The Bad Infinity: Eight Plays [Paperback]

Mac Wellman (Author), Bonnie Marranca (Editor), Gautam Dasgupta (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1994

THE BAD INFINITY is the first published collection of plays by one of America's best-known and most widely performed experimental playwrights. Mac Wellman's biting social satire, Joycean language games, outrageous humor, and provocative subject matter have been the focus of critical acclaim on both coasts and stormy controversy on Capitol Hill. Now, with the publication of eight of his most provocative works of recent years, the playwright hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "one of the contemporary stage's premier masters of syntactical scat" is introduced to an even broader audience.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"It is a powerful selection of experimental plays which will attract considerable and sustained attention." -- The Reader's Review

"The Bad Infinity is invaluable for tracing Wellman's evolution, from the Godotesque landscape in Harm's way (1978) to the parody of Jesse Helm's NEA 4 furor in 7 Blowjobs (1991)." -- Theater

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (February 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801846889
• ISBN-13: 978-0801846885
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,062,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully bizarre, December 23, 2000

By 

Matthew Cheney (New Hampton, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bad Infinity: Eight Plays (Paperback)

Mac Wellman is the closest thing to a reincarnation of Gertrude Stein that we've got. Much of his writing frustrates any sort of analysis, and yet it is mesmerizing and beautiful. The monologue "Terminal Hip", which won an Obie award and is included in this collection, is a perfect example of Wellman at his best -- here, the detritus of our common languages converges in a mesmerizing tone poem which begins, "Strange the Y all bent up and dented/ Blew the who to tragic eightball. . ." It's certainly not easy to read, or to sit through in a theatre, but it's worth the effort of attention, for few people have ever been as talented as Wellman at discerning the hidden beauties in the pure sound of language.

But it's not all just about language. There's substance here, though sometimes you really do have to search for it. There's a fascinating adaptation of Dracula (vampires are a common theme in Wellman's work), and some marvelous political satire -- Jesse Helms is a favorite target of Wellman's wit. (Alas, Wellman's best satire, and perhaps his best play, "Sincerity Forever", is not included here, though it is available in the anthology Grove New American Theater edited by MIchael Feingold.)

It's probably fair to say that Mac Wellman is America's leading avant-garde playwright, for though his name is certainly not a household word, his career has been long and broad enough for him to have had many important productions throughout the world, and to have influenced a whole generation of young theatre artists. He is to his own generation what Richard Foreman was (and is) to his, and what I expect Suzan-Lori Parks will be to hers: a formidable imagination, a great artist, an inspiration, and a necessary provocateur.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Bad Infinity, July 25, 2009

By 

cortezhill - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Bad Infinity: Eight Plays (Paperback)

The eight plays in this collection are:

Harms Way
The Bad Infinity
The Self-begotten
Dracula
Wirligig
Crowbar
7 Bl**jobs
Terminal Hip

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-have collection for any fan of modern theatre, December 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Bad Infinity: Eight Plays (Paperback)

Mac Wellman is perhaps our greatest contemporary playwright.

He is an intellectual and a verbal acrobat. He is an anti-naturalist.

This collection brings together some of his earlier work. The plays contained are not as beautifully mature as the Crowtet plays or those even more recent. They are still much more interesting than most plays written in the past 50 years or so. Some of the plays were commissioned as site-specific works, which proved to be fascinating exercises for his abundant imagination.

They're probably not for everybody. Witness the scant productions of these works. They're kind of weird. But if you get them--are able to tap into them--the aesthetic experience is overwhelmingly wonderful. Mr. Wellman's heart is as big as his brain, and that's what make these works great.