Books by Mr Tom Jacobson

Christopher Marlowe, sixteenth-century author, was murdered at the age of 29. This tragicomedy speculates that his death was tied to his scandalous play about the relationship between Jesus and the disciple John."Playwright Tom Jacobson is a linguistic gadfly. Often, you are tickled by him. Occasionally you are bedeviled by him. Once or twice, you just want to swat him. Linguistic pyrotechnics explode in Jacobson's period verse drama THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. Little is known of Marlowe's life. It is certain that he was an atheistic iconoclast whose heretical views placed him in constant danger of arrest. The motive for his murder in 1593 remains murky. In this clever attempt to solve the mystery, Jacobson's precocious use of language is rivaled only by the sheer effrontery of his subject matter." -F Kathleen Foley, Los Angeles Times

When Trent brings Felix home to New Orleans to meet his father and homophobic grandfather, the family's demons come slithering into the light. Watchful ghosts, sinister hustlers, and a myriad of parasites lead Felix on a Southern Gothic journey to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1."Tom Jacobson's galvanic drama HOUSE OF THE RISING SON, boasts some of his trademark qualities, such as shrewd scientific metaphors and astute ruminations on social issues. Those heady ideas are embellished here with the sublime pleasures of a well-spun yarn chock-full of surprises. Equal parts ghost story and unorthodox family drama, this gripping play is further blessed with an unmistakable whiff of Tennessee Williams-style lyricism. Beginning in contemporary L A, the story quickly shifts to New Orleans, where Jacobson capitalizes on the city's eternal aura of mystery and occultism ... Expect the unexpected, as the intricate narrative incisively explores issues of family dynamics and gay relationships in startlingly fresh ways. Ingeniously pondering how nature balances the good and bad effects of parasitic organisms, Jacobson forges profound reflections on symbiotic human relationships. The first act ends with a humdinger of a surprise that sets the stage for a mind-blowing second act, full of humor, poignancy, suspense, and food for thought. Possibly Jacobson's finest work to date, this sinfully rich concoction is the theatrical equivalent of a multicourse gourmet meal." -Les Spindle, Backstage"... the prolific Jacobson at his witty yet heartfelt best ..." -F Kathleen Foley, Los Angeles Times"... the gay community, publicly uncloseted for barely fifty years, is late in bringing its paranormal yarns to the campfire. Tom Jacobson takes a giant step forward with his engrossing, provocative HOUSE OF THE RISING SON ..." -Bob Verini, Variety

Based on historical incident, the play chronicles the first race riot in Los Angeles history: the 1871 lynching of 18 Chinese men by a mob of 500 "people from all nations." Tom Jacobson's fiercely theatrical retelling brings to light the remarkable, culturally diverse 19th-century Wild West town that exploded into the metropolis we know today."THE CHINESE MASSACRE (ANNOTATED), Tom Jacobson's rousing new play, is like a fun day at Disneyland. Jacobson chronicles the 1871 lynching of 18 Chinese men by a mixed-race mob, historically considered to be Los Angeles's first race riot. Actors break the fourth wall by expounding on exposition and commentating on chaos, thus the 'annotated' in the title. With 14 astounding actors playing over 30 parts, the characters' contrapuntal conversations can be cacophonous, and the masterful dialects are sometimes unintelligible, but this hugely theatrical historical interpretation is an imaginative, sprawling epic that captivates and charms. With actors popping up and down like shooting gallery targets, gunfights, reenactments of the past, delicious historical tidbits, and clever, tongue-in-cheek dialogue, THE CHINESE MASSACRE (ANNOTATED) is a theatrical Frontierland - but better. You won't see mass murder, syphilis, and herb-induced abortions at the Happiest Place on Earth." -Tony Frankel, Los Angeles Theater"THE CHINESE MASSACRE manages to be emotionally moving and intellectually stimulating as well, but the emotional impact is mostly due to the sheer drama of its events rather than their presentation within Jacobson's play. This might be exactly what Jacobson intended. The (ANNOTATED) in the subtitle means that actors frequently stop the proceedings and speak from the sidelines directly to the audience, offering historical footnotes, candid confessions of the artistic license taken by the playwright, and comparisons of their own comments to the techniques employed by Brecht in his epic theater - which was designed to make spectators think about what's happening, at the expense of emotional reactions." -Don Shirley, L A Stage Times"THE CHINESE MASSACRE is a prodigiously researched, self-consciously Brechtian parable about what may be L A's first officially recorded race riot in 1871. A number of 'annotators' playfully interrupt the action to identify historical inaccuracies that have been interjected for the flow of the story - and, citing Brecht's style of epic theater, to prevent the play's larger ideas from being overpowered by our emotional reaction to various lynchings and other brutalities depicted on the stage. Those ideas swirl around the essences of ethnic bigotry that just seem to keep recycling themselves, like our race riots, as the decades roll by." -Steven Leigh Morris, L A Weekly

Based on the actual minutes of a women's club formed in rural South Dakota in 1934, this poignant comedy charts 70 years of personal and national history, from skinning skunks and julebukking in the '30s to restoring native prairie in the new millennium."Tom Jacobson has paid exemplary homage to real-life American heroes from a less jaded period in our history, using transcripts of minutes from a rural South Dakotan women's club that gathered monthly from 1934 through 2004, when the last two survivors begin to fade. As with other of Jacobson's plays (BUNBURY, SPERM, OUROBOROS), the playwright assigns himself intricate narrative challenges that would have sent Williams back to the loony bin ... These powerful Midwestern survivors are the stoic Americans to celebrate and honor, something Jacobson has accomplished with his lyrical, sweetly bucolic text." -Backstage"Playwright Tom Jacobson seems to challenge himself with each new project, from the ambitious interconnectivity of the two parts of OUROBOROS to the giddy rewrite of famous literature in BUNBURY. On the surface, his latest play, THE FRIENDLY HOUR, may not seem stylistically in line with his other work, but it is - its audacity is simply more quiet. It is a moving and funny piece ... Jacobson's intriguing play structure, which tells the story entirely through meetings of a club, seeks to let the passage of life over seven decades provide the drama ..." -Variety"Tom Jacobson's lovely new play chronicles the rituals of a women's club in rural South Dakota from the late '30s to 2007, and we watch the women with whom we grow increasingly familiar age and engage in theological disputes that are really at the heart of the matter. God's purpose, and the purpose of community, interweave and clash through the decades ... an impressionistic landscape that straddles the literary worlds of Anton Chekhov and Thornton Wilder." -L A Weekly

What if Blanche Dubois didn't go crazy? Or the Three Sisters actually made it to Moscow? When he discovers he's fictitious, a never-seen character in an Oscar Wilde play, Bunbury joins forces with Rosaline, Romeo's never-seen obsession from ROMEO AND JULIET. Together they infiltrate and alter classic literature, including giving ROMEO AND JULIET a happy ending."In essaying a 'play for trivial people,' Tom Jacobson has delivered a seriously clever meta-theatrical comedy and an unexpectedly moving ode to the mysterious powers of art and love in BUNBURY ... Jacobson's antic yet humane wit harpoons some of the biggest leviathans of the theatrical sea, from Wilde to Chekhov to Albee, with an impressive range and a nimble touch that recalls the young Tom Stoppard ..." -Terry Morgan, Daily Variety"... Jacobson's latest play is his most magnificent to date ... As Bunbury and Rosaline sweep through time and literature, his audience's collective imagination is also swept up in ways in which the world can change. A hundred years from now, people finding complex and ingeniously twisted great works of art could easily find it to be quite 'Jacobsonian.'" -Travis Michael Holder, Backstage West