Rushes of Tulsa, The (and Other Plays)
These four plays by Sidney Goldfarb are politically astute and savagely funny, though remarkably compassionate, like a stew cooked up by the Marx Brothers, Groucho and Karl, after years of Zen Meditation. Pursued by the forces of murder and exploitation, ordinary people struggle just to stay alive. The path to liberation is through the human body, at once the arena of conflict and the locus of healing in a culture torn by menace and mayhem. This is a Theater of Incarnation. It is also a Theater of Celebration. Startling invention in language and structure turn palpable horrors into unexpected forms of transcendence. To the discerning ear these plays are actually poetry disguised as theater. Goldfarb ranks among the indispensable experimental poet/playwrights of his generation.
Praise for the plays:
"A play ["The Rushes of Tulsa"] of this hallucinatory intensity should require a doctor's prescription. Sidney Goldfarb mixes cattle ranching, the international drug trade, cabalistic massage, urban Indians, incest, God and global capitalism, into a lyrical, hilarious, and ultimately heartbreaking masterpiece." - Richard Halpern, author of Norman Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence and Shakespeare Among the Moderns
"In this strange world desiccation alternates with drowning as the only possible states for living matter; dryness becomes associated with maleness, water with women. The play ["Orange Grove"] evokes a frightening place where, without knowing it, ordinary folks are in over their heads. Goldfarb's landscape seethes with myth and metaphor. This is Sam Shepard on acid." - Alisa Solomon, The Village Voice
"'Hot Lunch Apostles' is a devastating play - a breakthrough work. Using powerful gutter poetry, playwright Sidney Goldfarb wrenches whorehouse slang into memorable images of disgust and despair. In a funny kind of way, he has come up with a dramatic equation that explains the birth of Christianity as a vital ideology. A life of emptiness and degradation demands redemption." -Dan Isaac, Other Stages
"The words are just beautiful in Sidney Goldfarb's version of the compact and lyrical tale ["Pedro Pramo"] told by Juan Rulfo about a mysterious Mexican village and its strange inhabitants. It respects the stark poetry in the novel's picaresque narrative, about a young man who strikes out in search of his father and uncovers the secret history of the man and of all who knew him." - Marilyn Stasio, New York Post