WHAT: Regional Premiere of the Lee Roscoe’s highly anticipated and timely play Impossible?—a serious satire about the rise of tyranny in America.
WHEN: 4 pm, Saturday, October 24 and 2 pm Sunday, October 25—livestreamed online.
WHERE: Eventide Theatre Company’s Virtual Playhouse located at https://www.facebook.com/eventidetheatrecompany
FREE. Donations welcomed.
Impossible? is supported by The Massachusetts Cultural Council, Towns of Brewster and Dennis.
MORE ABOUT THIS EVENT
Impossible? is a serious satire about the rise of a tyrannical president and how this impacts friends in a small New England town. The play is a ferocious, funny, and tragic look at how hyperbolized madness at the national level has real consequences in people's lives. The play is presented in two fast-paced acts. Set in the present day, Impossible? unfolds with an inevitability that is chilling as historical patterns in the rise of dictatorship emerge in modern form. The playwright's keen eye for the ridiculous keeps the audience chuckling along, entertained by witty dialogue even as the unthinkable becomes reality. Racism and sexism also feature in this thought-provoking play. The play is blunt and unsparing, without veering into partisanship or over-simplification, and is likely to be a win with audiences across the political spectrum.
Sarah St. Mimsey is an artist who struggles to make ends meet. Her lover, Dave O’Sulley, owns a local radio station. Their best friend, Landon Eldredge, is a farmer. As the play progresses, their relationships undergo profound alteration as the newly elected President, Eddie Fabuloso—urged on by his adviser, Nikki Mugg—loses his mental stability little by little as he rearranges a nation in his grip. O’Sulley's reporting on an incident at a Fabuloso rally connects the local action with that of the national scene.
Impossible? had originally been scheduled for September 2020 as a full-scale production for Eventide’s stage. Due to Covid, the play is being presented online through Eventide’s Facebook page and will be available at http://www.eventidearts.org through November 15. (Additional information at https://www.artistsandmusicians.org/writers_corner/leeroscoe.html)
The Playwright
Lee Roscoe is an award-winning playwright whose plays have been seen from NYC to the Cape and beyond, at such prime venues as The Living Theatre; Provincetown Theater; SlamBoston at Playwrights Theater Boston; Playwrights Platform, Waltham; Women’s International Theater Festival, Provincetown; The Tilden Arts Center, Hyannis; the Piano Factory, Boston; and Great Plains Theater Conference, Omaha. They have also been heard on public radio in San Francisco and Brandeis University. Her original radio drama, The Mooncusser's Tale, is available at https://beta.prx. org/stories/258677, and womr.org where it premiered. Lee Roscoe is a member of The New Play Exchange (NPX).
An Equity actress who trained at HB Studio, and Circle in the Square, she worked backstage at several Off-Broadway theaters, and later onstage Off-Broadway in the New Pinter Plays, and in the long run of “The Kitchen” directed by Jack Gelber, starring Rip Torn. The Boston Globe wrote “Roscoe is brilliant” regarding her role in The Captain’s Doll, Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater. And she was Cape Cod Times' Best of the Year actress twice. She appeared in a number of films and writes of her experiences in counterculture filmmaking in The Cinema of Norman Mailer.
Her work has been praised by theater greats such as Living Theater founder Judith Malina, artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, D.C. Michael Kahn, David Hare, and the late Howard Zinn. Her themes are often about how the ills of the world at large affect the human heart, and her styles vary from realism, to satire, to the groundbreakingly abstract and imaginative.
She is a long-time journalist published widely on the Cape, regionally and, on occasion, nationally on topics ranging from the arts, science, and history to the environment and other news. Her poetry has appeared in Counterpunch, The Aurorean, and other journals. Author of "Dreaming Monomoy’s Past, Walking its Present," the interacting nature and history of a typical coastal area, she is a Massachusetts legislature state commended environmentalist/educator, and Woods Hole Ocean Science Journalism Fellow. She invented the first modular, multi-use clothing in the U.S.—The Instant Dress, featured in Life Magazine and Women’s Wear Daily.
Lee Roscoe is represented by ArtistsAndMusicians (http://www.ArtistsAndMusicians.org).
Eventide Theatre Company, located in the heart of Dennis, MA, provides an encouraging, supportive environment for actors, songwriters and playwrights leading to excellent, creative, and thought-provoking performances that stimulate and educate Cape audiences of all ages.
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