The five highly topical plays in this collection by Toni Press-Coffman have aged well and remain remarkably relevant to many of the most divisive issues that still face us as a society-in ways more encouraging than not. These plays explore the nature of idealism, especially its distinctively American forms-where it comes from, how it is tested, how we lose it or temper it, and what saving graces may come to take its place. We can still learn from the student civil rights activists, draft resisters, and soldiers who, like their president, found themselves mired in the Vietnam war and its aftermath; from what inspired those who committed violence as well as those who tried to stop it during the 1992 Los Angeles riots; from the intentional martyrdom of those on United Flight 93. Toni Press's characters, with all their flaws, don't take easy ways out or accept easy answers to the moral questions life poses. They do prove themselves capable of change, insight, compassion, and quiet, imitable heroisms well within our range. We finish these plays feeling, ah, now, we can get started.
The five highly topical plays in this collection by Toni Press-Coffman have aged well and remain remarkably relevant to many of the most divisive issues that still face us as a society-in ways more encouraging than not. These plays explore the nature of idealism, especially its distinctively American forms-where it comes from, how it is tested, how we lose it or temper it, and what saving graces may come to take its place. We can still learn from the student civil rights activists, draft resisters, and soldiers who, like their president, found themselves mired in the Vietnam war and its aftermath; from what inspired those who committed violence as well as those who tried to stop it during the 1992 Los Angeles riots; from the intentional martyrdom of those on United Flight 93. Toni Press's characters, with all their flaws, don't take easy ways out or accept easy answers to the moral questions life poses. They do prove themselves capable of change, insight, compassion, and quiet, imitable heroisms well within our range. We finish these plays feeling, ah, now, we can get started.
Toni Press-Coffman has written twenty-seven plays that have been produced in cities throughout the United States. She frequently writes about real people or events such as the people who died when Flight 93 crashed in a Pennsylvania field (United); the 1992 L.A. Riots (Trucker Rhapsody); Lyndon Johnson's presidency (Unconditional War); social issues impacting the lives of women and children (Stand) or the consequences of the rampant racism that continues to plague American society (Stand, Trucker Rhapsody). The recipient of several playwriting awards, she is also an actress, dramaturg, and co-founder of Winding Road Theater Ensemble in Tucson, where she served as company manager for ten years. She now lives in Connecticut with her husband Glen, dog Mareeba, and cats Augie and JJ.
Trucker Rhapsody & Other Plays is a sweeping and incisive
exploration of what it means to be human in an American landscape
of conflict, unrest, and inequality during the past 50+ years. When
she holds a mirror up to nature in these plays, we may not like
what we see, but perhaps we won't be so quick to look away. -Dr.
Judith Sebasta, Austin Community College
These plays, set in recent historical moments of heightened
pressures and conflicting interests, are nonetheless driven by the
characters in all their flesh-and-blood humanity, their impulses
both grand and trivial. . . .Her skill at weaving divergent threads
and points-of-view into one complex, irresolvable but co-arising
American experience is unique. -Susan Marsden, Resident Director,
Eureka Theatre (Retired)
Toni Press-Coffman is a humane creator of characters struggling to
navigate their interwoven lives. Times and spaces overlap as we
witness their struggles to form community in a world of disunity.
-James Reel, Arts Critic and Journalist
Perhaps Toni Press-Coffman's greatest gift as a writer is to break
open her characters (widely diverse, spanning centuries, races,
genders, class and politics) to reveal their beating hearts. . . .
Given voice by a theatrical language, both heightened and
deceptively natural, her plays pulse with a driving rhythm and
flashes of searing imagery. -Brad Erickson, Playwright and
Executive Director, Theatre Bay Area
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