The Playwrights Database
JEFF SCHWAMBERGER
Nationality: USAemail: Click here to contact Website: Click here
Literary Agent: n/a
Jeff Schwamber lives and writes in La Honda, California - the tiny town in the San Francisco Bay Area fleetingly famous as the epicenter of the literary end of the Sixties psychedelic movement, where Ken Kesey wrote Sometimes a Great Notion, started his Acid Tests, and hung with the Hell's Angels. Things have calmed down considerably. Jeff's most recent play, Gravitation and Ascent, was workshopped at Theatre Rhinoceros after receiving a reading at Damesrocket Theatre in Tucson. In 2002, Gravitation and Ascent was a finalist in the Phoenix Theatre's Festival of Emerging American Theatre. His A Thin Place in the Universe was staged in the Studio at Theatre Rhinoceros after readings at Venue 9 and the 450 Geary Studio. An ealier play, Ourselves, Our Foes, was winner of the American Theatre Ventures National Playwrights Contest and the Sonoma County Playwrights Festival and was produced by the Actors Theatre of Santa RosA. He collaborated on the Belle of Bourbon Street, an adaptation of Georges Feydeau's La Dame de chez Maxim, for TheatreWorks. Jeff's first work, Joshua, was produced in Columbus, Ohio, both by the Ohio State University (where he was a student at the time) and by CupolA. Jeff is currently at work on a new play, tentatively titled Stuff I Thought of in My Head, which was given a sneak preview in late 2005 at San Francisco's Off-Market Theatre by C.A.F.E. in the Reading Room. Jeff has been a member of the Dramatists Guild since 1993. He's a founding member of First Seen (www.firstseen.org), a San Francisco Bay Area Theatre company and playwrights' collective established in 1998 and committed to developing and producing new work. He has been a member of Theatre Bay Area since 1992, and from 1993 to 2001 was a member of ThroughLine, a Bay Area playwrights' group. He was also a participant in TheatreWorks' New Plays Initiative. He has a Ph.D. in Theatre from the Ohio State University and was on the faculty of Ithaca College before moving to the San Francisco Bay AreA. Jeff's work has been supported by grants from the California Arts Council, the Zellerbach Foundation, and the CA$H grants program of Theatre Bay Area (supported by grants from the Hewlett and Packard Foundations and San Francisco's Grants for the Arts).
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below is a list of Jeff Schwamberger's plays - click on a Play Title for more information
Ask Ezekiel Belle of Bourbon Street, The Gravitation and Ascent Joshua Ourselves, Our Foes Stuff I Thought of in My Head Thin Place in the Universe, A Zero PointAsk Ezekiel
Synopsis:
So here goes, says Billy as the play opens. My Dad, His Mission, and My Good Deed. Billy, inspired by his favorite proto-Romantic boy-poet and imaginary best friend Thomas Chatterton, is convinced he has an idea that will make his dad happy -- for like the first time ever. 'Tis a consummation Billy devoutly wishes. He's just disappointed his father woefully by failing to graduate from high school because I flunked just about every class I took. Samuel is a fanatical believer in the theory that Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford -- and not that semi-illiterate seller of malt from the provinces, William Shakespere -- is the Immortal Bard. His life's mission is to find proof. Billy, inspired by Chatterton, contrives a plan that necessitates a daring bit of seemingly innocent forgery. Threaded through the play are Billy's interactions with the starving Thomas and with the Bible-obsessed teenage Vincent van Gogh, who longs for nothing but to please the poor -- and to win the hand of his unapproachable cousin. Alas, things go horribly awry. Thomas, the Marvelous Boy who perished in his pride dies by his own hand at the age of 17. Vincent is scorned in love and fired from the pathetic post he clings to teaching catechism to coalminers. Billy and Samuel experience first triumph, then ignominy when Billy's good deed is revealed as fraud. It's Vincent who somehow seems to find a way forward out of the shambles -- in a question he poses the prophet Ezekiel about the confounding behavior demanded of him by Yahweh: I asked Ezekiel, Why eat ye dung? It is, of course, the taste that everyone tastes who has ever heard a call and answered it.
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Play Ten Min
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Top of PageBelle of Bourbon Street, The
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Top of PageGravitation and Ascent
Synopsis:
I often don't have a clue what I'm writing about until I stumble across something that crystallizes it for me. In the case of Gravitation & Ascent, that something was an old alchemical engraving of an eagle in flight, struggling to break free from a chain tethering it to an enormous stone on the earth below. Daniel wants nothing more than to break free from the wretched flesh that tethers him. Little wonder. He's beyond weird -- and painfully aware of the effect his unsettling behavior has on others. He seeks transformation -- the realization of his innerness, as he puts it, the luminosity of his being. Being stuck in the mud is indeed messy and demoralizing. But Daniel discovers that being lifted up can be truly terrifying. Heaven is an alien place. Gravitation & Ascent is about many things. the terrible transport of self-discovery. the confounding messes we make of our lives in the hope of change. the simple sweetness of friendship. Sex and sainthood. Healing and love. But I think what sums it up best are the eagle and the stone -- the stuff above us we long for and aspire to, the stuff below us that drags us down and grounds us. But most of all it's about the tension of the chain that binds the two. Escape isn't the answer, but we struggle nonetheless.
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1st Produced:
Workshop, the Studio at Theatre Rhinoceros 2000
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Male: 4 Female: 1 Other: -
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Top of PageJoshua
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Top of PageOurselves, Our Foes
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Felix Yusupov is a self-indulgent aristocrat obsessed with messianic delusions, tortured by his sexuality, desperate for greatness. Determined to answer his divine calling, he hatches a grandiose scheme to destroy Rasputin and bring salvation to the tsar and Mother Russia. the scheme is a fiasco, and its consequences for Yusupov are the very opposite of his intent. With Rasputin dead, he is left facing the one thing he fears most -- the darkness in his own soul. "Ourselves, Our Foes" was winner of the American theatre Ventures National Playwrights Contest and the Sonoma County Playwrights Festival.
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Actors Theatre of SAnta Rosa 1993
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Play/Drama. - - Gay/Lesbian, historical characters
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Top of PageStuff I Thought of in My Head
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Top of PageThin Place in the Universe, A
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Young archaeologist Christopher knows what he wants: "I want every eye to look upon me, every knee to bend. I want lips to part and say, he is a god among us." At a site halfway round the globe, he digs, certain that what he's about to unearth will bring him fame. He discovers instead that there are thin places in the universe -- places where the visible and the invisible meet. That your heart takes you there, ready or not. And whatever happens there, happens to awaken you. "Nothing if not ambitious - imaginatively evocative - an impressive undertaking" -- Bay Area Reporter
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1st Produced:
the Studio at Theatre Rhinoceros 1999
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First Seen
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Play/Drama
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Male: 3 Female: 2 Other: -
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Top of PageZero Point
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Part of 8 Minute Madness. Eighteen new provocative And engaging plays will be presented in groups A And B of 9 plays each. the plays, directed by innovative directors, Are produced by A select team of New York's finest designers. Attending industry members will vote for who will win the coveted Award of 8 Minute Madness Playwright of 2011. the participating Audience will Also vote on the best performance by An Actor And best over-all show. the plays Are: . . .Last And Always by Allan Baker, First Half by Ron Burch, the Intervention by Ron Burch, Last Words by Jeff Carter, the Family That Plays Together by Gigi Eng, Magnolia Day by SD Graubert, Bottom of the Ninth by Rand Higbee, the Wedding Ring by Tony Howarth, Duet in Platinum by Allston James, A Change of Plans by Dennis Jones, Mammaries by Joanne Koch, Bona Fide by Nina Mansfield, It's the Jews by John Minigan, Out of Time by Barbara And Carlton Molette, Dead Body by Barry M. Putt, Jr., Short Division by Fred Sahner, Zero Point by Jeff Schwamberger, And Slipping into Anarchy by Jeffrey Wolf.
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Turtle Shell Theater, 300 West 43rd Street, 4th floor, New York, NY 10036 21 Jan 2011
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8 Min
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