Teatrophy: Three More Plays
by Peter Carlaftes
“These plays read like bomb instructions to blow up the status quo!” — Michael Puzzo, playwright (The Dirty Talk, Lyric Is Waiting)
“Spiked with dark humor, wise-cracks and moments of deep caring!” — Richard Vetere, playwright (Caravaggio)
“Imagine Samuel Beckett staging Escape from New York as a futuristic romp among the cultural ruins!” — SF Weekly
In TEATROPHY: THREE MORE PLAYS, critically-acclaimed playwright/author/poet Peter Carlaftes offers a trio of brilliant and intense modern plays that inspire on both page and stage. In “Anti,” Carlaftes explores a frightening future—in which government surveillance and data mining is the norm—through the eyes of a theater director on the verge of giving up hope. The chilling psycho-sexual drama “Closure” examines the relationship between a woman whose sister was abused a child, and the rapist-murderer that stalks her outside her therapist’s office. In the tender and humorous “Inside Straight,” characters must confront their lovers’ sudden shift in sexual orientation as a gay man and a lesbian woman discover they are attracted to each other. The plays share a passion for beautifully drawn, full characters and powerful moments that force them to expose the true identity they work so hard to hide. As the SF Weekly raves, “As with Strindberg, Beckett or even Sartre, Carlaftes’ message seems to be something we intuit, like music.”
High Praise for TEATROPHY
“If Dr. Moreau fused the ungovernable souls of Beckett and Genet, he’d have created ?Peter Carlaftes. These plays read like bomb instructions to blow up the status quo.” —Michael Puzzo, playwright (The Dirty Talk, Lyric is Waiting)
“Challenging and cerebral work . . . A great addition to any collection.” —John Clancy, playwright, League of Independent Theater
“In each play characters speak in a fast-talking, spare language as if the sky is about to fall and flatten them at any moment. And everybody seems to be in a rush knowing that they have a damn good chance to be a goner. Spiked with dark humor, wise-cracks and moments of deep caring it’s hard not to appreciate and actually relish the sense of dread in every scene in all three plays.” —Richard Vetere, playwright (Caravaggio)
Imagine a drunken Samuel Beckett staging Escape from New York as a futuristic romp among the cultural ruins.” —SF Weekly
“Cries out Ultramodern—and that it delivers with unflinching scrutiny. . .” —Bay Guardian
“A comedy of eros! . . . A restive heart knows no logic or permanence.” —Guardian
“As with Strindberg, Beckett or even Sartre, Carlaftes’ message seems to be something we intuit, like music. —The Weekly
I Fold With The Hand I Was Dealt
poems by Peter Carlaftes
The second book of poems from the bare-fisted poet Peter Carlaftes
i fold with the hand i was dealt is the second book of poems from the bare-fisted poet Peter Carlaftes, and this insightful collection takes the reader on a thoroughly re-imagined joyride from birth through death via past and beyond. Carlaftes offers a brilliant poetic voice, filled with drop-dead humor, searing insight and resilient originality, even while resonating with overtones of Bukowski, Baudelaire and Vonnegut. A poem from the collection, “The Next to Last Wave,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Carlaftes is an NYC playwright, poet, and performer; author of 12 plays, including a noir treatment of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, and his own celebrity rehab center spoof, Spin-Dry. i fold with the hand i was dealt is his fourth book (the others being — A Year on Facebook (humor), Drunkyard Dog (poetry) and Triumph for Rent (3 plays), all on Three Rooms Press). He is co-founder and editor of Three Rooms Press; their most recent books include Maintenant 6: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art; Have a NYC: New York Short Stories; and Mike Watt: On and Off Bass, a collection of photos and distilled tour diaries from the great punk rock bass player.
Drunkyard Dog
Poems by Peter Carlaftes
Drunkyard Dog, Poems, by Peter Carlaftes
“A brilliant poetic voice, filled with drop-dead humor, searing insight and resilient originality, even while resonating with overtones of Bukowski, Baudelaire and Bogart . . .”
DrunkYard Dog by Peter Carlaftes is a long-awaited collection by a poetic master who honed his intense, insightful and inspiring poetic voice on the playgrounds of the Bronx, and, after seeing the world, moved onto the bars of Manhattan. Tales of bartender blues and bliss, injected with hope in a milieu of madness. Lush portraits of urban personas like Goodtime Charlie, the Battling Brothers, Ronnie the Cop and Uncle Willie. Cinematic swirls of downtown denizens in stark raving shades of shot-infused clarity. A poetic pub crawl that picks up the pieces of a dismantled present and puts them back together in a brand new cocktail. “If the sun set in the East, Carlaftes would be Bukowski.”
Carlaftes is the author of six chapbooks including The Bar Essentials, Sheer Bardom, Nightclub Confidential and Progressive Shots (all Three Rooms Press). Nine of his original plays have been staged to critical acclaim, including Anity, Spin-Dry, Handout, and Closure. He has also written and performed his one-man show, Lenny Bruce: Dead & Well, and is the author of two other books: A Year on Facebook (humor) and Triumph for Rent (three plays).
Triumph for Rent: 3 Plays
by Peter Carlaftes
Three inventive and thoroughly enjoyable dramas by a new master of modern stagecraft. “As with STRINDBERG, BECKETT, or even SARTRE, PETER CARLAFTES’ message seems to be something we intuit . . . like music.” —SF Weekly
Playwright Peter Carlaftes presents three compelling, funny and biting dramas in TRIUMPH FOR RENT: Three Plays (Three Rooms Press, 184 pages, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-9840700-6-0). The plays include SPIN-DRY: An hilarious wild ride through a 90s rehab center for celebrities; HUNGER: a heartfelt drama—inspired by the Knut Hamsun novel—about a starving writer trying to survive and keep his integrity alive as the borders blur between fantasy and reality in a world of rocker chicks, hookers and convicts; and FRONTIER-A GO-GO, a tragi-comedy in which a man living on a man living on the Nebraska plains circa 1872 uses a time machine to summon a hippie drifter and a budding feminist who have just conceived a daughter at a rock concert in 1972, and then summons the daughter, aged 25, from her 1997 date with a cybergeek.
Peter Carlaftes began his theatrical career on the playgrounds of the Bronx, and after seeing the world, branched out to Manhattan. Nine of his plays have been staged, to critical acclaim, among them Anity, Frontier A-Go-Go, Spin-Dry and Closure. He also created and staged a deconstruction of Knut Hamsun’s classic novel Hunger, and created and starred in a one-man rendition of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming. He has recently written and performed his solo work, Lenny Bruce: Dead & Well, and starred in numerous Off-Broadway plays. In addition to his theatrical career, Carlaftes is the author of two other books on Three Rooms Press: A Year on Facebook (humor), and Drunkyard Dog (poetry).
A Year on Facebook
by Peter Carlaftes
Groucho Marx meets Kurt Vonnegut and they become BFFs in this irreverent, hilarious new book.
A Year on Facebook is a comical trajectory through modern American life via daily updates from the insightful and irreverent pontiff of pun—Peter Carlaftes.
In this day of the tell-all journal, Carlaftes’s book, exposing the foibles of our seemingly civilized sensibility, tells both how — and like — it is. Iconic from conception, A Year on Facebook is a one of a kind literary experience that raises the bar for the idealist in us all.
Through the hysterical daily Facebook status updates of the author— who became a viral Jonathan Swift through his irreverent social, political and just plain “out-there” observations—A Year on Facebook provides an hilarious book to thumb through at random or read page-by-ROTFL-page. It’s packed with side-splitting illustrations, and “interactive” pages that provide a multimedia experience for the reader in combination with the book’s namesake website.
A Year on Facebook by Peter Carlaftes, Three Rooms Press
ISBN: 978-0-9840700-3-9, $13.95, 6” x 9”, Territory: WE, 184 Pages, January 2010, Trade Paper, Humor/Pop Culture/Social Networking
About Peter Carlaftes
PETER CARLAFTES is a New York-based performance artist, playwright, fiction author, actor, and poet. He is the author of twelve plays, including a noir treatment of Knut Hamsun’s “Hunger” and his original celebrity rehab center spoof, “Spin-Dry.” He has appeared in numerous Off-Broadway productions, including his comic solo performance piece, “Lenny Bruce: Dead & Well,” as well as “Barefoot in the Park” and Stephen Adly Guirgis’ “Den of Thieves.” Carlaftes books include A YEAR ON FACEBOOK (humor), DRUNKYARD DOG and I FOLD WITH THE HAND I WAS DEALT (poetry), TRIUMPH FOR RENT (3 Plays) and TEATROPHY (3 More Plays). He is co-editor of the annual Dada writing and art journal, MAINTENANT and the annual New York-based short story collection, HAVE A NYC. He is co-director of Three Rooms Press, a fierce, New York-based independent publisher inspired by Dada, punk and passion. He lives in New York City.
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