David Copelin
Playwright/Dramaturg/Teacher/Translator
suchapunim@gmail.com
Agent:
Michael Petrasek
Kensington Literary Representation
34 St. Andrews Street
Toronto, ON MST 1K6
416.979.0187
kensingtonlit@rogers.com
After many years of work as a dramaturg at several well-known professional theatres, I'm now focusing more on writing my own plays. To my surprise and delight, several of them have been produced and published. I've also won a few awards, and received some grants to keep writing. These are encouraging. So are the royalties from productions! Some of my plays have overtly Jewish content, some don't, but my Jewishness informs everything I write. I think that's a blessing.
Jewish Plays
Full-length
The Angel Capone
Comedy in two acts
4m, 5f
It's 1928. Aspiring New York actress Lenore Shlemansky gets no respect from her accountant sister Dora or their dressmaker mother Anna. Then Lenore gets cast in the Ziegfeld Follies, and Hamilton Prescott, a Broadway producer, hires Dora. Soon the squabbling sisters are in Chicago, where gangster Al Capone is smitten by Lenore. When Hamilton and Dora reject a script that Lenore has written for herself to star in, she gets Capone to invest in the show. But who can be certain that a new play will be a hit? And if it's a flop, who can predict what a ruthless "angel" might do?
Produced by Holy Blossom Temple Stageworks Company, Toronto, 2011
The Rabbi of Ragged Ass Road
Comedy in two acts
3m, 2f
Dethtinni, a lovelorn skeleton, haunts Yellowknife in northern Canada, where Ed, a fake shaman, and his sister Jo clash over values. Jo has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer and faces surgery. Ed teases her about her troubled relationship with Barry, a white lawyer for the local diamond mine. Barry's sister Susan, a rabbi, comes to visit. She has lost her faith and quit her congregation after the senseless death of her husband Michael. Susan fears that she is going insane after a confrontation with Dethtinni, but Rivka, the raven who flew out of Noah's Ark, comforts her. Concerned that Ed is fleecing Barry, Susan challenges Ed, and discovers that she has much to learn. Disguised as Michael, Dethtinni seduces Susan. When the deception is revealed, Dethtinni threatens to kill Jo unless Susan agrees to love him. She refuses. Dethtinni is thwarted by Ed, Barry, and Rivka. Barry and Jo reconcile, and Susan receives an unexpected gift.
Rehearsed reading at Magic Theatre, San Francisco, 2008
Short Plays
Quite Contrary
Comedy in one act
3m, 1f
It's 1536 in England, and Henry VIII's soldiers are looting monasteries. Father William and Brother Hugh hide their monastery's treasures, which include a statue of the Virgin. Then Toss, a ragged traveler, seeks sanctuary. They grant it as their last act before the death they fear is coming for them. Then Hugh catches Toss juggling, and William discovers that Toss is Jewish! Jews were banished from England over a century before. The monks decide to trade Toss for their freedom. Then the statue of the Virgin comes to life, and she's not the saintly Mary of Christian tradition; she's Miriam, a salty, practical Jewish woman who despises the smug attitude of the churchmen. When she asks Toss to say kaddish with her for her murdered son (it's Good Friday), he refuses. But Miriam "convinces" all three men to say kaddish, and a miracle happens.
Produced by SABEL, Malibu, California, 2001
Mind Over Matter
Comedy in one act
1m, 1f
It's the summer of 1968. Marty has burned his draft card at an anti-war demonstration and has been attacked by the police. Alison has rescued him. Both are Jewish. Alison has taken Marty to her apartment, where he hopes for some soothing casual sex. Sadly, he fails Alison's test: He can't hear the overture to Rossini's William Tell without thinking of "The Lone Ranger." Then he unmasks her hypocrisy and manipulation -- and she unmasks his. They realize that they are meant for each other.
Produced by the Yale Cabaret, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969
Non-Jewish Plays
Full-length
Bella Donna
Comedy in two acts
2m, 3f
Bella Donna relates an imaginary episode in the dramatic life of Lucrezia Borgia, the most infamous woman of the Italian Renaissance. An illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI, Lucrezia was her father's political pawn and a scapegoat for her brother Cesare's murders. Excommunicated by her father's successor as Pope, weary of her husband Alfonso's infidelities, Lucrezia takes a young lover -- with darkly comic consequences.
Produced by Some Strange Reason at the Toronto Fringe Festival, 2005
Awarded best Play and Patron's Pick
Published by Playwrights Canada Press, Toronto, 2006
Several subsequent productions in Canada
Ubu Rex
Farce in two acts
17+m, 2+f
This is an adaptation of Alfred Jarry's proto-Absurdist Ubu Roi, a wicked parody of Macbeth, 19th-century heroic French drama, and the brutal politics that seem to govern everywhere. When the obese Pa Ubu, egged on by his ambitious wife Ma Ubu, assassinates King Wenceslas of Poland and usurps the crown, his astonishing stupidity and greed know no bounds. His subjects revolt, and his forces are defeated by those of the equally venal Czar of Russia. Deposed, Ma and Pa Ubu flee to America, where new opportunities await.
Produced by Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, 1980
Produced by the Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, 1990
Published by Pulp Press, Vancouver, 1973, revised and reprinted 1978
Many subsequent productions in university theatre departments
Short Plays
Coming Up for Air
Comedy in one act
1m, 2f
In the not-so-distant future, global warming has melted the polar ice caps, and Oregon's Rogue Valley is now Lake Rogue. The UN has declared water a human right, and now there's so much of it that attempts to commercialize it have been abandoned. But clean air is getting scarcer, and high school entrepreneur Bunny has found a way to capture a very lucrative market. She convinces her reluctant classmates, conventional liberals Marion and Jake, to join her growing enterprise.
Commissioned and produced by the Oregon Conservatory of Performing Arts, Medford, Oregon, 2011
A Clean Breast
Comedy in one act
1f
Tammy Morgan, a tough, sensitive working class woman, is facing a mastectomy. She tells us about her life and loves as she awaits the surgery and what might come after.
Co-Winner, Emerging Playwrights Competition, Solo Collective, Vancouver, 2005
Produced by Sarasvati Productions, Winnipeg, 2006
Excerpted in She Speaks, ed. Judith Thompson, 2nd ed., Playwrights Canada Press, Toronto, 2006