Murray Schisgal

A collection fo five-one act plays all dealing with desire in our apocalyptic times. Sexaholics finds Tony and Juliet, in Scene 1, driven obsessively, pathologically, and hilariously, by sexual desire. This, prior to the advent of AIDS. Scene 2 occurs after 1981 and reveals how they try to cope, control, humanize their sexual drives. The results mirror our sexual lives in the 1990s. The Artist... finds an aging male Artist sketching a young, female nude Model. Her youth and desirability provoke him to refect on his life and the abyss that lies between age and youth, between desire and fulfillment. The Artist...2 brings onstage a female Artist and her young, male nude Model. He is the son of her best friend who gave up the idea of being a painter to raise a family. Who made the wiser choice haunts the Artist as she sketches. The Cowboy... After being fired from his job as a highly paid advertising executive, our hero seeks refuge in the fantasy that he is a cowboy in the Old West. His wife seeks to bring him back to reality with humorous unforeseen consequences. In Extensions, a vaudeville team, waiting to hear from its agent, are subjected to a relentless barrage of supernatural telephone calls that encapsulate all of life's random vicissitudes. Song, dance and comic patter intertwine with the absurdist dramatization of their isolation and desperate need for each other.

Poor Harry Berlin decides to end it all by jumping off the Manhattan Bridge. He is stopped by his old friend Milt who takes Harry home and introduces him to his wife, Ellen, with whom Harry instantly falls in love. Milt and Ellen divorce, then realize they're still in love; to get back together, they have to encourage Harry to jump off the bridge.

Contents, The American dream / Edward Albee - Gallous humour / Jack Richardson - The typists / Murray Schisgal - Incident at Vichy / Arthur Miller.