Tales From the Arabian Nights
by Book and lyrics by Michael Bigelow Dixon

The Sultan, bewitched by a magic scimitar, decrees that he will marry a new bride every evening and chop off her head the next morning.

To save her pretty neck, clever Scheherazade tells her husband a tale which isn't quite completed by the dawn's early light.

So he postpones the execution a day.

Scheherazade keeps up this parade of stories for a thousand and one nights, finally winning him away from the scimitar's evil spell.

As she tells each tale, an ensemble of as few as 6 actors or as many as 25 or more act out the story.

Dixon takes a jocular approach to the centuries-old tales "true to basic plot lines and intentions of the tales, but not averse to kidding and stylizing the material.

This is fine, for the playful approach makes the show stage worthy and engaging."

—Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle.

From the author: The Thousand and One Nights remains a wonderbook of the mysterious East.

Its many tales of marvels and enchantment, some of which have been retold for more than a millenium, originated in India, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and possibly Greece.

Their compilation into a single work was the achievement of many writers.

This "contemporized" collection of familiar and obscure stories evokes an ancient world where magic and reality commingle, where sweet daydreams abruptly end in shivering awakenings.

In this adaptation anything can happen, and indeed many strange things do.

But it is all in the same spirit of creativity, fun, and inventiveness that saved Scheherazade and entertained the Sultan for those thousand and one nights...a thousand and one years ago.