I'm pleased to announce the release of Stop Plosive by Cesi Davidson as a volume in the Conversation Pieces series, in both print and e-book editions. Stop Plosives is the fourth book Aqueduct has published in Cesi's Short Plays to Nourish the Mind and Soul sequence. You can purchase it now at http://www.aqueductpress.com.
And you can read a sample from the book at http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/samples/978-1-61976-266-4.pdf.
Cesi writes in the introduction:
Why not?
In this collection of plays, I play. Why not? I explore how we can become more human with perspective-taking by giving an object, food, or animal, human characteristics. I place humans in unusual circumstances with time and space, and with mixed intentions. What can we discover? Come play with me. Let’s laugh and have fun together. Let’s acknowledge our sadness. And let’s cry together. Let’s admit that we don’t know all the answers but still know the importance of asking questions. Why not?
Advance Praise for Stop Plosive
The plays in this collection will elicit a mosaic of emotions. There's joy ("Potato Chip Race"), and laughter ("Mrs. Brown's Dilemma"), anger ("Where's Becky?"), and bewilderment ("Clockwise"). You'll meet yourself, your family, your friends, and even your frenemies. You'll know that we are seen and immortalized in print. Allow these feelings to course around your body through the magic of plays on a page. Cesi Davidson has done it again, in this, her fourth collection. We can always depend on this prolific playwright to deliver us to ourselves in all our messy glory.--Celeste Rita Baker, World Fantasy Award Winner, author of Back, Belly & Side
Why Not?
At the very beginning of her new collection of plays, Stop Plosive, Cesi Davidson asks her readers, old and new, to explore each and every play asking, “Why not?” And as I read each play in the series, I suspend all preconceived notions, which may cloud my ability to play within her plays!!
One particular play, “Bus Talk,” really spoke to me. “Bus Talk” shares the story of a New York City bus driver on his last day of work before retirement. The play begins with the bus driver lamenting that despite his 33-year stellar safe driving record, his employer is more concerned with weeding out bus drivers who are deemed too old and making too much money. This metaphoric scenario is familiar to those of us who have experienced a career in which our deep and personal connections with our core constituency, the “passengers on the bus,” are not appreciated by the administrators of the “bus system.”
The genius of Davidson’s play is in creating an uplifting story in which the bus driver realizes his true gift in connecting with specific passengers on his bus and then magically bestowing his gifts on each passenger without the constraints that the bus system imposes on him.
The bus driver essentially is living his last workday in the realm of “Why Not?”. In other words, Davidson is asking her readers to contemplate this compelling question: Without systemic constraints and barriers, imagine what we could do with our life? Imagine what we could do if we lived life in the sphere of “Why Not?”. For example, why not use our true gifts which are grounded in love for one another?
Thank you Cesi Davidson, for your many gifts, which fill my heart and head with your inspirational “Why not?”.--Tobie Stein, PhD, Visiting Distinguished Professor, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan
In Stop Plosive, Cesi Davidson’s wildly imaginative short plays continue to astonish. In this slender volume, she had me laughing at her hilarious take on superbad sex machine/soul brother James Brown. She had me crying as a retiring bus driver doles out random acts of kindness to his passengers. She had me thinking about the insidious way white privilege works in “Where’s Becky,” a politically enlightened homage to Waiting for Godot. And she gave me hope in “Bringing Tiny Home” when white and black stepsisters overcome their differences and figure out a way to care for their recently deceased father’s dog. What more can one ask of a playwright? And yet there is more, much more. Read or watch these plays. You will be very happy you did.--Zachary Sklar, Oscar-nominated screenwriter (JFK, with Oliver Stone), author of The Work: A Jigsaw Memoir