Dennis Barton

Plays That Aren't Boring: Scripts for Stage and Screen Dennis Barton

Four complete works for the stage and screen. Surreal Stage PlaysAmerica the Odd: son of Odysseus, Telemachus, has himself elected President of a new America during his fathers long absence from home. A drunken Abraham Lincoln and George Washington fist-fight over a lost love; the Lone Ranger and Custer form romantic ties; Adolph Hitler seeks redemption through an affair with a 1950s alcoholic housewife; Russian golfers conspire to beat Neil Armstrong to the moon and to help Odysseus recover his kingdom. Watermelon: a number of realities meld around the central themes of personal identity and free will. From the rural American farmlands to slapstick-tragic Watermelon World, characters seem puppets of fate until God discovers her own free will. ScreenplaysHuck Finn Rides Again: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn grow up to take opposite sides in the American Civil War, and its a contest between their boyhood friendship and the new ideals of adulthood. Issues of money, power, and racial prejudice drive a powerful wedge between the one-time pals originally created by Mark Twain. Lemonjello: a comic satire in which a young AfricanAmerican man raised by white parents finds himself stuck between the black and white worlds of contemporary America, where racial prejudice, and a longing for true love and understanding lead Lemonjello into and out of one hilariously tragic situation after another.