Six One-Act Plays

"Published here for the first time, Six One-Act Plays follows the 2008 collection of Richard Harsham's Twelve Plays in Search of Their Characters that comprised longer works for the stage. Influenced by the dramatic rigors of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter--Harsham subscribes to the mea culpa Pinter offered at the time of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "I've often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say: that this is what happened; that is what they said; that is what they did." These one-act plays explore the human condition in cosmopolitan settings, revealing characters who work without benefit of a metaphysical safety-net and who inflict their needy sensibilities upon one another in a fragmentary world of scarce consolations and furtive urges. The sustaining illusion of permanence is subverted by the cosmic reality: human existence, in the grand scheme, proves as fleeting as the crystalline snowflake that, after making its "mark" lodged on winter's window pane, melts away, furry-white sparkle gone into velvety-black void....Harsham catches the irony of the unsolvable human mystery--that, as individuals, we are our own "disappearing acts." Like snowflakes, no two ever alike, ever again.