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JOHN BIGUENET |
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Nationality: USA Email: Click here to contact Website: Click here to visit |
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Literary Agent: Abrams Artists Agency |
John Biguenet has published six books, including Oyster, a novel, and The Torturer's Apprentice: Stories, both widely translated. Biguenet's radio play Wundmale was broadcast in Germany and Austria. Two of his stories have been featured in Selected Shorts at Symphony Space on Broadway. The Vulgar Soul won the 2004 Southern New Plays Festival and was a featured production in 2005 at Southern Rep Theatre. Rising Water, the winner of a number of awards, has had productions around the country since its premiere in 2007. The similarly honored Shotgun, the second play in his Rising Water cycle, premiered in 2009 at Southern Rep Theatre with subsequent productions in 2010 at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater and Florida Studio Theatre. His new play, Night Train, was developed on a Studio Attachment at the National Theatre in London. His work has received an O. Henry Award and a Harper's Magazine Writing Award among other distinctions. Having served twice as president of the American Literary Translators Association and as writer-in-residence at various universities, he is currently the Robert Hunter Distinguished University Professor at Loyola University in New Orleans.
Plays by John Biguenet
Night Train | ||
| 1st Produced: | New Jersey Repertory Company | 30 Apr 2011 | ||||
Company: | n/a | |||||
| 1st Published: | I don't think it has been published. Try emailing Playwright or Agent where listed at top of page. | ISBN/ASIN: | - | |||
| Music: | - | doollee no | #127389 | |||
To Buy This Play: | If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies | |||||
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Genre: | Play/Drama | |||||
| Parts: | Male | 2 | Female | 1 | ||
Parts other: | - | |||||
Notes: | - | |||||
Synopsis: | Night Train begins with Alex, a well-dressed, well-heeled banker, riding the midnight train alone in his first-class compartment. His starting point and his destination are unclear but we know that he will arrive by morning, anxious to rejoin his young wife. Into his compartment barges Max, a gregarious stranger who claims that he is seeking refuge from a noisy second-class compartment nearby. Like the speeding train the play takes many twists and turns and when Max introduces Alex to the sultry and mysterious Marta, we know that we have boarded a train where all our expectations will be derailed and where our final destination will remain shrouded by the drifting smoke of the locomotive until the final jarring stop. | |||||
Further Reference: | - | |||||
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Rising Water | ||
| 1st Produced: | Southern Rep Theatre (New Orleans) | 2007 | ||||
Company: | Southern Rep Theatre | |||||
| 1st Published: | I don't think it has been published. Try emailing Playwright or Agent where listed at top of page. | ISBN/ASIN: | - | |||
| Music: | - | doollee no | #114418 | |||
To Buy This Play: | If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies | |||||
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Genre: | Play/Drama | |||||
| Parts: | Male | 1 | Female | 1 | ||
Parts other: | - | |||||
Notes: | "[Rising Water] grabbed the audience in its first tense moments and never let go. Biguenet has created characters of such opposite dimensions that they generate innate humor, which continues deeper into the play than one would have thought possible. It is natural and needed; otherwise the situation would be unbearable." -New Orleans Times-Picayune "The well-structured two-hander . . . offers an appealing and often compelling grasp of storytelling." -Variety "Rising Water emerges as a great American play - perhaps one of the first great plays of the 21st Century." -Orange County Register "[Rising Water] is . . . indelible an experience." -Backstage.com (Los Angeles) | |||||
Synopsis: | In Rising Water, a couple awaken in the middle of the night to find their pitch-dark house filling with water. Clambering into their attic, and then onto their rooftop, they struggle not only to survive but also to keep the guttering flame of their relationship from being extinguished. (A brief slide show about Rising Water with excerpts of dialogue can be seen at http://www.nola.com/photos/t-p/index.ssf?Waters.) | |||||
Further Reference: | - | |||||
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Shotgun | ||
| 1st Produced: | Southern Rep Theatre (New Orleans) | 2009 | ||||
Company: | Southern Rep Theatre, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, and Florida Studio Theatre | |||||
| 1st Published: | Dramatists Play Service, NY, 2011 | ISBN/ASIN: | 978-0-8222-2500-3 | |||
| Music: | - | doollee no | #114419 | |||
To Buy This Play: | If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies | |||||
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Genre: | Play/Drama | |||||
| Parts: | Male | 4 | Female | 1 | ||
Parts other: | - | |||||
Notes: | "In Shotgun . . . playwright John Biguenet exposes with power and grace the wounds that remain and examines how they might best be healed." -New Orleans Times-Picayune "Shotgun. . . deals with race but is ultimately about people. And it's fascinating." -Gambit Weekly "[Shotgun is] a serious play about serious subjects, and yet it is filled with the rich dark humor that got New Orleanians through those days after the storm."-Nola.com "Biguenet's ear for dramatic, natural dialogue is so adroit you cannot turn your eyes and mind from his play. So is his enchantment!" -WYES-TV "It's the narrow focus of this new play that shakes you. . .. Human drama doesn't have to look huge to be heartbreaking." -Orlando Sentinel "A moving exploration of a ravaged New Orleans . . . [and] an absorbing new drama by John Biguenet." -Sarasota Herald-Tribune | |||||
Synopsis: | In Shotgun, set four months after the collapse of defective levees in New Orleans, a white man and his teenaged son, having lost their house to the flood, rent half of a shotgun duplex from an African?American woman, whose father has lost his home in the Lower Ninth Ward and moved in with her. Even living under one roof, though, they find a wall still runs between them. But like the city's levees, can it, too, be breached? (A brief video of the play can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KT4WLFTWn4&feature=player_embedded.) | |||||
Further Reference: | - | |||||
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Vulgar Soul, The | ||
| 1st Produced: | Southern Rep Theatre (New Orleans) | 2005 | ||||
Company: | Southern Rep Theatre | |||||
| 1st Published: | I don't think it has been published. Try emailing Playwright or Agent where listed at top of page. | ISBN/ASIN: | - | |||
| Music: | - | doollee no | #114420 | |||
To Buy This Play: | If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies | |||||
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Genre: | Play/Drama | |||||
| Parts: | Male | 5 | Female | 3 | ||
Parts other: | - | |||||
Notes: | "[Biguenet's] play serves as a provocative inquiry into the nature of belief and self-deception." -American Theatre "The best, most stimulating play ever seen at the Canal Place theater." -WYES-TV "The Vulgar Soul is open to interpretation, with an enigmatic, accumulative power that captures the attention and imagination . . . with a questing intelligence." -New Orleans Times-Picayune "The Vulgar Soul is, in a word, superb." -Slidell Sentry-News | |||||
Synopsis: | In The Vulgar Soul, a young man devoid of any religious belief watches as the five wounds of the Crucifixion gradually appear on his body. The faithless stigmatic searches for a cure even as he is celebrated by the faithful. Abandoned by them when the wounds fade, he is offered an unexpected opportunity to embrace what he has resisted. His psychiatrist, a young woman married to an older architect, parallels her patient's journey in yielding to her own body's demands. [8 characters / 5 actors] | |||||
Further Reference: | - | |||||
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Wundmale | ||
| 1st Produced: | Westdeutscher Rundfunk (Koln) | 1994 | ||||
Company: | Westdeutscher Rundfunk | |||||
| 1st Published: | I don't think it has been published. Try emailing Playwright or Agent where listed at top of page. | ISBN/ASIN: | - | |||
| Music: | - | doollee no | #114417 | |||
To Buy This Play: | If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies | |||||
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Genre: | Radio Drama | |||||
| Parts: | Male | 6 | Female | 4 | ||
Parts other: | - | |||||
Notes: | Produced in German. Also broadcast by osterreichischer Rundfunk (1996). | |||||
Synopsis: | n/a | |||||
Further Reference: | - | |||||
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