Plays By Megan Terry
by Megan Terry

This collection contains three full-length plays: APPROACHING SIMONE, BABES IN THE BIG HOUSE, and VIET ROCK "The work of no other contemporary American playwright can boast the extraordinary scope of that of Megan Terry.

In the course of over thirty years her collected plays have become a virtual compendium of the styles of modern drama, ranging from collaborative ensemble work to performance art to naturalism....

Beginning with her earliest work, she has devised a politically and socially activist theater, using a diversity of nonrealistic forms to challenge a culture which has systematically disparaged nonlinear drama.

Megan Terry remains a key figure in the development of the American alternative theater."David Savran, In Their Own Words: Contemporary American Playwrights; APPROACHING SIMONE: "Terry's treatment of her story is masterly....

There is nothing unnecessary.

It is as sparse, as vital and as undemonstrative as Simone's own life...a superb theatrical coup."Clive Barnes, New York Times "APPROACHING SIMONE is a chronicle—grave, didactic, warm, filled with an incandescent interest in its subject...a rare theatrical event for these hysterical and clownish times, a truly serious play, filled with the light, shadow and weight of human life, and the exultant agonies of the ceaseless attempt to create ones humanity.

Megan Terry's play, may very well stimulate renewed interest in one of the most powerful minds and tormented spirits our age has produced."Jack Kroll, Newsweek "...a purity of intent that is startling.

Before I write another line let me say that Ms Terry's script...is absolutely magnificent, the most impressive new play in a very long while."Kevin Kelly, The Boston Globe "...Simone Weil is radically different from the sort of woman we usually find represented in the theater...she is an adult female being.

Her battles are not sexually determined.

She is a throwback to the Greeks.

By exhibiting physical, intellectual, and spiritual courage, she deals with both internal conflicts and political struggles."Harriet Kriegel, Women In Drama; BABES IN THE BIG HOUSE: "BABES IN THE BIGHOUSE is a wildly varying production, with situations so funny they're sad, so tragic they're hilarious.

The characters are acid-strong."Steve Jordan, Omaha World-Herald "BABES is a funny, shocking, affecting piece of theater.

Ms Terry's jazz-like verbal constructions were absolutely great."Maggie Hawthorn, Seattle Post-Intelligencer "Megan Terry, like Kafka did in "The Trial," uses razor-honed, sardonic gallows humor to coax empathy and understanding—so her theme—the dehumanization of incarcerated people aided and abetted by sexist stereotyping and sadism—comes across with even greater power and urgency.

Victor Livingston, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin "With BABES IN THE BIGHOUSE, Terry's development achieves a new precise fluid force and cohesion.

In a gesture similar to one Caryl Churchill would make in Britain a few years later, Terry and Schmidman cast men as well as women in the roles of the female prisoners and matrons.... [thus] we quickly accept that our perceptions of gender are based on social roles, gestures and styles."Helene Keyssar, Feminist Theater