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Midnight Plays
by Leon Katz
Price: $7.50
ISBN: 1-886420-17-3
Midnight Plays anthologizes four plays from four different worlds of
story-telling: a Victorian tale of vampires (Dracula/Sabbat), a story of Jewish
mysticism (The Dybbuk), a scatological retelling of the Oedipus myth (Swellfoot's
Tears), and a tale from the Marquis de Sade (Justine). Their common denominator
is their Grand Guignol environment that plays into and pays homage to the Grand Guignol
spirit of the past century's morality. Each of the four protagonistsJustine, Swellfoot,
Dracula, Channanplays holy fool who whether he shares or is outraged by that
moralityit makes little differenceis brutally victimized by it. The plays
explore what is left of heroism, possibly meaningless, certainly helpless, but,
paradoxically, still uncompromising.
Dracula: Sabbat
The play simmers with nakedness and erotic energy. A work of absolute
authenticitywith beauty, dignity, gravity and sensuality, rare to the
point of near extinction in any part of our contemporary theater . . . . It is
beautiful in its shivery delight and awed fear of tension and release.Jack
Kroll, Newsweek
Justine
Katz has taken one of the most horrific tales of human degradation in Western
literature and fashioned it into an extraordinary, beautiful theatrical
experience.Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Dybbuk
Brio, exaltation, pure and sinister passion exudes from this La Mama production of The
Dybbuk, a production which satisfyingly plunges us way over our heads into the story by
using a full range of modern devices and insights.Village Voice, NY
About the Author

Leon Katz is the author of several dozen original plays and adaptations produced in the US
and abroad, among them The Three Cuckolds, a commedia dell'arte play which has had
over 400 productions internationally, its sequel The Son of Arlecchino, Beds,
and The Making of Americans, an opera based on Gertrude Stein's monumental novel with
a score by Al Carmines. He has also done translations and stage versions of works by Aeschylus,
Ovid, Schiller, Ibsen, Claudel, Strindberg, Proust, Kafka, Joyce and others. Leon Katz currently
teaches at UNC-Chapel Hill.
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