The Best American Short Plays 1995-1996

Stein and Young have gathered a sharp, savagely funny, occasionally surreal collection of one-act plays that read like short stories. In David Ives's Degas, C'est Moi, a man escapes from his humdrum life by assuming the persona of the French painter for a day--only to be brought back to earth by the sight of a real-life nude. Marilyn Monroe has a rendezvous with Carl Sandburg in a Washington hotel suite in Lavonne Mueller's American Dreamers. A couple's once-a-year meeting takes on its annual bizarre twist in Allan Knee's St. Valentine's Day Massacre. And, in possibly the only epic one-act ever written, William Seebring unleashes the mother of all tabloid manias when a child is born without a heart--and lives--in his 40-character The Original Last Wish Baby.You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll finish each one in fewer than 15 minutes--but don't be surprised if some of them linger longer.