A Proprietor, an Undertaker, a Cabby, and a Chemist walk into a bar…
…carrying a lot of debt. They hatch a murderous plot against local drunkard, Mike Malloy, for the insurance
payout. Oh, you thought this was a joke? Well, according to Ragamuffin & Ragabiscuit, two shantytown kids trying
to convince the Copper to allow them to fetch a pail of water from the only clean pump left in the neighborhood,
this bumbling murder trust underestimated who they were messing with—and none of it is a laughing matter.

Dramaturg's Note

Iron Mike Malloy: The Drunkard, The Juggernaut, and Modern-Day Universal

As a playwright, Klae Bainter turns his talents to humorously and perceptively investigate the lived realities of working class individual, describing it as existing “between lofty and blue collar,” and an interrogation of “the grotesque nature of people, their values, their class, and the spaces they hold sacred”. His play, “The Brutal Fucking Death of the Drunkard, the Immigrant, the Durable, the Juggernaut; "Iron" Mike Malloy,” is told through the eyes and poetry of two neighborhood street kids seeking a bucket of water from a water pump. Once for public use, it is now privatized and guarded by a Copper. The two kids then entrap the Copper in the story of Mike Malloy, one that is hilarious, at times dark, and deeply moving. The play draws on many rich ideas and traditions:  Brecht’s Epic Theater, Suzan-Lori Parks “Rep and Rev”, old school rap and hip hop, Abbot and Costello’s slap stick comedy, and heightened poetic verse, to name a few. With a voice and point of view that is uniquely his, Bainter takes each of these ingredients, tosses them into a cocktail shaker, shakes vigorously, and produces a potent libation; one that is delicious, delightful, and deceptively 200 proof.

The titular character of Klae Bainter’s "Iron" Mike Malloy draws on the playwright’s background in and penchant for creative non-fiction; Mike Malloy is, in fact, loosely based on a historical individual. Born in 1873, Mike Malloy was an alcoholic homeless firefighter, victim to both his immigrant status and to the violent attempts at his life by members of New York’s lower-class who make up the play’s murder trust. However, in Bainter’s play, Malloy and his fellow characters are not to be observed historically but as semi-allegorical, as our playwright teases apart issues and anxieties of our modern era: late-stage capitalism, and it’s influence on masculinity, lateral mobility, science, death, and class. The Proprietor is simply a proprietor of an establishment, rather than based on any specific biography or place, and his fellow murder trust compatriots a written in a similar fashion. Like the play’s yard hydrant, which shifts from water pump, to beer tap handle, to the taxi meter in the Cabbie’s car, the characters are constantly shifting as well; from stranger, to adversary, to friend, to self. Where a play that is truly biographical has the potential to mask its message bogged down in historical truths and realism, “Iron” Mike Malloy produces people that everyone knows from their own “watering hole.” 

At its core and with its tongue sardonically pressed into its cheek, the play humorously satirizes the idea of the American Dream, a dream that was unattainable for Malloy in his time, and one even more unattainable in our own. In a world of social media and its viral trends and “get rich quick” schemes, crushing student loan debt, the mechanization of working-class labor, and a national minimum wage of $9.30 an hour, true upward mobility proves to be a more and more myth. Thus, what is seen in the world of “Iron” Mike Malloy poses pressing questions: How does one succeed in a patriarchal capitalist culture that is driven by the debt we owe? Who is most susceptible to the harm from this society? What do we do with we’ve had enough?

And, perhaps most pressingly of all: what is the cost of fitting in? 

–Tyler Everett Adams, Production Dramaturg

The annual Ohio University Seabury Quinn, Jr. Playwrights’ Festival held each year at the end of the Spring Semester represents the culmination of the work of playwrights enrolled in the MFA Playwriting Program. During the festival, the work of the second and third year students is presented in the form of rehearsed reading, script-in-hand workshop productions, or full Studio productions. Playwrights receive audience feedback in addition to individual professional response and mentoring.

N/N by Ivan Mosley (Third Year Thesis Reading)

Directed by Lloyda Alicia Garrett
Dramaturg Nickose Layne & Lexie Tillery
April 23, 2022 @ 8PM
Forum Theater – MASKS required for all audience members

About the Playwright:

Ivan Mosley (he/him) is a playwright and dramaturg from North Carolina. He graduated from Wake Forest
University with a BA in Theatre. His play Evelyn & His Brothers was selected as a semifinalist for the 2018 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. He is a proud alumnus of the Kennedy Center Summer Playwrights Intensive and the Advanced Playwriting Program at the National Theatre Institute. He has developed his plays at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the John F. Kennedy Center, Route 66 Theatre Company, Tantrum East, Greensboro Playwrights Forum, and the Ring Theatre. He has served as the dramaturg for the World Premiere of The Sting of White Roses by Angelica Cheri and the regional premieres of The Right Reverend Dupree in Exile by Jackie Alexander and Objects in the Mirror by Charles Smith. Currently, he is pursuing his Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting and his
Masters in Arts Administration at Ohio University.

About the Play:

N/N is about two queer Black people camped out in a never-ending cotton field. Jacobee, a contemporary urbanite,
is waiting for a winged woman named Hippolyta to give her wings so she can fly away from Remus, a slave from the
1860s, who is looking to travel further in the field, where he feels safe. Remus and Jacobee are soon visited by
Conjure and his disciples, who advise them to stay away from Hippolyta but remain exactly where they are.
However, Conjure soon reveals ulterior motives. Jacobee and Remus must decide whether they will trust Conjure or
unite to protect themselves against him.

CAST:

Remus: Donald Avi Stewart
Jacobee: Clarissa Raybon
Conjure: Will Harrington
Timmons: TBA
Banjo: Austin Vega
Augustine: Lexie Tillery
Gethsemane: Kay Collins
Hippolyta: Ayana Johnson

The Model Congressman by Steven Strafford (2nd Year Reading) 

Directed by Tyler Everett Adams
Dramaturg Sam Nelson
April 23, 2022 @ 3PM
Forum Theater – MASKS required for all audience members

About the Playwright:

Steven Strafford (he/him) is a Brooklyn-born playwright. He is the author and performer of the award-winning Methtacular! which he has performed across the country at LORT theaters, universities, and LGBTQ spaces. Methtacular! was filmed at Steppenwolf Theatre’s 1700 Space in 2019. His play Small Jokes About Monsters recently won the 2022 Ready-to-Publish Award from SETC and will be published and licensed by StageRights. It also won the 2016 New American Voices Competition and was a semi-finalist for The O’Neill New Play Conference. It received productions in Chicago, Houston (nominated – Houston Theatre Award – Outstanding New Play) and Sioux City, Iowa.  His play Greater Illinois was a finalist for the Jackie Demaline Play Award as well as a semi-finalist at The O’Neill. His short plays, Use Your Noodles and The Breakup Play have each had multiple university productions.

About the Play:

It's 1994, and Kevin's just a kid hoping to win a big scholarship and get enough money to go to the school of his dreams. It's 1994, and Kevin's just a closeted kid who secretly goes on adults-only chat rooms looking for men. It's 1994, and Kevin's just an ambitious, closeted kid who has to decide how far he's willing to go to impress the man who can change or ruin his life. It's time to go to the 1994 Model Congress!

CAST:

Kevin: Holden Evans
Michael: Kaleb Jackson
Sharriese: Taylor Roberts
Melissa: Shelby Merchant
Joan: Jane Reagan
Assemblyman Joe McClintock: Wade Elkins
Stage Directions/Offstage Voices: Taylor Mickey

The Long Memoriam by Eryn Elyse McVay (2nd Year Reading) 

Directed by Molly Donahue
Dramaturg Becca Shelley
April 22, 2022 @ 3PM
Forum Theater – MASKS required for all audience members

About the Playwright:

Eryn Elyse McVay (she/her). Second-year playwright, Eryn Elyse McVay is a Pacific Northwesterner who earned her BA in Theatre from Western Washington University where she concentrated in Playwriting and Acting, and is currently an MFA candidate in Playwriting at Ohio University. Her play How Sweet The Sound has been a semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill 2019 New Playwrights Conference, the 2019 National Partners of American Theatre Region 7 Selection for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, a semi-finalist for the International Wolfe Prize from UNC’s PlayMakers Repertory Theater, and received recognition in Distinguished Achievement from KCACTF for their National Undergraduate Playwriting Award in both 2018 and 2019. Eryn’s new full-length play what the Gods gave me received a staged reading at the 27th Annual Seabury Quinn Jr. Playwright’s Festival at Ohio University in Spring 2021, and will be premiering as a full production at Ohio University in Fall 2022.

About the Play:

On the eve of their grandmother’s funeral, the Long children, Sal, Marcy, and Hannah, all ex-members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, meet at their family home in Central Washington state to prepare to say goodbye to Gram. When their oldest sibling and still-practicing Mormon brother Tyler shows up with his new, very young, and mysterious girlfriend Madison, a well-concealed family secret comes to light. Sal, being the only sibling not in the know, is forced to reconcile her memory of her family with the ugly reality, while long-dormant dark forces threaten the Long's survival.

Content Warnings: religious trauma, conversations surrounding sexual assault, misogyny, violence

CAST:

Sal: Jaimie Henderson
Tyler: Oliver Runyon
Madison: Nina Blair
Marcy: Lily Adams
Hannah: Sarah Riley
Stage Directions: Laura Wininger