The Exit Interview (Published Comedy)
by William Missouri Downs
Winner of a Rolling Premiere from the National New Play Network.
PUBLISHED BY CONCORD
Untenured professor Dr. Dick Fig has discovered that a PhD on Bertolt Brecht is not a growth industry. He is being laid off. The last indignity standing between him and the slow-moving unemployment line is the university’s mandatory exit interview.
Enter Eunice. She is the interviewer. She believes in The Secret. Dick believes in reason, conflict, and not wasting oxygen on small talk. They are not a good match...
Untenured professor Dr. Dick Fig has discovered that a PhD on Bertolt Brecht is not a growth industry. He is being laid off. The last indignity standing between him and the slow-moving unemployment line is the university’s mandatory exit interview.
Enter Eunice. She is the interviewer. She believes in The Secret. Dick believes in reason, conflict, and not wasting oxygen on small talk. They are not a good match. Then a despondent student begins shooting up Ronald Reagan Hall next door.
Trapped together, Dick and Eunice take cover and stumble into a series of unavoidable questions: What is the meaning of life? What is the relationship between religion and science? And why does God hate amputees? Dick lost his foot in a tragic moose accident. It was later reattached. This does not make him feel better.
The Exit Interview is not realism. A chorus of actors plays nearly two dozen roles, interrupting the main action to reenact Dick’s failed romances, his battles with small-minded colleagues, and his complicated emotional history with the moose.
When things become too intense, the chorus halts the story entirely to stage fake commercials and ten-minute plays inside the play, reminding the audience that they are in a theater and should probably keep thinking.
- Inquire About Rights
- Recommend
- Download
- Save to Library