Drama/ 6 characters, 3 men, 3 women/ Full Length, Two Acts
Synopsis: France in the 1960s. “Pursued by ghosts,” Liliane, a wealthy woman and survivor of a concentration camp, flees to her country house. She discovers two charming young intruders have already made themselves at home, and, over the objections of her companions, welcomes them to stay. The visitors’ naive facades, however, mask a devotion to Nazi ideology, and a capacity for murder.
Amateur and professional rights:
Alan Rossett
rossdoal@aol.com
Ph: (33) 1 73 75 57 65
About the Playwright: “Cocteau meets Woody Allen” was film-director Jean Delannoy’s comment on Alan Rossett, the only American to have French language plays produced regularly in France . . . and to receive awards from the Centre National des Lettres. Born in Detroit, he began his career as an actor in New York, where he appeared for a season with the Living Theatre and also as James Earl Jones’ first Iago. Relocating in Paris, he wrote and directed an evocation of Montmartre Light and Shade with Charles Boyer. Then his comedy High Time went from London to Sydney to New York (at the Actors Studio) and wound up, translated, in a Parisian cafe theatre before transferring to La Bruyere, a Broadway category house.
Rossett made the language cross-over into French with two plays set in restaurants which he staged in the midst of diners at a show biz hang-out, running 200 performances. Many other productions followed of his French-language plays, including How It Happened, Cat As Cat Can, Love On Ice, Calamity Jane.
His French plays are published by Avant-Scene Theatre, Editions des quatre-vents, Editions Art et Comedie et Librairie Theatrale. He has adapted into English many of his own works as well as a series of plays by colleagues that have received grants from the Beaumarchais Association of the French Author’s Society. Rossett has done English versions as well of Alain Decaux’s historical pageants (Chateau Blois Comes To Life and De Gaulle: the Man Who Said NO. As an actor, he has appeared in films of Marcel Carné, Woody Allen, and over 50 others.
Tug of War was first produced at the Roundabout Theatre, New York City, in December 1970.