Fiction. In his new fiction, playwright, poet and novelist Mac Wellman has created a hilarious satire of American Theater. Chris Name, a nobody working at the local Sweet Thumb River Valley Reactor complex, is suddenly taken up by a local theater director, who presents Name's play, the performance of which ends in the death of the theater company's chief and in the end of more than one theater career. One of America's most renowned and respected playwrights, Wellman has created in this new work a world peopled by cantankerous, wistful, confused, and frightened people who have lost parts of their bodies, their minds, and their souls in the perpetual machine of the American dream.

Author City: BROOKLYN, NY USA

Mac Wellman's recent work includes The Difficulty of Crossing a Field (with composer David Lang) at Montclair State University in the fall of 2006, and 1965 UU, for performer Paul Lazar, directed by Stephen Mellor at the Chocolate Factory in the fall of 2008. He is also working on two plays for chorus: The Invention of Tragedy (Classic Stage Company) and Nine Days Falling (commissioned by the Stuck Pigs Company of Melbourne, Australia). He has received numerous honors, including both NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships. In 2003 he received his third Obie, for Lifetime Achievement. In 2006 his third novel, Q'S Q, was published by Green Integer, and in 2008, a volume of stories entitled A CHRONICLE OF THE MADNESS OF SMALL WORLDS was published by Trip Street Press, as well as a new collection of plays, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, by Minnesota Press. His recent books of poetry are MINIATURE (2002), STRANGE ELEGIES (2006) and SPLIT THE STICK: A MINIATURIST-DIVAN (2012), all from Roof Books. His play LEFT GLOVE was published by Solid Objects in 2011. He is the Donald I. Fine Professor of Playwriting at Brooklyn College.

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