William Mastrosimone. Collected Plays

William Mastrosimone's plays are audacious. This is not all they are of course, but they challenge us, sometimes to make us recoil in shock or at least become unsettled. Who else dares to give the rapist the funny lines as Mastrosimone does in Extremities. Nor is this audacity limited to social or political issues. Who else confronts the driver-owner of a transcontinental semi with a reclusive dime store clerk, as in The Woolgatherer, or a belly dancer who has the soul of Isis with a shut-in hemophiliac as in Shivaree. In these plays Mastrosimone has found vastly dissimilar characters who are drawn to each other, and he probes until he enables us to see past our stereotypical expectations. Fresh insights enrich us and we are reminded of that endless human diversity--indeed human potential--that we so often never recognize on our own. - from the Introduction by M.E. Comtois, Founding head of the Playwriting Program at Rutgers University