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Overview
“Nersesian is this generation’s Mark Twain and the East River is his Mississippi.”—Jennifer Belle, author of High Maintenance
“Award-winning playwright Arthur Nersesian has woven an effective dramatic form through four plays, each quite funny in its own way. Each yields very powerful human results while subtly investigating the major social issues of our time.”—Evangelina Borges, Trying Time Press
Nersesian's cult status has grown from the success of his novels, and here for the first time his equal skills as a playwright are revealed to a hungry public. Three of the four plays in East Village Tetralogy have been staged off-Broadway in New York City. The four plays included in this volume are:
Rent Control
East Village Writer's Bloc
Plea Bargains
Spare Change
Synopsis
The first book of plays from New York City's most respected literary chronicler
Library Journal
These four plays are partners in words to Saul Steinberg's iconic 1976 New Yorker cover, "A View of the World from Ninth Avenue," which illustrates the alleged physical and cultural disconnect between New York City and the rest of the continent. Nersesian, a well-reviewed novelist (see The Fuck-Up), reanimates the clich of the self-absorbed Manhattanite in these examples of his dramatic work, three of which have been produced off-Broadway. Save for Rent Control, it's difficult to imagine that anyone outside of the five boroughs-or outside of the service area of Amtrak's Northeastern Corridor-would be interested in producing them. Rent Control, at least, has humor and a quintet of swindlers that distinguish it from the whininess and stock New York gloom of its cohorts. East Village Writer's Bloc is about a bunch of people who can't write sitting around and talking about each other's lack of talent; Plea Bargains is an hour spent that you'll never get back again; and Spare Change is just more Gotham unpleasantness. Recommended for branches of the NYPL.-Larry Schwartz, Minnesota State Univ. Lib., Moorhead Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.