Oregon Trail: The Play!
by A.J. Allegra
Oregon Trail: The Play! is an irreverent comedy honoring/skewering that most traumatizing/beloved of educational video games from the 1980s and 90s. The play follows the Bootsmeyer family (fatherly Ezekiel, godly brother Jebediah, obligatory-female-character Martha, young ragamuffin Judah, and Old Crazy Fingers) as they set off in the year eighteen somethin’ something on a troubled journey westward. Narrated by an inexplicably omni-present general store owner, this dark comedy takes the audience through familiar territory, as the Bootsmeyers stock up on provisions for their oxen-led wagons and do their best to survive river crossings, illnesses, hunting, highway robbery, and a host of other mid-nineteenth century dilemmas.
These short plays are a collection of the poetic and unexpected. They include unassigned dialog and scene order determined by the spinning of a wheel. A chorus of seahorses sings, a car and a store have relationship problems, and Van Gogh meditates on his own death. Each play offers a fundamentally different moral compass to guide away from loneliness and fear. It is this compass that sets the course through this lyrical and unique collection. Included works: “A Blinded Horse Dreams of Hippocampi,” “Inspiration Point,” “I’m in Al-Qaeda: a comedy of manners,” “Whatsleeves,” “Old MacDonald Dirge,” “~6x³=SAFETY: a comedic list poem,” “My Rich Temple,” “Patience on the Way to Daylight: an Ars Poetica farce,” and “Exhausted Paint: the Death of Van Gogh.”
Robin Hood (thief, brigand)
by Andrew Vaught
Robin Hood is a thief and brigand who steals from the rich to give to the poor—simple enough. But what happens when a thief and brigand is a little too good at his job? The play follows Robin and his band of Merry Men, who accidentally intercept a chest full of 100,000 gold coins on its way to Austria. What they believe to be a great bounty stolen from the land’s wealthiest citizens turns out, in fact, to be a ransom payment for King Richard, who is imprisoned in Austria while on a religious crusade. Robin and his men distribute the stolen gold to the land’s poor. But when Richard’s brother, the oppressive Prince John, finds out that the land’s poorest citizens are quickly becoming distinctly Middle-Class, he is incensed and vows to destroy the man they call Robin Hood...