The Gary Plays Part I at Skylight Theatre

The Gary Plays are an octet of loosely-connected plays portraying economic and spiritual distress in the contemporary urban wilderness of Los Angeles. Unemployed actor Gary Bean is Mednick's everyman/anti-hero, hailed by KCRW as "a sort of L.A. Leopold Bloom." "This cycle of plays is both a portrait of Los Angeles and a testament to the quality of its theater; given the various assaults on the community over the past year, it couldn't come at a better time," says director Guy Zimmerman. Martha Demson, Artistic Director of Open Fist agrees, pointing out how much Mednick's octet of plays resonates with the community's sense of siege. "As Gary walks his dead son's ashes along the LA River to the sea, he revisits failed relationships, confronts the Angel of Death and is heckled by the voices of his fading dreams and his persistent narcissism. These plays today seem a pointed and humorous allegory for all our struggles."