Jerome McDonough's ability to condense mankind into one tiny package is revealed again in this play. This work depicts the entire history of the theatre in 35 minutes. It begins with Greek ritual and ends with current post-modern ritual (is the theatre-cycle complete?). A play for players, Stages reveals the emotions of the playwright, director, stage manager, and performers. Humor, frustration, dreams, and despair—the stuff of life itself is the stuff of this riveting play. Stages—a montage of theatre as life or, perhaps, life as theatre. As only McDonough can do it.

This riveting play, a multi-faceted examination of theatre and, by extension, of life, sweeps us through the frustrations of play creation and production. We see the players search for themselves behind their own masks and the inevitability of the closing performance—or is it just part of an insidious cycle? As the Playwright claws for his own truth, the performers find scene-by-scene challenges spanning the spectrum of theatre history, from ancient ritual and the Greeks through Shakespeare, the Comedy of Manners, the melodrama, the early realists, the naturalists, and the absurdists right up to the brutal, neo-ritual confrontation of the current Avant-Garde.

"Where next?" the performers and audience wonder. Are we left with only "the essence now. Word and voice"? Or are we awaiting some vibrant new curtain? And where does the human being fit? Are the actors simply puppets, "maze mice," or are they the "living part," theatre's axis?

A Director's Script (prompt book) is available from the publisher of this play. It contains drawings of costumes and set, details on all technical aspects of staging, discussion of characterization and plot and theme; and it suggests the complete blocking and full stage directions for all movement and business.

All serious troupes—high school, college, community, professional—should add Stages to their season. Strong contest material.

One act; Set, bare stage (2 step units and a platform); Simple costumes.

Other McDonough original plays: Asylum, Eden, Fables, Filiation, Limbo, Mirrors, Plots, Requiem, Reunion, Stations