Humpty Dumpty and Other Plays Paperback - 2004

"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; Griller; Humpty Dumpty; 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.