A Few Stout Individuals
By John Guare
3/5
()
About this ebook
Arthur Schlesinger calls A Few Stout Individuals “a political extravaganza.” This latest work from award-winning playwright John Guare, author of House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation, addresses ideas of history and memory, fame and ignominy, reason and insanity with his trademark Guare imagination.
In a Fifth Avenue brownstone in 1880s New York, former president and Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant is penniless, dying of throat cancer, and attempting to finish his memoirs while he’s cajoled and pestered by everyone from his wife and children to Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) and, by way of drug-induced hallucinations, the Emperor of Japan. A thoroughly original play that explores the nature of memory, ambition, and history itself, A Few Stout Individuals is “unmistakably the product of Mr. Guare’s exotic yet very American imagination” (Ben Brantley, The New York Times).
Read more from John Guare
The House of Blue Leaves and Chaucer in Rome: Two Plays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Landscape of the Body: A Play Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Free Man of Color Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Lydie Breeze Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to A Few Stout Individuals
Related ebooks
Landscape of the Body: A Play Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Substance of Fire and Other Plays Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Assembled Parties Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOther Desert Cities: A Play Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Rock 'n' Roll: A New Play Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Collaborators: A Play Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Len Jenkin's Theatre: Wonder and Heart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnderstanding John Guare Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhy Marry? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Free Man of Color Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Captain's Tiger Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This Lime Tree Bower (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOffstage Voices: Life in Twin Cities Theater Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhy Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them: And Other Political Plays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hurlyburly and Those the River Keeps: Two Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSt Nicholas (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThis Isn't 40 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLydie Breeze Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShining City (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChurchill: Shorts (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Other Worlds (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rodney's Wife Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Hotel (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMark O'Rowe Plays: One (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHe Who Gets Slapped: A Play in Four Acts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Night Alive (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Port Authority (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMiss Witherspoon and Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge: Two Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Overwhelming: A Play Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Performing Arts For You
Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Robin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unsheltered: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Macbeth (new classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sisters Brothers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Yes Please Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hamlet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book: The Script Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Importance of Being Earnest: A Play Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slave Play Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Romeo and Juliet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Trial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Star Wars: Book of Lists Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Count Of Monte Cristo (Unabridged) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Town: A Play in Three Acts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diamond Eye: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Dolls House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coreyography: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The History of Sketch Comedy: A Journey through the Art and Craft of Humor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHollywood's Dark History: Silver Screen Scandals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mash: A Novel About Three Army Doctors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for A Few Stout Individuals
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
A Few Stout Individuals - John Guare
ACT ONE
An extraordinary masked apparition appears: the EMPEROR OF JAPAN.
THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN I am the emperor of Japan
I am the throne of chrysanthemum
I am the center of the disk that is the sun
I am the horizon behind which the golden sun rises
I give the sun to you each morning
I take the sun back each night
I am the moon who casts a cool light on the ocean which I also am
I am shadow
I am light
I am memory I am memory I am memory I am memory
A dark room, lit by a few hurricane lamps. USG, sixty-three, but looking ancient, sits wrapped in blankets in a wheelchair, in pain, toothless, wasted, his voice a harsh fierce whisper.
USG But who am I?
THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN I am the emperor of Japan
I am the throne of chrysanthemum
USG I know who you are. Who am I?
CLEMENS’S VOICE Who am I? What is he saying?
THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN Why did the South last so long?
USG The south of what?
THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN Why did the South fight? Were they all fighting for slavery?
USG I don’t know what you’re talking about—
THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN They weren’t all slaveholders. It’s not why the South lost. How did they hold on so long? Why did it take you so long?
USG I didn’t ask you here for this. I asked you—
THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN Why did you summon me?
USG I can’t remember.
Other people are dimly visible in the room: SAMUEL CLEMENS, a blustery man, fifty, red hair turning white. MRS. G, fifty-nine, terrified. ADAM BADEAU, fifties, very lame, pale, red