Plays by John Glore:
EPIC
THE PLAY
ON THE JUMP
THE RUB
Synopses:
Epic – In 1934, renowned muckraking writer Upton Sinclair ran for governor of California on a socialist platform he called End Poverty In California — or E.P.I.C. — and he was on his way to victory until a consortium of underhanded power brokers launched an unprecedented public relations blitzkrieg fueled by lies, distortions and innuendo, to sink Sinclair. The play incorporates some of the famous and infamous people who got involved on one side or the other, including Sister Aimee Semple McPherson, Charlie Chaplain and FDR, as well as a host of unknown players, some of whom wielded a whole lot of power behind the scenes. The play also traces a parallel story about a down-and-out man named John Pelletier, who was recruited (by one of the Bad Guys!) to run for the state legislature as an E.P.I.C. candidate and ended up winning while Sinclair went down in flames. A true story about a political campaign that changed the way campaigns have been run in America ever since. Flexible cast size but not small.
The Play – Los Angeles, 1939. A struggling repertory company faces the possibility of going under when one of its most important angels, an unscrupulous oil tycoon, threatens to pull his support because he disapproves of some of the artistic choices they’ve made lately. Roy, the actor-manager of the company, enlists the help of his grifting half-brother, Rudy, to run a con targeting the oil tycoon, in order to get the money they need to stay afloat. The success of “the play” devised by Roy and Rudy depends on contributions from everyone in the company, but especially on the unexpected roles played by Tillie Teacham, the company’s assistant stage manager (and would-be dramaturg), and James, a brilliant African-American actor who is as temperamental as he is talented. Just as it looks like they might actually pull it off, all hell breaks loose and the heist comedy suddenly goes full “Jacobean revenge drama.” When the dust settles, Tillie reveals that she still has one surprise up her sleeve. Cast size 9-11.
On the Jump – Life hasn’t been easy for Colleen Ferguson. And now her new husband has dumped her on their wedding night and absconded with her life savings. When she decides to throw herself off a bridge, she has an encounter with another would-be jumper, which sends her life spiraling in surprising new directions — but in order to stay on top of an increasingly complicated situation, she has to live a lie … then two lies … and eventually the lies catch up with her. A mistaken-identity romance about the vagaries of a love that blossoms in the damaged hearts of two strangers who overcome death, duplicity and despair in their quest for a happy ending. Productions at South Coast Repertory and Arena Stage. Cast-size 8.
The Rub – La Jolla, Calif., 1955. Following the death of his beloved wife, Raymond Chandler, old, alcoholic, and suicidal, has disappeared and his erstwhile publisher, Blanche Knopf, wants to find him before he harms himself. Blanche hires a woman detective who calls herself The Blonde — and she’s as big a mystery as Chandler himself. An homage that honors and subverts the tropes of Chandler’s hard-boiled crime fiction, which raised the genre to new literary heights while exhibiting a kind of world-weary ugliness that can’t be easily digested or excused any more. Noir with a healthy dose of humor. Cast size 7-8. Originally commissioned by South Coast Repertory.
Bio:
John Glore writes plays (adaptations and original work for young audiences and plays for adults), fiction and non-fiction prose (short- and long-form). He was until recently the associate artistic director of Tony Award-Winning South Coast Repertory in Southern California, where he worked for 31 years to help plan and implement the artistic and literary work of the company. He served as co-director of SCR’s Pacific Playwrights Festival and oversaw the programming of the company’s Theatre for Young Audiences series, to which he contributed numerous plays. With the performance trio Culture Clash he co-authored adaptations of two plays by Aristophanes, The Birds and Peace. His plays have been seen at Berkeley Rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Arena Stage, The Round House Theatre, The Children’s Theatre Company, First Stage, Childsplay, Oregon Children’s Theatre, the Getty Villa, Imagination Stage in Washington, D.C., the Coterie Theatre in Kansas City, and many others. He received a Playwrights Fellowship from the California Arts Council, won the inaugural Heideman Award from Actors Theatre of Louisville for his 10-minute play, What She Found There, and received the Kennedy Center’s Roger L. Stevens Award and a Theatre Visions Award from the Laurie Foundation for his full-length On the Jump.
He is currently writing a novel with the working title, Unnatural.
His non-fiction prose includes hundreds of articles for the playbills and other publications of Arena Stage, South Coast Repertory and Center Theatre Group, and articles for American Theatre magazine and Theater (a journal published by the Yale School of Drama). He received the John Gassner Prize in theater criticism from the Yale School of Drama. He is currently at work on a full-length non-fiction book with the working title, Quirk: a Perlustration in Eight Jaunts.
He served as literary manager for Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. and resident dramaturg at Center Theatre Group. He has occasionally taught playwriting and related subjects at UCLA and Pomona College.
Website: www.johnglorewrites.com