Cities Out of Print
Unit set: A wrecked car
Cities Out of Print is a collage play that explores the making of modern myths. Car crashes and pop heroes are the substance of memory for a man and a woman who act out the lives of the dead and famous. Speech is reduced to found language as they re-enact the lives of media icons.
Cast Requirements
1 woman
1 man
Publisher
Best of the West: An Anthology of Plays from 1989 & 1990 Padua Hill Playwrights Festivals
Press
“In the lively and amusing one-hour play, Ms. Mosakowski and Matthew Maguire portray a couple so entranced by legendary figures who have died in car crashes—James Dean, Grace Kelly, Albert Camus, Jackson Pollock, and many others—that they work themselves into an ecstatic, suicidal frenzy of fantasized identification.”
—Stephen Holden, New York Times
“A man and woman on a dirt-patch with auto landscape, on which they act out the lives of the dead and famous…. This is wickedly funny conceit—and well played.”
—LA Weekly
Production and Development History
Premiere: Padua Hills Playwrights Festival (1989).
New York Premiere: Manhattan Theatre Club’s Downtown/Uptown Festival (1990), extended to Westbeth Theater Center.
Commissioned: BACA Downtown (1988), presented as work in progress.
Cities Out of Print
Manhattan Theatre Club
Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Set Design: Tom Dale Keever
Light Design: Pat Dignan
Cast: Matthew Maguire and Susan Mosakowski
Cities Out of Print
The Padua Hills Playwriting Festival
Lighting Design: Jason Berliner
Cast: Shawna Casey and John Diehl
Cities Out of Print was developed at BACA Downtown
Cast: Terence Barrell and Susan Mosakowski