Tom Jacobson Playwright

T O M J A C O B S O Np l a y w r i g h t

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Welcome to Tom Jacobson's website.

Here you'll be able to read about his past productions, those upcoming, and plays yet to be produced.

You may also request a script or production rights.

Hope you enjoy the site!

Taylor Gilbert and KC Marsh in Ouroboros at

The Road Theatre Company (2004) photo credit: Marci Hill

ABOUT

Tom Jacobson has had more than 70 productions in Los Angeles and around the country, including THE BELOVED DISCIPLE, CYBERQUEER, and DEGENERATE ART. His adaptations SPERM at Circle X and THE ORANGE GROVE at Playwrights Arena were Critics Choice in the Los Angeles Times. He has been a co-literary manager of The Theatre _ Boston Court, a founding member of Playwrights Ink, artistic director of Ensemble Studio Theatre-LA, and a board member of Cornerstone Theater Company. He teaches playwriting and related courses for UCLA Extension. The Road Theatre Company's 2008 THE FRIENDLY HOUR followed their 1998 production of TAINTED BLOOD (winner of seven Valley Theatre League Awards), their 2004 production of OUROBOROS (Garland Award for playwriting, LA Weekly Awards for playwriting and Production of the Year), and their 2005 production of BUNBURY, which was nominated for a GLAAD Award and an Ovation Award, and won several Valley Theatre League and Ticketholder Awards. Most recently, THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY WAY at The Theatre _ Boston Court garnered acclaim in both Pasadena and at the New York International Fringe Festival. THE CHINESE MASSACRE (ANNOTATED) at Circle X and HOUSE OF THE RISING SON at Ensemble Studio Theatre-LA premiered in April 2011.

PLAYS

Plays

Apocrypha (3 women, 4 men) Within a framework of tragicomic realism, poetic visions of controversial passages of the New Testament Apocrypha come to life as an early Christian council debates which books to include in the Bible. *Battle Hymn (3 women, 2 men) A realistic, darkly humorous drama set in an Oklahoma bowling alley (run by a charismatic Christian matron) during a dust storm. Paralleling the eternal conflict in the Middle East, a black woman fights to keep her white boyfriend from marrying a Lebanese singer. *The Bell Witch (4 women, 6 men) The true story of the most famous poltergeist in American history; it terrorized a Tennessee farm family in 1820. Theatricality and psychological exploration combine to make this folk tale more than just a ghost story about the only poltergeist known to have committed murder. A musical, believe it or not!*The Beloved Disciple (3 men) Christopher Marlowe, sixteenth-century author of Doctor Faustus, was murdered at the age of 29. This tragicomedy speculates that his death was tied to his scandalous play about the relationship between Jesus and the disciple John. Pick of the Week and nominated for an L.A. Weekly Award.Bunbury (3 women, 3 men; 1 set) When he discovers he is only a fictitious character in The Importance of Being Earnest, Bunbury joins forces with Rosaline, Romeos never-seen obsession from Romeo and Juliet. Together, they win back their loves and change the world by changing classic literature. Winner of a Ticketholder Award and Garland Award for Best New Play, Critics Choice in the Los Angeles Times.The Chinese Massacre (annotated) (6 women, 12 men) This annotated true story of the first race riot in Los Angeles history challenges the notion of history itself. As diverse a population in 1871 as today converges on Nigger Alley in response to a tong war over a woman and lynches 19 Chinese men and boys. Where does revenge end? Clytemnestra (2 women, 3 men) Adapted from Menander, this play tells the Electra story from the point of view of Clytemnestra, a brilliant woman with a biting wit. The funniest Greek tragedy you've ever seen! Part of The Vesuvius Prophecies trilogy.Conserving Melissa (2 women, 2 men) A conservator's obsession with the Egyptian mummy she's restoring threatens her impending marriage in this funny romance cursed with confusion. You never really know someone till they're dead.... Cool My Tongue (1 woman, 5 men) Five gay men in a Christian change program struggle with spirituality and desire in this comedy-drama, with devastating consequences. Ironies abound in a program that accomplishes the opposite of its aims. Cyberqueer (1 woman, 7 men) A lonely college professor finds sex, danger and romance on the Internet in this comedy the Los Angeles Times called dazzling and the L.A. Weekly called menacingly funny. A Critics Choice in Drama-Logue.Degenerate Art (3 women, 4 men) An Expressionist artist battles Nazis and his own ardent nationalism when his art is declared degenerate by the totalitarian regime.Deus Ex Machina (2 women, 3 men) Archeologists discover an unknown Greek play and other secrets in the ruins of Pompeii that threaten to set in motion a modern apocalypse. Part of The Vesuvius Prophecies trilogy.The Friendly Hour (5 women) Based on the actual minutes of a womens club formed in rural South Dakota in 1934, this poignant comedy charts 70 years of personal and national history, from skinning skunks and julebukking in the 30s to restoring native prairie in the new millennium. The Glory of Her Sex (4 women, 7 men, 1 man or woman) A comedy/drama about the true androgynous adventures of the Chevalier d'Eon de Beaumont, 17th-century Frenchman who was actually thrown in the Bastille for wearing men's clothing.Hell Mouth (1 woman, 2 men) Torn between his Midwestern parents and the Beverly Hills owners of an unknown Caravaggio Hanging of Judas, Tim rediscovers himself while making the art history discovery of the century. Imagine your own mother on the Worst Dressed Women List. *House of the Rising Son (4 men) When Trent brings Felix home to New Orleans to meet his father and homophobic grandfather, the familys demons come slithering into the light. Watchful ghosts, sinister hustlers, and a myriad of parasites lead Felix on a Southern Gothic journey to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Ill Will (2 women, 2 men) A strange and possibly malevolent last will and testament sends four grieving friends and relatives on a perilous journey inside themselves. *Inherent Vice (4 women, 3 men; 1 set) Farcical furor breaks out during an exhibition of erotic art as a museum tries to woo a prudish donor. *The Journeys of Yuzu adapted from the ancient Pali manuscript (1 woman, 5 men) A young assassin seeks clues to his origin and discovers a secret that changes the world. Pure evil pursues impure good in this irreverent verse drama about the ultimate action hero. *The Lock of the Five Keys (2 men) An American professor disappears in India, leading to a search through history for a mysterious amulet that carries both a blessing and a curse. A play within a play within a play within a play within a play.*Los York (3 men) UCLA or NYU? Seduction and betrayal or self-sacrificing love? Otis is stuck between two coasts and his two gay uncles, in the middle of an America living in terror. Choosing a grad school was never this hard. *Man of Honor - book and lyrics by Tom Jacobson, music by Kelly Green (4 women, 4 men, 4 minimal sets) A gay Man of Honor sabotages his best friends wedding because he cant let her go. * The Orange Grove (4 women, 5 men) A small Lutheran choir in its death-throes provides the backdrop for this Chekhovian warning of the impending doom of mainline Protestantism in America. Laughter through tears with nice lemon bars. Critics Choice in the Los Angeles Times.Ouroboros (2 women, 3 men) Two American couples get caught in a chronological palindrome on a trip to Italy. Stigmata, alchemy, adultery and St. Catherine of Siena's severed head plague a nun and a minister in this circular love story that is a comedy if performed forward and a tragedy if performed backward. Winner of Best New Play and Production of the Year LA Weekly Awards.Pipestone (3 women) A middle-aged woman struggles with her suspicion that her mother was murdered by her aunt. A comedy/drama with Jello. *The Rosy Fingers of Dawn (2 women, 3 men) Not even the eruption of Mount Vesuvius can stop an inventive and theatrical Roman family from putting on their production of a lost Greek classic, Menander's Clytemnestra. The show must go on! Part of The Vesuvius Prophecies trilogy.Son of Othello (2 women, 5 men) A modern African-American academic plunges into a 400 year-old intrigue when he finds a 16th-century Italian diary that mentions William Shakespeare. Monks, pirates, eunuchs and actors conspire to rewrite literary history.Spareribs in the Material World (3 women, 3 men) A medieval vestment with mysterious powers may be the only way to defeat an evil Jesus in this intriguing tale of heresy and a love that will not die: the real story behind the extinction of the dinosaurs. *Sperm adapted from Jacques Miroir's 18th-century play (2 women, 5 men) Pulled from the stomach of a whale, an American whaler is bleached blind and becomes a modern Tiresias in the court of Louis XVI. He seduces Marie Antoinette and sets the king on a path to destroy France and ultimately humankind. A tragicomedy in rhymed couplets. Critics Choice in the Los Angeles Times.Spontaneous Human Combustion (1 woman, 3 men) At the dawn of Reagan's Morning in America, four college students seduce, betray and forgive each other in this gay comedy of bodily fluids that climaxes in the world's tackiest Dead Celebrities Party. *Stereopticon (2 women, 4 men) Spanning more than 30 years, this comedy-drama follows two life-paths of a woman who must decide whether to marry her fiancé after she finds out hes slept with men. A palindrome play with two endings and two beginnings. *Sweeter than Pussy (5 men) The Odyssey re-created in the sauna of a Koreatown gym. *Tainted Blood (3 women, 5 men) Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, and Arthur Conan Doyle use logic and religion to fend off a seductive vampire in this fang-in-cheek comedy/thriller. Pick of the Week in the LA Weekly, and winner of seven Valley Theatre League Awards.The Twentieth-Century Way (2 men) is the true story of two actors who hired themselves out to the Long Beach Police Department in 1914 to entrap "social vagrants" in public restrooms. Thirty-one men were arrested, and the ensuing scandal led to an ordinance against "oral sodomy" in California. Voice (3 women, 5 men, 1 boy) A stylized tale of a 17th-century Italian castrato singer's defiance of church and society in his struggle to marry the woman he loves. ** denotes unproduced

Above: A cold reading of

The Friendly Hour

At right: Peter James Smith, Don Oscar Smith, Joshua Wolf Coleman, Kevin Crowley, and Bonita Friedericy in

The Orange Grove (2005)

photo credit: Playwrights Arena

PRODUCTIONS No Frame

Select Productions and Awards

The Chinese Massacre (annotated) Directed by Jeff LiuCircle X Theatre Company (2011)National Endowment for the Arts production grant (2009)House of the Rising SonDirected by Michael MichettiEnsemble Studio Theatre-LA (2011)Making Paradise: The West Hollywood MusicalDirected by Michael John Garces and Mark ValdezCornerstone Theater Company (2010)The Twentieth-Century WayDirected by Michael MichettiThe Theatre _ Boston Court (2010) and the New York International Fringe Festival (2010)Nominated for five Ovation Awards, four Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards, and a GLAAD Award.The Friendly Hour Directed by Mark BringelsonThe Road Theatre Company, North Hollywood (2008)LA Weekly Award for Best EnsembleBunbury Directed by Mark BringelsonThe Road Theatre Company (2005)Los Angeles Times Critics Choice, nominated for 2006 GLAAD Award and two Ovation Awards, also produced at LA Theatre Works (2006), Diversionary Theatre in San Diego (2007), Long Beach Playhouse (2008), Skull and Dagger Society of UCSD (2008) and Department of Theatre and Dance at Pomona College (2008).Conserving Melissa Megan MurphyRenegade Theatre Ensemble, San Jose (2005)The Orange Grove Directed by Jessica KubzanskyPlaywrights Arena, Los Angeles (2005)Los Angeles Times Critics ChoiceOuroboros Directed by Michael MichettiThe Road Theatre Company (2005)Los Angeles Times Critics Choice, LA Weekly Awards for Best New Play and Production of the Year, subsequently produced at Houston's Main Street Theatre (2006) and Convergence Continuum in Cleveland (2009)Sperm Directed by Tara Flynn and Tim WrightCircle X Theatre Company, Los Angeles (2004)Los Angeles Times Critics Choice, LA Weekly recommendedCool My Tongue Directed by Todd NielsonCelebration Theatre, Los Angeles (2000)The Book of the Dead Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1996, 1999)Endangered Species Directed by Fred SandersInteract Theatre (1996)Tainted Blood Directed by Michael MichettiThe Road Theatre Company (1998)Seven Valley Theatre League Awards, LA Weekly Pick of the Week, four other productions nationallyCyberqueer Directed by Mark BringelsonCelebration Theatre (1996, 1998)LA Weekly Pick of the Week, four subsequent productions nationallySon of Othello Directed by Fred SandersCelebration Theatre (1995)The Beloved Disciple Directed by Fred SandersThe Complex, Los Angeles (1994)LA Weekly Pick of the Week
No Frame

Emily Kosloski, Peter James Smith, and Tom Beyer in The Orange Grove at Playwrights Arena (2005) photo credit: Playwrights Arena

REVIEWS

Los Angeles Times review: House of the Rising Son (2011) It's no coincidence that Tom Jacobson's “House of the Rising Son” at the Atwater Village Theatre is set primarily in New Orleans during the annual Tennessee Williams Festival. It's a play that Williams himself might have penned if not for the homophobic strictures of his day.A generational saga, “House” bristles with the same kind of self-loathing secretiveness that forced Williams to cloak his homosexual themes in myth and metaphor. But that covert quality is balanced by an emotional openness and poignant pride reminiscent of Terrence McNally's “Love! Valour! Compassion!” All this, with plenty of laughs.This world premiere, produced by the Ensemble Studio Theatre Los Angeles, showcases the prolific Jacobson at his witty yet heartfelt best. (Another Jacobson world premiere, Circle X's production of “The Chinese Massacre (Annotated),” runs concurrently in the adjacent theater.)To say much about the plot would spoil its genuinely shocking twists. The action centers around parasitologist Dr. Trent Varro (Paul Witten) who falls for young Felix (Steve Coombs) and brings him to New Orleans to meet his wealthy relatives, the courtly but distant Garrett (Patrick John Hurley) and the apparently homophobic Bowen (Rod Menzies, double cast with Nicholas Hormann.) Richard Hoover's evocatively decaying set, Jeremy Pivnick's spooky lighting, and Bruno Louchouarn's original music and sound give this New Orleans mansion the feel of a haunted house, which in a very real sense it is. The cast is superb, particularly Menzies as the savagely sardonic Bowen, whose offbeat aphorisms garner the biggest laughs of the show. As for director Michael Michetti, he's the perfect guide for Jacobson's carnival fun “House” of a play -– and a ghostly, entertaining tour it is.The Twentieth-Century Way reviewed in Back Stage West (2010)Playwright Tom Jacobson is known for tackling challenging themes, and his latest effort recounting a scandalous little-known chapter in Southern California history—is among his boldest. Not content to merely relate a fascinating milestone in gay-rights travails, Jacobson sets the stage for two versatile actors to explore multilayered ruminations on sexual identity, institutional corruption, the conscience of civil servants carrying out questionable duties, the mysteries of the acting craft, and more. Director Michael Michetti and first-rate actors Will Bradley and Robert Mammana take us on an illuminating theatrical adventure not likely to be forgotten.During summer 1914, the city of Long Beach enlisted two actors, W.H. Warren and B.C. Brown, as "vice specialists" to go into public restrooms and other places in attempts to entice gay men toward sexual acts, then arrest them. These were the first recorded incidents in the U.S. of police entrapment of gays, setting the stage for myriad gay-rights violations in the 20th century and beyond. Jacobson's intriguing script shrewdly mixes historical fact and fictionalization.The inventive play-within-a-play structure begins with two present-day actors meeting in a theater, ostensibly to audition for a film role as a con artist, circa 1914. The competitive actors instantly commence an edgy interchange. The forceful and ruggedly handsome elder actor (Mammana) convinces the reluctant pretty-boy thespian (Bradley) to engage in a series of improvisations. The dicey subject matter is the Long Beach entrapment campaign of 1914. By making split-second shifts in costume accessories, Bradley plays the entrapment agent Brown, the Long Beach police chief, a reporter for the Sacramento Bee, an attorney, and an entrapment victim—a middle-aged Scottish druggist. Making similar instantaneous changes, Mammana portrays the entrapment agent Warren, the editor of the Sacramento Bee, a Minnesota florist, a gay party boy, a Long Beach police officer, a district attorney, and a housewife. On a purely technical level, the actors give virtuoso performances, mastering an astonishing range of characters apiece. Beyond that, their intelligent interpretation of Jacobson's text expertly serves the complexity of the piece, eliciting laugher, shocks, chills, and endless food for thought. The play takes a startling turn at the end, bringing Jacobson's central themes of role-playing, self-deception, and moral responsibility to a shattering conclusion. The Friendly Hour reviewed in Daily Variety (2008)Playwright Tom Jacobson seems to challenge himself with each new project, from the ambitious interconnectivity of the two parts of "Ouroboros" to the giddy rewrite of famous literature in "Bunbury." On the surface, his latest play, "The Friendly Hour," may not seem stylistically in line with his other work, but it is its audacity is simply more quiet. It is a moving and funny piece, and the performances by a quintet of skilled actresses makes the play sing with jubilant, complicated life.Jacobson's intriguing play structure, which tells the story entirely through meetings of a club, seeks to let the passage of life over seven decades provide the drama. This is more effective in the second act, in which characters grow old and die; the meetings in the first act run together without enough of a sense of progress or differentiation. Jacobsons' dialogue, however, and the cast are so good that this is essentially a quibble.In 1934 South Dakota a group of young wives have formed a club called the Friendly Hour. Its an opportunity to see their friends, raise money for good causes and, always, to have a tasty lunch. Book lover Dorcas (Ann Noble) nominates her friend Effie (Kate Mines) for president, a decision shell regret over the next 70 years as the two regularly clash. The teasingly scatological Opal (Deana Barone) becomes treasurer, the German-accented Isabelle (Bettina Zacar) concentrates largely on cooking, and Dorcas ever-cheerful sister Wava (Mara Marini) keeps her sorrows to herself.Noble is delightful as Dorcas, bringing brash humor and charm to the role and doing full justice to more dramatic moments as well. Mines is strong as the controlling and conservative Effie, whose bossy nature is undercut by interludes of hiding in closets due to fear or embarrassment. Mines inhabits this character fully. When Dorcas and Effie become great friends again toward the end of their lives, after all of the bad blood between them has passed, wer'e glad to see it thanks to the power of her perf.Barone is superb as peacemaker Opal, strikingly different as the older version of the character but completely believable throughout. Marini is very good as Wava, a character underwritten compared with the other three. Zacar displays admirable versatility with multiple small roles, succeeding best as the sweet if somewhat dim Elvira.Director Mark Bringelson keeps the pacing swift and the dense series of events clear, but his choice to have the characters regularly walk behind the audience to change costumes is unnecessarily distracting. Desma Murphys wooden home framework set creates a properly farm country ambiance, bolstered by Lisa D. Burkes nicely wrought array of homespun outfits that get fancier as the years go by. Costumes, Lisa D. Burke; lighting, Derrick McDaniel; sound, Christopher Moscatiello; production stage manager, Maurie Gonzalez. Opened, reviewed Sept. 12, 2008. Runs through Nov. 1. Running time: 2 HOURS, 20 MIN (TerryMorgan)Bunbury reviewed in Back Stage West (2005)In The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon Moncrieffhas invented an imaginary invalid named Bunbury so he may "go down into the country whenever I choose," but in the fantasticalworld of Tom Jacobson, a place where distinguished literature and literary genres reign supreme, there is a Bunbury; the only problem is that he has no idea he's fictional. As Jacobson's astonishinglybright new play opens, Bunbury (played with passion and elegance by Sean Wing) ponders the love interest of Shakespeare's Romeo before he went to that darned ball. "If he had kept mooning over Rosaline, he'd be alive today," but alas, Rosaline is only a plot device, never appearing onstage. "She's less than fiction," he argues. "She's sub-fictional." Soon a young ladyin Renaissance garb speaking in iambic pentameter (Ann Noble) arrives unannounced--and boy, is she pissed. Rosaline convincesBunbury she's more than just a "few drops of ink" and together they journey back to save the classic lovers right in their tomb, inadvertently changing the course ofall literature in the process. Back in Earnest-land, Cecily (Stephanie Stearns) prophetically surmises of Romeo and Juliet's permanently altered ending, "Why, if they'ddied, half the marriages in theworld would end."Traveling from Poe's The Raven to visits with Streetcar's Blanche and Virginia Woolf's George and Martha, Bunbury realizes what they've done. "This newliterature," he wails, "where's the pity? Where's the fear?" They set about on a mission to correct theircorrection and for Bunbury to prove that even if he is fictional, he's not a trivial character, nor is anyone else in the world. How he and Rosaline's efforts play out-ifyou'll excuse the expression--is the stuff of which classic theatre is made: both extraordinarily clever yet ultimately touching and incredibly moving.Jacobson's latest play is his most magnificent to date and here it's gorgeously mounted, acted and designed, featuring uniformly excellent and most committed performances and sharply visual staging by director Mark Bringelson. Still, the star of this production isthe remarkable Mr. Jacobson. As Bunbury and Rosaline sweep through time and literature, his audience's collective imagination is also swept up in ways in which the world can change. A hundred years from now, people finding complex and ingeniously twisted great works of art could easily find it to be quite "Jacobsonian." (Travis Michael Holder)Ouroboros reviewed by LA Weekly (2004) When it comes to showing us the way, political theater is about as dead as political discourse in this country. On the campaign trail, we watch and hear the prevalence of smears, mangled logic, lies, hysteria and rage in the place of openhearted discussion. Slogans may tidily sum up fury, but they dont actually penetrate an idea. Strong leadership. Flip-flop. Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot. In this polarized nation, the hecklers have seized the day, leading the way to a greater understanding of absolutely nothing.A recent, telling example appeared on the editorial page of The New York Times shortly after the Republican National Convention. Blowhard columnist William Safire, seeking to prove that both God and the American people are on his side, argued that the presidents 11-point lead in the then latest Newsweek poll demonstrated that, contrary to the whining of thumb-sucking liberals, the nation is not polarized at all, that the larger wisdom of the Republican agenda made itself apparent in the swing states, and that Democrats should now wipe the snot off their noses and retire to their corner. It was, as usual, an exercise in derision passing for discussion. Three days later, eminent pollster John Zogby confirmed that, in light of so many voters not being home over the Labor Day weekend, the presidents 11-point upward bounce was actually a mirage, that, as of September 14, the presidential horserace remains neck-and-neck. Safires premise was, as usual for Safire, planted in marshmallow goop.Yes, this is a conflicted nation in which one camp is shouting at but not speaking to the other. As a character in Federico Fellinis last film points out to the noisy people around him, as he pokes his head into a wishing well, If youd all just stop talking for a moment, we might actually understand something. In the theater, little Bushes are springing up on stages all over the map. Locally, you can find the U.S. president in plays at Evidence Room in Homewrecker, and at Sacred Fools in Dubya 2004. Hes also been sighted recently at Hollywoods MET Theater, Actors Gang Theater and, some time ago, at Santa Monicas City Garage. Not surprisingly, in New York Tony Kushner incarnated him last month for a work in progress (Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy). And in London, David Hares Stuff Happens and Tim Robbins Embedded feature our incumbent as a central player. In none of these plays does Mr. Bush appear even remotely sympathetic or halfway intelligent. And though it may be deeply satisfying to vent ones frustration through art, the half-truth conclusion Hes an idiot is not a signpost on any road to wisdom. Enter Tom Jacobson, among our city's most brilliant dramatists. His new play, Ouroboros a reference to the circularity of a snake eating its own tail at Road Theater Company, is a political play in the abstract, a theological one in the concrete. If youre swimming in the sewage of the current election, Ouroboros must be seen for the way it floats above histrionic political cesspits, offering the wisdom and beauty of a broader view of whats in our control and what isnt. Ouroboros is a heady play, but eerily emotional at the same time. Its political only to the extent that its core elements, religion and spirituality, are playing such a pivotal role in current American politics.As a backdrop, Jacobson takes us to the art and architecture of Medieval and Renaissance Italy, with its angels and devils and ghoulish Byzantine influences that are really the source material for the good-versus-evil mentality of our pop culture and, of course, our current White House administration. The contemporary characters, however Americans abroad are trying to find moral nuances in their own bad behaviors against this militantly harsh canvas. As in Jacobson's play, Sperm, presented last year by Circle X Theater Company, Ouroboros (which is considerably more audience friendly), is about the American Character and, like Sperm, is set on foreign shores. Sperm studied an American whaler/con artist who stumbled into the French Revolution. Ouroboros looks at two unrelated modern American couples, refugees touring Italy in order to find some relief from the spiritual malaise of home. Its as though Jacobson sees Europe as a beacon with some imaginary statue calling to America, Give us your tired, your confused, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. A woman named Catherine (Shauna Bloom) gazes into the mummified head of her namesake, St. Catherine, and, losing her mind (as she does routinely on antidepressants), sees a reflection of herself. In a further underscoring of the plays theological impulses, another of the characters, Margaret (Taylor Gilbert) is an Episcopalian postulate nun who literally lost her singing voice after observing the death of a friend from AIDS; in her friends final moments, she says, he claimed to have seen heaven, and in it Gods throne vacant. Her five-city trip, accompanied by a gay choir director named Tor (Paul Witten), is a pilgrimage to Milan where perhaps the opera at La Scala will trigger the return of her singing voice. The man with whom Margaret winds up having an adulterous affair, Philip (K.C. Marsh), is a guilt-ridden Lutheran minister from Chicago, accompanied by Catherine, his mentally unstable wife, whos unable to bear children and has just been turned down for adoption. (Shes in Italy to study enamels.) Christ puts in an appearance (Josh Gordon, in one of 12 quick-change roles) as the devil in disguise. Themes of sin, sacrifice, guilt and redemption adorn the play.Jacobson's works are both erudite and very, very clever a cleverness that can sometimes be his undoing, their being more clever than soulful. Hes our local Tom Stoppard but with a penchant for surrealism. Jacobsons cleverest trick is to snag his couples in a twilight-zone time glitch. In their five-city tour from Rome to Milan, Margaret and Tor keeping bumping into Catherine and Philip, who at first, mysteriously, seem to know far too much about them. In Scene 1, Philip keeps referring confessing to an affair hes had with astonished Margaret, who insists shes never seen him in her life. This is because, in a metaphysical quirk, Catherine and Philip are actually traveling in the opposite direction as Margaret and Tor from Milan to Rome. By the time Margaret and Tor get to Milan in Scene 5, they meet Catherine and Philip as theyre just starting their Italian adventure stunned that Margaret and Tor know so much about them the inverse of Scene 1. For the audience, the resolution of this perfectly symmetrical play of opposites and inversions comes in the middle Scene 3 (Florence) where both couples temporarily occupy the same time zone. Meanwhile, Jacobson keeps toying with opposites. At the end of Scene 1, in a labyrinth vault, the ground swallows up Philip, while his deranged wife is left scraping at concrete with her fingernails trying to find him. When we get to Scene 5, argaret leaps from a banister and floats above Milan. At play's start, Philip (at the end of his journey) begs Margaret not to go to Milan. In Scene 5, Margaret, at the end of her journey, makes precisely the opposite appeal, that Philip must see Rome. None of this is letting the cat out of any bag: The subtitle of the play that follows Margaret and Tor from Rome to Milan is called A Nun's Tale. On alternate weekends, Ouroboros is played with the scenes inverted, subtitled A Priest's Tale, following Catherine and Philip from Milan to Rome. So one way or another, one play or another, you're going to know at least one of the endings after the first scene. This isn't a drama about suspense, its a mystery about balance. As Catherine points out in a Florence cathedral, Notice the symmetry of the four large devils, north, south, east and west. Ive forgotten their names, probably Asmodeus, Beelzebub but the interesting thing is the symmetry. Structure meets theme in Jacobson's play. Its like watching a fresco by Raphael come to life. Michael Michetti's tender direction accents the actors cheerfully wry intelligence of the actors that floats over and then dips into their agonies. When Bloom's Catherine collapses with an emotional seizure in Siena after viewing St. Catherine's mummified head, Marshs kindly desperate Philip tries to calm her by having her pray. "Good," he says. "Jesus will be here with you while I go get a cab. Then well go back to the hotel and watch CNN." This is Philip's unwittingly ludicrous version of comfort: that network news will provide a happy escape from the harsher realities of Medieval relics. Desma Murphy's multilevel Byzantine set, with its suggestions of arches and a nave ceiling, plays beautifully with Jeremy Pivnick's cinematic lighting design and David B. Marling's seductively haunting neo-Gregorian sound transitions. When political conversation fails to converse, the arts drift toward theology for some comprehension of what, on Earth, were doing. The nihilistic Dada art movement was born from the chaos of World War I. The Theater of the Absurd emerged from the paralyzing terror of the atomic bomb movements that openly questioned the capacities of reason and language when God's throne sits so evidently vacant. Ouroboros, however, skirts nihilism, existentialism and postmodernism. It's as comforting as a priest who believes. The play is back there with Galileo, looking with wonder at the paths of the stars and relishing the beauty of the trails they reveal. The play screams from inside out, and outside in, that the shape of things is orderly and symmetrical, that there really is a Guiding Hand. As theological dramas go, it's about as optimistic as any contemporary playwright can reasonably get away with. In the stench of an election year, its perspective is as fresh as an ocean breeze. (Steve Mikulan) Sperm reviewed by LA Times (2004)By Philip Brandes, Special to The Times In a refreshingly original and imaginative debut staging from Circle X Theatre Company, Tom Jacobson's "Sperm" combines the literary DNA of 18th century French drama with postmodern irony to spawn a whale of a tale (literally the title refers to the species of leviathans that have loomed large in symbolic portent since Jonah's night sea journey).History, mythology, poetry and scatological puns collide with dazzling ingenuity in Jacobson's quirky seriocomic gem, composed entirely in rhyming iambic pentameter. Clearly billed as an "adaptation" of a supposed subversive historical text ("Cachalot" by Jacques Miroir), "Sperm" explores the twilight of the French monarchy as it tries to stem the rising tide of republicanism among the populace. Amid the intrigues at pre-revolutionary Versailles arrives Richard (Joel McHale), a fair-spoken American seaman who accepts a royal invitation to instruct the French in the ways of whaling. This Nantucket Yankee in King Louis' court comes bearing more than fish stories he also introduces contagious American ideas of democracy and equality, along with a mystical awareness of the animate spirits of hunted animals. These radical concepts are invigorating to the intellectually curious Louis XVI (Jim Anzide) but threatening to the more politically savvy Marie Antoinette (Michaela Watkins) and her scheming allies of convenience, the decadent Duc de Coigny (Casey Smith) and the corrupt abbess, Sister Louise (Sarah artmann).Although Richard starts out as a political pawn, he confounds everyone (including the audience) by getting swallowed by a whale and mutating into a new life form after his rescue. Imbued with the spirit of the slaughtered whale, he uses his newfound magical powers to exact revenge on the human race. In the complex view of "Cachalot's" anonymous author, the need for social reform was urgent, yet the democracy we now revere seemed a force of anarchy, threatening the extinction of the human race.This odd tale is a perfect fit for the Circle X troupe's signature offbeat sensibilities. In this inventive staging by Tara Flynn and Tim Wright (their first as the company's new artistic directors), even apocalyptic forebodings are tossed off with breezy wit. When King Louis recounts his prescient nightmare about being devoured and beheaded by wild animals, Marie Antoinette quips: "No wonder you could not get back to bed / A pillow's not much good for just a head!"

The cast of The Friendly Hour a ccepts their LA Weekly Award for Best Ensemble 2009: Kate Mines, Ann Noble, Bettina Zacar, Mara Marini (not pictured: Deana Barone)

UPCOMING

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Tom spent most of 2011 writing The Vesuvius Prophecies, a trilogy set in Pompeii. The first public readings of the plays will be in Ensemble Studio Theatre-LA's Winterfest on the following dates:Deus Ex Machina 2:30 p.m.January 21, 2012Archeologists discover an unknown Greek play and other secrets in the ruins of Pompeii that threaten to set in motion a modern apocalypse. Clytemnestra 5:30 p.m.January 28, 2012Adapted from Menander, this play tells the Electra story from the point of view of Clytemnestra, a brilliant woman with a biting wit. The funniest Greek tragedy you've ever seen! The Rosy Fingers of Dawn 8:00 p.m.January 28, 2012Not even the eruption of Mount Vesuvius can stop an inventive and theatrical Roman family from putting on their production of a lost Greek classic, Menander's Clytemnestra. The show must go on! All readings will be at: Atwater Village Theatre3269 CASITAS AVE.LOS ANGELES, CA 90039For more information about Winterfest, visit:www.ensemblestudiotheatrela.org
CONTACT No Frame

Contact

3425 W. 1st Street

Los Angeles, CA 90004-6032

(213) 385-4562 tom.jacobson_sbcglobal.net

Joshua Gordon and Paul Witten in Ouroboros at The Road Theatre Company (2004) photo credit: Marci Hill

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Will Bradley and Robert Mammana

as Brown and Warren

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"An impressive range and a nimble touch that recalls the young Tom Stoppard." Terry Morgan, Daily Variety, October 4, 2005 (review of Bunbury)