son, an aggressive wheeler-dealer, learns that the Colonel is the oldest living graduate of Mirabeau B. Lamar Military academy, and when the school comes forth with the idea of holding a celebration in honor of the old man, the son persuades them to do so in Bradleyville-hoping to benefit from the resulting publicity. But getting his Father to agree to the plan, and to parting with a piece of property which the son covets for commercial purposes, are other matters. Resolute to the end, Colonel Kinkaid resents being the "oldest living anything" and, with his dying breath, continues to resist the loss of his ideals to expediency, and to a way of life which he can only regard as shoddy, second-rate and lacking in the values which he has striven to uphold.

Notes:
One of the three independent plays comprising the celebrated A Texas Trilogy

1st Produced:
Dallas Theater Center, TX, USA >>>    1974-1975 Season

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Dramatists Play Service, NY,    -

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:
Comedy Drama Comedy

Parts:
Male:  6            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Place On the Magadela Flats, A

Synopsis:
the time is 1956, the place a small cattle ranch in drought-stricken New Mexico. Carl Grey, a former prisoner of war in World War II, is struggling to make a go of it, battling the elements and worrying about providing for his pregnant wife, Charlene. His problems are not eased by his happy-go-lucky younger brother, Frank, who is often more of a hindrance than a help-and with whom Carl finds himself in growing conflict. although leavened with humorous scenes involving their colorful neighbors, and the denizens of the Busy Bee Cafe, the core of the action focuses on the mounting tension between the two brothers which, despite Charlene's attempts at moderation, ultimately reaches the breaking point when Frank falters at a crucial moment-bringing on an explosive final scene and a split for which there is no longer any hope of reconciliation.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Dallas Theatre Centre    1976

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Dramatists Play Service, NY,    -

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:  4            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Remember

Synopsis:
an actor reminisces whilst visiting his childhood home.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Dallas Theater Center, TX, USA >>>    1978-1979 Season

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:
-

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Santa Fe Sunshine

Synopsis:
the place is Santa Fe, New Mexico; the time the late 1950s; and the scene is the adobe house of Gino Bruno, a genial but largely untalented sculptor who believes that, at long last, he has created a masterpiece. His long-time friend, an equally bumbling painter named Claude Nordley, refuses to look at Bruno's sculpture, and professes to hate everybody and everything-except himself, and the cheap local wine known as "Santa Fe Sunshine." In fact no one gets a peek at Bruno's creation until it is unveiled at a disastrous party arranged by a scheming gallery owner and attended by a rich hillbilly art patron and an assortment of resident oddballs: a homosexual poet; a wood carver skilled at faking local artifacts; a college-girl folk singer; and her over-intense boyfriend, a would-be writer. as the wine flows, and personalities clash, the play reaches its very funny climax-in which all present learn something about life, themselves and the vagrant nature of the muses they would serve.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Dallas Theater Center, TX, USA >>>    1976-1977 Season

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Dramatists Play Service, NY,    -

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:
Comedy

Parts:
Male:  6            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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