Books by Len Jenkin

"Haunting, poetic and achingly tender, the pitch perfect HOW IS IT THAT WE LIVE OR SHAKEY JAKE + ALICE conveys love in a way that will leave you thinking about what it means for two hearts to be entwined for the brief flash of the human life span. It's as if someone forgot to tell playwright Len Jenkin that new plays are not supposed to be this good… The story and structure are deceptively simple. We meet Shakey Jake and Alice as teens, huddling for shelter, laughing, questioning, proclaiming their love and confusion under the bridge. Years pass between scenes that take us to young adults whose lives didn't turn out as they'd hoped, and finally to elderly people facing challenges beyond their control. …Two supporting characters serve as charismatic narrators, characters and catalysts in multiple roles, not unlike El Gallo in The Fantasticks or the Leading Player in Pippin… The biggest wow goes to Jenkin, the Obie Award-winning playwright who has reached for the stars in HOW IS IT THAT WE LIVE and, somehow, managed to bring one down to twinkle… HOW IS IT THAT WE LIVE is, in the end, a play about the human condition that doesn't condescend, simplify or slip into sentimentality. Amid life's inevitable disappointments and fears, it beats with hope that love is real and prevails. Shakey Jake and Alice aren't famous or rich. They don't change the world by the standards we usually apply to people who are deemed to be making a difference. But their love for each other turns out to be more important than being remembered for a brief sojourn on the earth. In fact, this play suggests, that may be the only important thing. Shakey Jake tells Alice that when they come back in another life, even if she's a tree, he will find her and love her. The marvel and joy is that you believe it." Nancy Churnin, Dallas News

Abraham Zobell is a man like other men. No better, not much worse. But, unlike other men, he has a vital need to lay flowers on an ocean grave before it's too late. Though he's recovering from a recent heart attack, Abe rejects the pleas of his wife and the advice of his doctors, rips out his IV, and sets out on a pilgrimage to the sea. Along the way, he encounters ghosts and memories, music and moonlight, pilgrim strangers, and even stranger friends. "Len Jenkin not only has a vivid imagination, but he also has an artist's command of his craft."New York Times "Len Jenkin has an unusual talent for reaching into shadowy places in the human psyche and coming up with evocative images."Journal American (Seattle) "Jenkin's plays have plenty of plot and delicious language, but the transience of experience is the main theme that runs through Jenkin's work. He manipulates theatrical illusions with a playful manner that recalls Jorge Luis Borges, to disguise meditations on mortality."Village Voice (New York)

Uncle Sam was a novelties salesman who died one night, alone and broke, in a Pittsburgh hotel. But he was also a larger-than-life figure, a mythic hero, to his nephew - who now seeks to discover his uncle's true story. His quest is a quixotic and picaresque one, involving a seductive nightclub singer who promises to marry Sam if he can locate his ne'er-do-well brother (who absconded with the proceeds from a robbery), and developing into a series of sometimes funny, sometimes hair-raising episodes as the nephew "becomes" his uncle in his youth and journeys to a remote lighthouse, a rather sinister university laboratory, an opium den, the clinic of a Mexican quack, and a very odd miniature golf course - all intriguingly distorted, as though viewed through a funhouse mirror. In the end it is really the landscape of the mind that is explored and illuminated, as the trail leads back to Old Sam and the disquieting knowledge that dreams and reality are, in the final essence, often one and the same, with the "truth" still remaining tantalizingly out of reach."Mr. Jenkin's play is in the first place a loving but rarified pulp-fiction parody, full of ingenious and peculiar turns of language." -The Village Voice"Jenkin's plays are, in a sense, loony detective stories, a pilgrim's progress through thickets of American hype and ignorance." -The New York Daily News"By the end of this imaginative evening, one could say that the play is a journey of self-discovery, a pop art fairy tale, or an investigation into the American psyche." -BackStage"... it's a wonderful piece, astonishingly imaginative and challenging." -The Bergen Record

FIVE OF US deals with the parallel lives of New York tenement dwellers, who live next door to each other but whose paths do not cross until one fateful moment, which spells disaster for them all. One apartment is occupied by Mark, a young writer who churns out pornography while planning the "big novel" he will someday write, and his live-in girlfriend, Lee, an anthropology grad who works as a waitress. Their next-door neighbor is Herman, a mentally deficient messenger who speaks in a language all his own and amuses himself by calling 800 numbers to make hotel reservations he has no intention of keeping. When Lee is offered a chance to join an anthropological expedition to Sri Lanka, Mark is faced with a crisis - the loss of both her companionship and her income. With the connivance of his ex-con buddy, Eddie, a street-smart would-be mercenary, Mark decides to prop up his finances by robbing Herman's apartment, in the misguided belief that the poor eccentric has been hoarding money. But, instead, what they find is the bizarre detritus of a stunted life - a life which is abruptly ended when Herman, coming upon them, is startled into a fatal epileptic fit. Fearful and guilt-ridden, Mark and Eddie try to cover their tracks - but as the play ends it is also clear that no matter how far or fast they flee they will never escape the spectre of the lonely misfit whose pathetic world they have so thoughtlessly and fatally shattered."FIVE OF US is a 10. Jenkin has a real genius for character." -The Hollywood Reporter"... it proves that he not only has a vivid imagination but that he also has an artist's command of his craft." -The New York Times"... a gripping, haunting experience that can't be dismissed lightly." -Drama-Logue"... full of surprises and subversions, so that the expected keeps failing to happen, and the unexpected keeps happening, in new and absurdly ironic ways ... FIVE OF US is several kinds of a good play." -The Village Voice

A brilliantly conceived and highly theatrical experience in absurdist drama, in which the audience is taken on a wild and funny metaphysical journey into the fertile imaginations of the diverse characters whose bizarre stories are deftly interwoven into the fabric of the play. DARK RIDE is comprised of a series of vignettes involving characters who, at first, appear to bear no relation to each other. A mysterious figure gives a scholar an ancient manuscript to translate; a thief steals an enormous jewel; a woman assures us that life is all coincidence; a dream-like waitress serves her customers all manner of thoughts and suggestions but no food. The images are bizarrely funny and provocative and, in time, coalesce into a pattern of driving concerns and obsessions that come into focus when the various characters finally meet at an oculists convention in Mexico City. Phantasmagoric, the play takes us on a journey that, in the final essence, transcends the physical world to explore the inner recesses of the mind."The trip itself, like a spooky show in a carnival tunnel, is full of bright, surprising images, scary and funny." -The Village Voice"... funny, rich, erudite, playful, assured." -Soho News"Few playwrights have Jenkin's skill at theatrical sleight-of-hand ... it supplies an ingenuity which cannot fail to stimulate both the theatre and the theatregoer." -The New York Daily News

A kaleidoscopic, surrealistic overview of contemporary America, set forth in the bizarre, highly theatrical style which characterizes this writer's distinctive voice. Produced by New York's highly regarded Public Theater, the play employs brilliantly imaginative avante-garde techniques to highlight both the dreams - and delusions - which infuse and motivate our modern world. The play is made up of a series of concurrent actions, some set in a tacky motel, some elsewhere, involving a group of disparate but curiously related people. There is the young night clerk, Pauline, who studies her high-school English Lit notebook, while growing increasingly fearful of the unseen and unwanted suitor who lies in wait in the motel parking lot; a raucous carnival barker touting his giant crocodile, Bonecrusher; a pair of seedy bar denizens who occasionally break into song; a dim-witted handyman, Chuckles, who performs pointless errands; a deranged scientist who believes that he is in contact with creatures from outer space; an abandoned woman who waits restlessly for a lover who will probably never return; and a mysterious drifter, Faber, who, somehow becomes the catalyst which fuses all these divergent elements into a cohesive, and often wildly funny whole. And, in so doing, makes the play both an encapsulation of the American myth and, at the same time, a telling comment on what is right - and wrong - with this myth."... it has a cumulative, atmospheric effect, tantalizing our senses at the same time it creates a haunting iconographic world ... AMERICAN NOTES is itself sui generis - bearing the unmistakably original signature of Len Jenkin." -The New York Times"[AMERICAN NOTES] is a kind of anti-OUR TOWN. The weird backwater in which it's set is a little surreal and a lot seedy, populated by nighthawks, drifters, pimps, and hucksters." -Chicago Reader"Twice as ingeniously written as any play in town ..." -The Village Voice"... a mythic vision of America ..." -Drama-Logue

In the first play in LIMBO TALES, HIGHWAY, a man suddenly decides to drive to his girlfriend's house, which is 200 miles away. He becomes obsessed with the thought that each car that passes may be his girlfriend coming to visit him - and as he begins to lose touch with time and place he becomes convinced that he has moved back to another century, another civilization. In the short INTERMEZZO, a Master of Ceremonies announces, in hilarious detail, all the exotic acts that will not be on the bill that evening. In the final play, HOTEL, a down-on-his-luck encyclopedia salesman sits in a flea-bag hotel room, eating Chinese food which is delivered by a disembodied arm, while listening to the squabbling of his neighbors and contemplating the aridity of his limbo-like existence."Len Jenkin not only has a vivid imagination, but he also has an artist's command of his craft." -New York Times"Len Jenkin has an unusual talent for reaching into shadowy places in the human psyche and coming up with evocative images." -Journal American (Seattle)"Jenkin's plays have plenty of plot and delicious language, but the transience of experience is the main theme that runs through Jenkin's work. He manipulates theatrical illusions with a playful manner that recalls Jorge Luis Borges, to disguise meditations on mortality." -Village Voice (New York)"Jenkin explores many of the raw nerve ends in our society; the deep need to believe an absolute, while at the same time reveling in the gratification of the present; the difference between titillation and satisfaction; the bizarre nature of reality; and the real nature of the bizarre." -Times (Seattle)

Both a riff on lounge acts and a lounge act itself. Time Out calls the show, "Enveloping, sad and entirely hilarious, the most fun you'll ever have watching the American Dream disintegrate.""Annie and I saw DREAM EXPRESS last night. I absolutely LOVED the writing, I was blown away. To my ear it is simultaneously sublime and gritty. Both lyric and comic. Cynical and romantic. Dark and light. Annie too was enamored of the writing. 'This town is holding onto the planet by its teeth.' I have been repeating that one and am waiting patiently for a moment in life when I can use it (with attribution). I wish I could be there every night. What a f#%king killer piece of theater." -Paul Lazar, Big Dance Theater

A fantastical "Kafkaesque" journey through time and space."TIME IN KAFKA is a playful, luminous trip ... Len Jenkins's 90-minute fantasy about a young scholar so in love with the work of Franz Kafka that he imagines the famous writer's spirit has appeared to tell him the whereabouts of a lost manuscript. What ensues is a poetic and often hilarious meditation on the mystical connection between writer and ardent - part dream reverie, part time travel and often mesmerizing theater ..." -Martha Heimberg, Turtle Creek News"TIME IN KAFKA is full of literary allusions, but it doesn't feel much like the work of its eponym, Franz Kafka. It's more like Thomas Mann on psychedelics." -Lawson Taitte, Dallas Morning News"'Time in Kafka is always broken. Every moment leads back to itself. Chronological and eternal.' The opening (and closing) lines for Len Jenkin's new play TIME IN KAFKA could not be more concise in their description of Kafka and the play itself, a fun romp ..." -Jennifer Smart, Pegasus News"... one surprise after another ... a vibrant celebration." -Christopher Soden, Arts & Culture Magazine

Subtitled "A History of Science (A Chronicle of Folly, Wisdom, and Madness)," PORT TWILIGHT has been described as "an end-times extraterrestrial vaudeville.""Len Jenkin's dark, whirling comedy, PORT TWILIGHT, follows several storylines as they trail throughout the fantasy city of the title. All of the stories involve what might be called decoding messages and 'alien contact.' ... thanks to Len Jenkin's language, PORT TWILIGHT makes for a haunting, mind-altering experience." -Jerome Weeks, Art & Seek"... PORT TWILIGHT is a distinctly playful and yet somber, introspective piece about the foibles and heartbreak of humanity, and its quest for solutions ... It is one of the most original shows I have ever seen. It combines insouciance, weariness, zeal, cynicism, comic relief, melancholy, the indecipherable into a poetically wistful and radiant experience." -Christopher Soden, Pegasus News"Len Jenkin's zippy, atmospheric dialogue. There's a beautiful lyrical quality to it." -Jonathan Pacheco, Slant Magazine

Trapped during a storm in a ferry terminal with no food, no electricity, and no cellular signal, these pilgrims of the night pass the time sharing salacious tales that range from adultery to a biblical flood. "In the six tales of PILGRIMS OF THE NIGHT, and in the framing narrative, Jenkin explores many of the raw nerve ends in our society; the deep need to believe an absolute, while at the same time reveling in the gratification of the present; the difference between titillation and satisfaction; the bizarre nature of reality; and the real nature of the bizarre." -Times (Seattle) "Jenkin's PILGRIMS OF THE NIGHT is a wonderful combination of innocence and guile, primitive impulses and sophisticated craft. Zombies, a headless woman, an island paradise, an erotically frustrated fry cook, a psychopathic neurosurgeon, a silver fairy, and a formerly live deer all make memorable impressions." -Post-Intelligencer (Seattle)

Coconut Joe is looking for the perfect consignment of coconuts for the biscuit factory he works for. His search has taken him to Berlin, where he is double crossed by a beautiful woman and ends up as a prisoner in a nuclear waste plant. He escapes and makes his way to Venice. He boards a ship but it sinks. But Joe manages to escape on a life raft with a Pirate Queen. They are washed up on an island and end up in a hotel that is full of down and outs who cannot pay their rent. They put on a puppet show to amuse themselves. "LIKE I SAY, a new play by one of America's leading writers, is set at the seaside Hotel Splendide, where a peculiar group of travelers try to make some sense of life and get ahold of some ready cash. This mysterious and comic story takes us to the edge of America and the end of the line." -Royal Court Theatre, London "Len Jenkin has an unusual talent for reaching into the shadowy places in the human psyche and coming up with evocative images - like thrusting an arm into a barrel of black slime and coming up with a handful of gold nuggets." -Journal American (Seattle)

Len Jenkin's noir fantasy entertainment is a cross between a surreal radio melodrama and wacky comedy filled with music and fantasy. Margo Veil is a young actress whose strange adventures lead her into an ever-changing landscape of dream and reality. "Len Jenkin not only has a vivid imagination, but he also has an artist's command of his craft." -New York Times "Len Jenkin has an unusual talent for reaching into shadowy places in the human psyche and coming up with evocative images." -Journal American (Seattle) "Jenkin's plays have plenty of plot and delicious language, but the transience of experience is the main theme that runs through Jenkin's work. He manipulates theatrical illusions with a playful manner that recalls Jorge Luis Borges, to disguise meditations on mortality." -Village Voice (New York) "Jenkin explores many of the raw nerve ends in our society; the deep need to believe an absolute, while at the same time reveling in the gratification of the present; the difference between titillation and satisfaction; the bizarre nature of reality; and the real nature of the bizarre." -Times, (Seattle)

A roller-coaster ride through the American scene, from the Fascination Parlor to Leroy Smiles the Crab-boy, and from the movie set to the tattoo parlor to Frankie the Finn. A concert for actors. "Len Jenkin not only has a vivid imagination, but he also has an artist's command of his craft." -New York Times "Len Jenkin has an unusual talent for reaching into shadowy places in the human psyche and coming up with evocative images." -Journal American (Seattle) "Jenkin's plays have plenty of plot and delicious language, but the transience of experience is the main theme that runs through Jenkin's work. He manipulates theatrical illusions with a playful manner that recalls Jorge Luis Borges, to disguise meditations on mortality." -Village Voice (New York) "Jenkin explores many of the raw nerve ends in our society; the deep need to believe an absolute, while at the same time reveling in the gratification of the present; the difference between titillation and satisfaction; the bizarre nature of reality; and the real nature of the bizarre." -Times, Seattle

KRAKEN explores the true-life encounter between legendary American novelists Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1856. Melville, in the midst of a spiritual journey to the Holy Land, stops to visit with his old friend Hawthorne, now the American consul in Liverpool. As they spend the evening together, they discuss and confront their, fears, failures, things of this world and the next, books and publishers, and all possible and impossible matters. "Len Jenkin not only has a vivid imagination, but he also has an artist's command of his craft." The New York Times "Len Jenkin has an unusual talent for reaching into shadowy places in the human psyche and coming up with evocative images." Journal American (Seattle) "Jenkin's plays have plenty of plot and delicious language, but the transience of experience is the main theme that runs through Jenkin's work. He manipulates theatrical illusions with a playful manner that recalls Jorge Luis Borges, to disguise meditations on mortality." Village Voice (New York)

JONAH is a rumination on the story of the man and the sea. Jonah's a man on the run. He hops a Greyhound to Joppa and then grabs a cabin on the ocean-bound Carnival Princess. Drinking away his sorrows at the ship's Grass Skirt Grill, the lounge band Sheila and the Lovetones plays him into a stupor before he tumbles into the waves. Len Jenkin's JONAH is a contemporary retelling of the unfaithful servant; some love stories about the evil city of Ninevah, a Dairy Queen, and of course, the whale. "Best New Play: …incredible results…Jenkin's JONAH… The frenzied take on the Biblical beach tale featured kaleidoscopic characters and heartwarming stories interwoven in a way that was meaningful, intellectual and fun-a…hat trick." Dallas Observer