“I want theater to wake me up, not lull me to sleep. My theater is not about fantasy, it’s not about seduction. My theater is not an outline for a film. It is not a TV sitcom onstage. I want my theater to be an event. I want it to push limits, bite the hand that feeds it and bang heads. It’s about my fears, my ideas, my blind spots, my isolation.”—Eric Bogosian
Eric Bogosian is one of our most singular and exhilarating commentators on American life. His award-winning solo performance works have been performed with acclaim all over the world. As the
New York Times
has pointed out, “Bogosian is a born storyteller with perfect pitch.” That is never more evident than in his newest book, which collects his three most recent plays.
In
Humpty Dumpty
, five friends gather for a holiday at a mountain getaway where unforeseen events bring them to the brink of the end of the world.
Griller
is set in a New Jersey backyard, where a barbecue gathering turns sinister and deadly.
Red Angel
is Bogosian’s riff on Von Sternberg’s
The Blue Angel
, reset on a college campus in 1990s New England.
One of America’s premier performers and most innovative and provocative artists, Eric Bogosian’s plays and solo work include
suburbia
(Lincoln Center Theater, 1994; adapted to film by director Richard Linklater, 1996);
Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll
,
Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead
;
1+1
Skunkweed
Wake Up and Smell the Coffee
Drinking in America
Notes from Underground
and
Talk Radio
(Pulitzer Prize finalist; New York Shakespeare Festival, 1987; Broadway, 2007; adapted to film by director Oliver Stone, 1988). He has starred in a wide variety of film, TV and stage roles. Most recently, he created the character of Captain Danny Ross on the long-running series
Law & Order: Criminal Intent
. In 2014, TCG published
100 (monologues)
, a collection that commemorates thirty years of Bogosian’s solo-performance career.